Michael Waldron, the head writer on Marvel Studios' Disney+ original series Loki, says he enjoys testing the limits of what studio boss Kevin Feige will allow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Waldron described his experimental approach to writing Loki during a panel discussion hosted by the Royal Television Society. "You've got to test the fences... With [Marvel Studios President] Kevin Feige, you get to see how far you can go," he said. "So you write in Sylvie soccer kicking an armadillo with a laser mounted on its back and they tell you 'Okay, that's too much. I like the mind invasion but maybe pull back on the laser armadillo.'"
The writer first discussed the planned laser armadillo bit around the time Loki wrapped up its first season on Disney+ back in July 2021, revealing that it would have taken place during the opening sequence of the show's third episode, "Lamentis." "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," Waldron told The Ringer-Verse podcast at the time.
"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," he continued. "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."
While the laser armadillo may have been a bit too much for Feige, Loki director Kate Herron previously revealed that the Marvel Studios president was fully on board will how weird the show aimed to be. "Something I always found was we would sometimes pitch something, and it would be at a good place, but he'd always be like, 'Okay, that's great, but push it further,'" Herron said. "Sometimes I'd pitch stuff and be like, 'This is too weird,' and he'd say, 'No, go weirder.'"
Marvel Studios' Loki follows an alternate, still-alive version of the God of Mischief who managed to escape custody at the end of 2012's The Avengers thanks to the time-travelling antics of 2019's Avengers: Endgame. By changing the course of history, Loki draws the ire of the Time Variance Authority, an organization that exists outside space and time with the mission of preserving "The Sacred Timeline." Loki Season 1 ran for a total of six episodes from June 9, 2021 to July 14, 2021. A second season is currently in the works.
Loki Season 1 is streaming now on Disney+.
Source: Royal Television Society, via Screen Rant