WARNING: The following contains potential spoilers for episode 1 of Loki, now streaming on Disney+.
Loki star Gugu Mbatha-Raw promised that her character, Judge Ravonna Renslayer, will step out from behind her desk and get her hands dirty as more of her backstory is revealed.
Mbatha-Raw spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the new series and how her small role in episode 1 of the hit series will expand as the show continues. When asked whether her character was jury and executioner as well as judge, Mbatha-Raw laughed it off before diving into her character’s history.
“Yeah, she is a judge, and yes, there is no real jury,” Mbatha-Raw said. “I don’t know about executioner, although she does have the power to delete people. So, potentially. (Laughs.) She’s an interesting character in that she’s worked her way up. She wasn’t born into power. She had a military background as a Hunter like [Hunter] B-15 [Wunmi Mosaku]. She’s incredibly ambitious, and she also has direct access to the Time-Keepers now that she’s in this authoritative position. So it’s a fun dynamic, obviously, when this judge of law and order comes into contact with this king of chaos in terms of Loki. It’s really the ultimate personality clash.”
While episode 1 merely saw Renslayer as a judge deciding on Loki’s guilt before Mobius jumped in, the actor teased far more from her character.
“She has a lot on her shoulders; she has a lot of responsibility. She has to make some morally ambiguous choices,” Mbatha-Raw said. “As a judge, she doesn’t want to compromise the position she’s worked really hard to get to. But when the stakes get high, she has to get out of the office; she has to get out from behind that desk and get into the action as well. So that’s when she has to call upon her military training, and we get to see a whole other side of her. So there’s a lot of secrets. There’s betrayal. There’s lots of layers of Renslayer to come.”
Loki stars Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Owen Wilson as Mobius M. Mobius, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna Lexus Renslayer, Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15, Tara Strong as Miss Minutes and Eugene Cordero as Casey, with Sophia Di Martino, Richard E. Grant and Sasha Lane in undisclosed roles. New episodes premiere Wednesdays on Disney+.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter