Fans are now less than a week away from the next Disney+ outing in Loki. First, fans got to follow Wanda as she explored her grief and trauma in questionable ways. Then the MCU followed that up by getting itself a brand-new star-spangled man. So, naturally, it's the God of Mischief's turn next.
Loki looks like quite a wild ride. As a previously released trailer revealed, Loki's escape in Avengers: Endgame caused some serious problems for the many timelines—bringing the attention of the TVA. An organization whose goal is to maintain the integrity of the timeline.
While trusting Loki to fix their problems is a questionable leap of faith, the TVA has arrived in the MCU, something that obviously comes with time travel. So how does one handle writing a six-episode series with time travel, while making sure it doesn't get crushed under its own weight and cause massive problems for the MCU's continuity? Michael Waldron has an answer to that.
TIME-TRAVELING MISCHIEF
In an interview with Vanity Fair, head writer for the upcoming Disney+ show Loki, Michael Waldron, was on hand to discuss the God of Mischief's crazy time-traveling adventures, and what that means for the MCU.
More importantly, though, what does it all mean for the characters we are following? According to Waldron "you can literally hold up a mirror to your characters."
“You can literally hold up a mirror to your characters. Perhaps they can encounter other versions of themselves at different points in their lives. In the case of Back to the Future’s Marty McFly, he can encounter versions of his parents, and then he understands himself better.”
With time travel comes a lot of things to think about. It's quite simply a logistical nightmare if not done with extreme care. Waldron knows the immense responsibility on his plate, especially since it affects the entire MCU.
In fact, the writer's room for the show was filled with loads of material to keep track of everything. Waldron notes that they "had to create an insane institutional knowledge" of everything time-travel.
“We had to create an insane institutional knowledge of how time travel would work within the TVA so the audience never has to think about it again. It was a lot of drawings of squiggly timelines.”
As everyone reading this article likely knows, the Avenger's final attempt to beat Thanos involved plenty of time travel in Avengers: Endgame. Waldron makes sure to point out that everything explained in that film "is the way the Avengers understand it," indicating that the series' time travel aspects will expand upon and perhaps differ from what was set up in Endgame.
Of course, being a Marvel project, fans are bound to pick everything apart to its core—especially with a week break in between episodes. Have no fear though, Waldron and co. are "acutely aware" that there is a wait, so they set out to create "a time travel logic that was so air-tight it could sustain over six hours."
“I was always very acutely aware of the fact that there's a week between each of our episodes and these fans are going to do exactly what I would do, which is pick this apart. We wanted to create a time travel logic that was so air-tight it could sustain over six hours. There's some time-travel sci-fi concepts here that I'm eager for my Rick and Morty colleagues to see.”
According to Waldron, part of the fun working on a Marvel project like Loki is creating a disaster and saying, "Yeah, we'll leave that for the next writer."
But then the funniest thing happened. Waldron was tapped as a new writer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. As Waldron puts it:
"...But then you do that on Loki and you find yourself writing Doctor Strange and you have to clean up your own mess.”
THE MCU TIMELINE IS IN GOOD HANDS
The way Michael Waldron talks about all the time-traveling craziness seems to clearly show that he knows his stuff. There's also a very clear passion present—something that is an endlessly important quality in someone so intimately involved in the MCU's development. I mean, Loki is literally going to inform the entire narrative.
While it's easy to see the responsibility that all of this brings with it, Waldron seems more than up to the task. Especially since he was also tasked with tackling Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. A film that, by all accounts, seems to be insane.
Many wondered what could possibly come after Avengers: Endgame. Now, here fans are, holding back massive amounts of extreme excitement over a solo series focused on the first Avengers villain. It's a crazy world, and something tells me that somehow the MCU is only just getting started.
