WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the Loki Season 1 finale, “For All Time. Always.” now streaming on Disney+.
The Loki Season 1 finale introduces Jonathan Majors as the big bad with a flourish and ends with the death of his character, known as He Who Remains. But with the action clearly fracturing the timeline and introducing a new multiverse, were her actions the correct ones?
Director Kate Herron spoke to Deadline about the moment that finally splits Loki and Sylvie and whether she thinks it was the best choice to make. “My interpretation is that it’s this good and bad thing,” Herron said. “I believe [He Who Remains] when he says, ‘Wait till you meet my variants,’ and you see the fear in his eyes. The TVA has done terrible things, but is it to a good end? Probably. It’s not a good thing that Sylvie kills him and opens up this multiverse because we’re going to meet these other variants of him. In my head, anyway, I think he’s being genuine in that moment and honest with them. That’s so beautiful in Jonathan’s performance but wasn’t so key in the character, obviously, for the first half. Loki and Sylvie are trying to suss him out, like ‘Can we trust this guy?’ That is inevitably what leads to the unraveling of Sylvie and Loki’s relationship as well.”
Herron went on to discuss what Majors brought to the role and how he took what was on the page — and in the source material — and elevated it to something new.
“It was really with Jonathan. When we cast him, I was talking to him with the studio about the role, and something that was cool for us all, is that psychologically, He Who Remains has been on his own for a very long time,” Herron said of the mysterious villain. “This is someone who has been isolated, but he’s been running this huge thing, and it’s a lot of responsibilities. So that was the fun thing… finding that fine line between the extrovert and the introvert of that character and how does he show that he’s been living on his own.”
Part of exploring the motivations and mindset of He Who Remains came down to the set, and Herron explained how the citadel and He Who Remains’ office played a part in revealing his character. “That was fun as well: digging into that aspect of the character and it echoed across our production design,” Herron said. “Me and [production designer] Kasra [Farahani] were really excited about the idea that the office was really polished and really pristine. He finished that space because that’s where he spends all his time. Whereas when you get to the other aspects of the sphere, it’s broken down and not maintained because he’s not living in those spaces. I think it was fun little hints like that [which show] how shut off from the world this character has become in order to almost maintain the world [so] that he can survive in it.”
Loki Season 1 is now streaming on Disney+ and will return for a second season at an unspecified date. Rumor has it that the God of Mischief will next appear in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Source: Deadline
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