Loki Director and Writer Explain How the Time Variance Authority Affects the Series’ Tone

The upcoming Disney+ series Loki will see the return of Tom Hiddleston‘s God of Mischief as he explores the fractured time stream of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The new show will also introduce the Time Variance Authority, a bureaucratic enforcement group dedicated to preserving and restoring the timeline across different branches of reality and an obscure faction in the pages of Marvel Comics. Because of their inclusion, Loki is pulling from a lot of different influences including Teletubbies, Mad Men, Blade Runner, and many others. And because of Loki‘s interaction with the TVA, Marvel Studios had to adapt the series tone to be unlike anything they’ve ever done before.

Director Kate Herron and head writer Michael Waldron recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the series. During their discussion, they addressed the influence that the office of the Time Variance Authority had on their plans for Loki.

“I actually spent a lot of my life working in admin offices as a temp, so I had a lot of personal experience in bureaucratic organizations to bring,” said Herron. “I was like, ‘These are the detail we need to capture,’ being someone who has worked in offices. And also, I love sci-fi, and I wanted to make the show just a big love letter to sci-fi and all the stuff that’s inspired me to be a filmmaker.”

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige added, “She spent a lot of time talking about noir in her initial pitch with us and looking at Mobius [Owen Wilson] as a bit of a hard-boiled detective in a nonplussed way. Bringing that vibe to the look of the show, to the bureaucratic procedure of the show is very unique.”

Waldron and the rest of the writers examined classic Marvel comics where the TVA were involved in the storylines.

“We drew inspiration from a wide breadth of ideas as the TVA shows up all throughout [Marvel]. There’s Fantastic Four runs, where they’re running around, and they’re in She-Hulk in a cool way,” said Waldron. “All of those stories were inspiration in just saying like, ‘Alright, what is this crazy organization? And how can we now make them real in a way that you could actually shoot a TV show about them?’”

We’ve seen a glimpse of the TVA offices in the various trailers for Loki, and the influence of Mad Men is certainly strong in the drab office setting.

Fans will get to see how those influences affect the story when Loki premieres on Disney+ on June 9th.