The director of Marvel’s Loki is citing some unique sources of inspiration for the upcoming Disney+ series. Loki director Kate Herron was doing an interview with EW’s print edition, in which she cited Blade Runner, Mad Men, and (if you can believe it) Teletubbies as influences on Loki‘s timeline-bending story. So how do those very different types of movie/TV shows all fit into Loki‘s story about Tom Hiddleston‘s timeline variant version of Loki being arrested by the time cops? well, according to Herron: “You’re just gonna have to wait until June 11” in order to find out. Fair enough.
After reading about those strange inspirations for Loki, Marvel fans have been trying to piece together where those influences show up in the series. The Blade Runner influence can be seen in the aesthetic and design of the TVA (Time Variance Authority), the aforementioned “time cops” who police and/or prune the various timelines of the Marvel Multiverse. The TVA’s inner workings and its agents (such as Owen Wilson’s Mobius M. Mobius) clearly come with a kitschy retro design and workplace dynamic that could be compared to Mad Men. As for the Teletubbies? Well, Marvel fans have one good guess how that strange kid’s show could be influencing Loki: by shaping its version of “Miss Minutes.”
Videos by ComicBook.com
Miss Minutes is the animated mascot of the TVA, who made her debut in some recent Loki promos. Miss Minutes looks like one of the retro PSA cartoons from the 1960s-70s, and is just the right balance of kid-friendly-yet-weird to fairly draw a comparison to the Teletubbies.
Loki is shaping up to be one of the most interesting (and potentially pivotal) Marvel Disney+ series. Behind all the aforementioned kitsch and humor, is a series that will open the doors of the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse so that notions of other timelines and realities gets much more flesh-out andexplained than what we got from Avengers: Endgame. Marvel fans have been questioning and debating the finer mechanics and meaning of the Marvel Multiverse, as there seem to be many plotholes from Endgame that still need filling.
In that sense, Loki and ist introduction of the TVA will be a perfect platform for key exposition about how alternate realities work – as well as what kind of beings either manage and/or threaten them. That will be key understanding for fans to have before Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness arrives.
Loki premieres on Disney+ June 9th.
