Loki Writer Explains Time Travel Approach (Exclusive)

Loki is using one of the trickiest story telling devices there is: time travel and alternate timelines. It's the type of thing that often creates paradoxes or plot holes, not to mention mind-boggling stories which can provide viewers with quite the headache as they try to make sense of how everything is happening and not messing with everything else that has already happened, will happen, could happen... well, you see the point right there. The show's head writer Michael Waldron knew that weekly episodes of Loki meant extra attention to detail from the audience and he opened up about the approach in an interview with ComicBook.com.

"Well, I think that it's especially difficult because this is a show," Waldron said, as seen in the video above. "Meaning, there's going to be a week between each of these episodes. That's a week of time for people to scrutinize our logic and figure out what doesn't make sense and all of that, as opposed to a time travel movie where maybe you watch it, something doesn't make sense, you can walk out and forget about it. We don't have that luxury. So, we worked really hard early on with our writer's room to establish, at least as airtight as we could get it, a foundational set of time travel rules that the TVA abided by and that we tried to live the rest of the show by."

Not only can the TVA travel to different points in time but they certainly have the jump on Loki's big brain. This is something the God of Mischief is not accustomed to. Often the smartest person in the room, the Time Variance Authority and their seemingly infinite knowledge of people and time seems to be the perfect match for Loki's schemes.

"That was absolutely the exciting part of putting him in the TVA," Waldron says. "And that was; here is a guy who thrives on chaos, on always being one step ahead, running up against an organization that is absolute order. They're not one step ahead, they don't even deal in steps. And so, then it was about, 'Okay, how do we take what the TVA represents, and almost distill them down into a single character?' And that became Mobius, Owen's character, whose energy is so different from Loki's, but there's such an almost patience about him and how he deals with Loki that is, weirdly, the thing probably most suited to drive Loki crazy."

What do you think of the Time Variance Authority and the time travel rules in Loki? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram! For more MCU chatter, subscribe to the ComicBook.com's MCU show, the Phase Zero podcast on any major podcast platform!