Loki Season 2’s Approach to Time Travel Rules Revealed (Exclusive)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been using time travel since its Doctor Strange movie, with Avengers: Endgame raising the stakes before Loki dove into the plot device and its consequences. With Loki Season 2 on the horizon, the franchise is about to see more time traveling on their screens. For the team involved with Loki, developing the rules of time travel came one with rule: keep it simple. Loki executive producer Kevin Wright talked with ComicBook.com about the approach in an exclusive interview. 

“Our Bible from season one on: simplicity,” Wright explained. “I think there is; how can you condense the essential information into a simplistic sentence or two so people go, ‘Oh, okay, I kind of get this,’ and you can… Because Miss Minutes, all of these other tools that we had, a line and a visual really could get us pretty far so people conceptually get it. A lot of times in the script we would start from a place of really spelling it out and then it became a game of culling back and condensing because if you throw too much information, it becomes homework and maybe becomes more confusing and maybe plants flags that break some rules for you. So, simplicity, and we always said, ‘Intrigue versus confusion.’ If you’re confused, it’s not working. If you’re intrigued, it’s good if it pays off.”

In the first reactions to Season 2 of Loki, some of the dialogue pertaining to time travel and other elements of the show seem to have leaned more into the confusion than intrigue, at times. However, the reactions are largely positive to the upcoming series which provided four episodes to members of the press to preview. A spoiler-free reaction to the first four episodes has been shared on the the Phase Zero channel, along with the full interview with executive producer Kevin Wright. 

After Kate Herron helmed Season 1 of Loki, Moon Knight director Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson stepped in to direct four episodes in the six-episode Season 2. “Moon Knight, they were awesome on, I had met with Justin and Aaron before Loki season one after The Endless, generally. Really, really liked them there,” Wright said. “Loki was kind of already getting moving. Kate [Herron] was on board. We were loving what she was doing and it was one of those, ‘Oh, got to keep those guys in mind for something else.’ And I kind of had recommended to another executive here who had met them about something else before Moon Knight that didn’t totally come together because of some other things. Then they went on the Moon Knight and it was like this really kind of full circle path of they were doing additional photography on Moon Knight. We had a number of scripts already ready to go on Loki and kind of sent Kevin Feige to go recruit them off the set of Moon Knight to be like, ‘Hey, see if they want to come in and meet with Tom and I about Loki season two.’ I think there was some trepidation of, ‘Do we want to come into a season two?” But they took the meeting thankfully with Tom and I and we were able to convince them why we thought they’d be great for it, but we wanted them to change it up a little bit. There was no point in doing the same thing again.”

Loki Season 2 kicks off on Thursday, October. Following new episodes of Loki, ComicBook.com’s Phase Zero podcast will be live to discuss the episodes on Phase Zero’s official YouTube channel.