TIME BANDIT

Marvel’s mercurial trickster is back and burdened with a glorious new purpose – to fix the timeline he broke in Avengers: Endgame. Tom Hiddleston and the Loki team discuss time, crime, and a fan favorite’s unexpected decade-long run in the MCU.

- MATT MAYTUM

The day Tom Hiddleston found out the role of Loki was going to go a little further than just playing the antagonist in 2011’s Thor sounds like an end-credits sting in a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie.

“Kevin Feige called me into his office shortly after I was cast,” recalls Hiddleston, chatting to Total Film via Zoom in May. “He said, ‘Congratulations on Thor. This is going to be great. I can’t wait to get started. And I’d like to talk to you about The Avengers. I’m going to make a Captain America film after this, and then we’re going to put them all together and we’re going to make The Avengers. It’s going to be all of them, plus the Hulk and Black Widow. And I want you to be the villain, because in 1963, Loki was the villain for the first Avengers comic.’ I thought, ‘OK, this is a slightly longer and more epic journey than I had initially imagined...’”

Hiddleston has now been playing the Asgardian trickster – one of the most consistently popular characters in the MCU – for 10 years, and is reprising the role in an ambitious six-part streaming series on Disney+. But Hiddleston’s MCU origin story was a humble one. He initially auditioned for the title character before being pivoted into the role of Thor’s devious, damaged adopted brother Loki, who glowers in the shadow of the heir apparent. Hiddleston says he was “completely thrilled and honoured and excited” by the switch-up. After an extensive audition process, he knew what the role entailed.