Hiddleston pleased that Loki show addresses gender fluidity
LOS ANGELES – Loki star Tom Hiddleston said he welcomed Marvel Studios’ decision to address the popular villain’s gender fluidity in a new Disney+ streaming series that debuts on June 9.
At a screening in London on Tuesday, the British actor noted that the god of mischief had been portrayed as gender-fluid in Marvel comic books as well as in Norse mythology, where the character originated.
On Sunday, The Walt Disney Co released a clip from the six-episode show and briefly showed a prisoner file that listed Loki’s sex as “fluid”.
“It’s always been there,” Hiddleston said.
“Loki as a character has had such a broad-ranging and wide-ranging identity. He’s always been a character you could never put in a box, you could never pin down. I was really pleased we were able to touch on that in the series.”
Hiddleston has played Loki since his appearance in the 2010 movie Thor.
The show takes place after events depicted in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, and catches up with Loki just after the Battle of New York when he escapes from Avengers custody and steals a time stone known as the Tesseract.
A group known as the Time Variance Authority (TVA), which keeps events from various universes in proper sequence, places Loki under arrest for abusing time travel and he is stripped of his shape-shifting powers.
“You take Loki, who seems to always be in control, and you put him in an environment where he has no control at all, no power, no potency. He’s stripped of all familiarity,” Hiddleston said.
US actor Owen Wilson co-stars as TVA agent Mobius M. Mobius, who enlists Loki’s help in finding a killer who is disrupting the timeline.
Wilson said he had not watched many Marvel films and relied on “Loki Lectures” from Hiddleston to help him understand the character.
“For a few days before filming began, he was really patient and really walking me through the whole mythology,” Wilson said.
“A lot of the way that we sort of play off each other sort of began in kind of just talking about stuff in those early days.”
The series introduces a slew of new characters to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, including Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Renslayer, Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15 and Richard E. Grant in an unrevealed role. - REUTERS
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