While Marvel fans wait patiently for the MCU's return with What If...? coming to Disney+ in just under two weeks, the team behind the studio's last release have shared a wealth of knowledge on the epic multiversal adventure.
The vast majority of Loki chatter has surrounded the unexpected arrival of Jonathan Majors' He Who Remains. After all, it sets up the MCU's next big bad in Kang The Conqueror while establishing a hoard of madness coming over the course of the franchise's next phase.
Additional discussions shed light on work Loki's team did behind the scenes that didn't make it to the final cut of the show, such as A-list MCU cameos and an amphibious God of Thunder beating the snot out of Loki. The series didn't have quite enough time to touch on every wild idea from its creators, regardless of how many great ones were considered for inclusion.
Another one of these scenes has just come to the public via Loki's head writer, who divulged information on yet another member of the animal kingdom that was set for MCU stardom.
AN ARMADILLO IN LOKI?
Loki head writer Michael Waldron spoke with The Ringer-Verse pocdast about a deleted opening scene in Episode 3 featuring Sophia Di Martino's Sylvie.
While the Goddess of Mischief worked to infiltrate Hunter C-20's mind in episode's opening, the scene "turned into kind of a fight sequence" between her and the TVA where "the beach bar actually turned on Sylvie." Waldron even described writing that "an armadillo with a laser mounted on it" took its chances with Sylvie before being kicked "like a soccer ball:"
“Once upon a time, the opening of Episode 3 when Sylvie is attempting to infiltrate Hunter C-20’s mind, that actually turned into kind of a fight sequence where the TVA had defenses in place. So there’s people in the memory, so the beach bar actually turned on Sylvie and were attacking her, and it got crazier and crazier. There were like, little kids attacking her. Then at one point, I literally wrote in that an armadillo with a laser mounted on it comes to the beach bar and is firing and Sylvie kicks it like a soccer ball out into the ocean. That was in a script."
Admittedly, Waldron conceded with Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige that this idea "might be the bar for too much:"
"Kevin often references that to me, like, ‘That might be the bar for too much.’”
FROGS? CROCS? ARMADILLOS? OH MY!
The potential introduction of an armadillo into the MCU raises so many questions.
Where did the armadillo come from? Why was it mounted with a laser? Is this another Loki Variant? What did the creature have against Sylvie? Who hired the animal for the job?
It's becoming clear that Kevin Feige allowed for a great deal of creativity in Loki's writer's room, such as bringing an alligator version of the God of Mischief to life in Episode 5. With this show bringing the start of the multiverse's exploration and eventual destruction, there was plenty of room for wild and wacky ideas from every angle.
In the end, this seemed to be one of the concepts that may have been just a bit too extreme, as it would have changed the entire dynamic of scene as it came through canonically. Sylvie's interaction with C-20 turned out to be one of the more intense moments as the Variant flexed her mischievous muscles and set the stage for her whole mission through the show's final four episodes.
More details on the making of Loki continue to flow from the team that made the series happen, and each one seems to be crazier and more outlandish than the ones before it. It remains to be seen exactly where this story continues in and before Season 2, especially with Loki himself and other supporting characters set to make appearances in other MCU projects in the works.
All six episodes of Loki are available to stream on Disney+.
