Loki Director Explains King Loki Deleted Scenes, Frog Thor Stories (Phase Zero Exclusive)

The fifth episode of Loki was an extremely fun one in the series as it featured a bunch of Loki Variants ranging from Alligator Loki to Richard E. Grant as Classic Loki. The episode also had some great Marvel easter eggs like the Thanos-Copter and Throg. One fun nod that did not make the cut of the episode was King Loki who was originally seen in the trailer for the show. Loki‘s director, Kate Herron, recently paid a visit to ComicBook.com’s Phase Zero podcast and talked about cutting King Loki and bringing Throg to life.

“I think beyond that, nothing major, I think there’s always trimming on scenes and you tighten it, right?,” Herron replied when asked if there were more deleted scenes. “Because I love improv. So, the actors would improvise bits and then you kind of take which bits you want to use. But I think that was kind of the main one. We did a little bit of reshaping to Crater Lake, which is the lake they go to. Because that used to be in episode three, but we did a lot of kind of structural shifting in the edit.”

She continued, “So with that going into episode four, we did a little bit of tweaking basically to that scene. But yeah, I think that was probably the main one because it also should say it was basically meant to be like, I flashed back to him in Asgard, and it was kind of like a Frog of Thunder reference, and it was really funny, but it’s just, he was literally, I think the next thing that happened is he saw Frigga and it just felt tonally a bit like it was almost taking away from what was to come. And so it’s not like it didn’t work isolated, but it’s just one of those things when you’re cutting something together, it was like, ‘Oh no, actually.’ It’s really fun seeing him as DB Cooper, but you kind of need a breath now to allow the mother and all the rest of that to have the impact it does. Otherwise, it felt like we were sort of not treating that respectfully, basically. So yeah, that’s kind of how that came to pass.”

“Yeah, so he was definitely up for it,” Herron said of Chris Hemsworth voicing Throg. “I think I remember quoting it with him because basically, we had that other scene originally that was in episode one. So that’s why I had all these recordings for, but I was just like, ‘Oh, I feel so bad that we couldn’t get it into one. Because it just wasn’t quite right.’ But then basically I always had that shot designed where I think I got the idea from Futurama or something, but you know, when you go through like the dirt and like go down into the lair? And, I think in my head I was just like, ‘Insert Easter egg.’ And I was like, ‘We’ll put something cool here.’”

Herron continued, “And then I think we’d been through a few things, but it was just as episode one was looking in the cut. I was just like, ‘Oh, well let’s put Frog of Thunder there.’ Because, that’s really fun. And you know, and we could put the little comic book reference on the jar and, yeah. So I just thought that was kind of a fun little nod to him there. But no, Chris was, I think he was into it. I remember him laughing, but it was just so surreal recording him, because even in the original version we had, it was a very short scene anyway. So it was very short and sweet, but, he found it very funny. I think he was just probably like, ‘Okay, cool. Well, what is this?’ Yeah.”

You can listen to the full Phase Zero episode with Kate Herron here. The finale of Loki is now streaming on Disney+.

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