The Story Behind The Wild Way Loki's Creative Team Created Tom Hiddleston's Intense Time-Slipping Scenes
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Though it hasn’t been too long since Loki’s Season 2 finale aired for those with a Disney+ subscription, you might still find some Marvel fans mourning the potential end of the series. With a bittersweet end to a journey that saw Tom Hiddleston’s anti-hero dealing with the phenomenon known as “Time Slipping,” some pretty intense moments came where Loki couldn’t even control where he was going.
It’s a harsh sight to see, and a member of the VFX team from visual effects house Framestore has dished on how it was created and why it was so important to get right. Also, there's talk of some "gruesomeness" that was rather inspired, but may still be tough for more sensitive readers. In which case, you'll know which section to skip based on the handy subheaders. Read on!
Why Loki’s Time Slipping Effect Was ‘Important’ To Get Right
In learning how Loki’s Time Slipping works, we got to know the effect as something that was intensely painful for our favorite God of Mischief/Stories. That knowledge was definitely included in the brief for Framestore visual effects supervisor Matthew Twyford and his team, as he describes the process pretty accurately.
That’s thanks to getting to sit down and talk to Tom Hiddleston during the Season 2 shoot. The information that Hiddleston divulged yielded these details from Twyford’s interview with Befores and Afters:
We knew how important it would be, how it was going to relate to Loki, the character, what he was going through at the time, and how we had to complement Tom’s performances, because it’s a bit of a weird one. We know it’s going to be painful. We know it’s going to be violent. And also, it’s confusing to him as well. So all of these things we got direct from Tom, which is rare to get that really one-to-one insight, which is really valuable to us.
Twyford shared further knowledge that tons of on-set performances from Tom Hiddleston were sourced for this Loki effect. Not to mention the fact that said physical references were captured in everything from a blue/green screen-enhanced set to just good old-fashioned physical make-believe.
Which bucket that scene where Loki flails along with a Wacky Waving Inflatable Man at Piranha Powersports falls into, we may never know. But what we can say is that Time Slipping was something that roped in almost the entire team that was allocated to the show.
That extensive workforce allowed Matthew Twyford and the folks at Framestore to make Loki’s potential final season all the more memorable to look at. Not settling with merely presenting far-off worlds or the Spaghetification of the Sacred Timeline, these merry pranksters got a special bit of encouragement from fellow visual effects Christopher Townsend. And that energy led to the inclusion of one key factor: "gruesomeness."
The ‘Gruesomeness’ That Was Encouraged In Loki’s Time Slipping Effect
When you’ve got a performance as good as Tom Hiddleston’s and Loki dialogue that really sells the pain in watching the Time Slipping process, pushing the envelope is a must. Matthew Twyford made that much clear when discussing the overall process that took Tom Hiddleston’s physical performances and married them with various distorting effects to provide the finished illusion.
And that is where this story about “gruesomeness” comes into play, courtesy of Twyford’s interview:
…right at the end of that, we let our DMP artists in there to have some fun. They went in there and the brief from Chris Townsend was, ‘Let’s see some gruesomeness.’ The DMP artists were doing bloated eyeballs and ripped up teeth and blood coming up the nose–there’s beautiful little moments in there through every single one of those timeslips.
Now you may not see those elements all that easily while watching Loki’s complete second season run, as this is a TV-14 series. At the same time, those of you who love to freeze frame programs such as this to try and pick out all the fine details have probably seen more than most audiences.
Just picture it: one day, you’re sitting in front of your screen trying to figure out how Loki’s Time Variance Authority works. Just when you think you’ve got a clear shot of those numerous posters warning employees to take lunch breaks not exceeding 17 minutes – boom, a misshapen Tom Hiddleston appears.
In that moment, you’ve seen something you can’t unsee. While that's not exactly what the audience necessarily shows up for with a show on Disney+, that's just how the good people at Framestore like it. It's a sign that they've done their jobs well, even if it scars some poor viewer who was not expecting to see Tom Hiddleston's teeth in the mix.
How Time Slipping Could Evolve In The MCU's Future
As this Disney+ series has possibly made the TVA important to the MCU, and thanks to all the multiversal travel that’s been occurring as of late, the Time Slipping effect just might find itself used all over again. With various series and films that could employ this very story device at any moment, the work of the team from Framestore would be invaluable.
And in a world like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, when the walls of time and space are breaking down, anything is possible. Especially with the upcoming Marvel movie and TV roster approaching its first mature-rated test cases with Echo and Deadpool 3 being released in the new year. That scenario could do wonders for the "gruesomeness" of Time Slipping, depending on how hard creatives wanted to go.
Flashing back to the here and now, Loki fans can very easily retrace his journey, in all of its Time Slipping horror, on Disney+. Meanwhile, the MCU roster is pretty light for 2024, with those projects mentioned above being the big tickets for the near future. Perhaps it’s not too late to put the Merc with the Mouth through the Time Slipping process, only to count how many expletives he uses to describe and endure it all. For now, you can always revisit the highs and lows of the MCU on the Disney streamer.
