The Big Picture

Season 2 Episode 2 of Loki, directed by Dan Deleeuw, weaves together separate storylines and features a major fight sequence. Deleeuw discusses how he got the job for directing the episode. Deleeuw’s background in visual effects helped shape pivotal scenes, and his collaboration with other creators like Eric Martin, Justin Benson, and Aaron Moorhead and actors like Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson gave him insight into the entire story of the season. Deleeuw’s background in visual effects helped shape pivotal scenes like the scene where X-5 is tortured in a Time Cube.

Season 2 Episode 2 of Loki featured a jaunt into 1977 London, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson) taking turns interrogating the contentious X-5 (Rafael Casal), a visit to a 1982 McDonald’s, and a fight to protect the branched timelines of the multiverse. It’s a lot of separate stories to weave together, but that’s exactly what Dan Deleeuw did in his directorial debut for TV. “Breaking Brad.” The episode featured not only an official return for Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) but also a major fight sequence at the end of the scene that ended in tragedy for the multiverse.

Deleeuw is best known for his work on MCU projects like Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War where he served as the visual effects supervisor and the production visual effects supervisor. He was also the second unit director for Avengers: Endgame, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and Eternals. While he is also working in visual effects for Loki, Episode 2 marks his debut as a director. We spoke with Deleeuw about how he ended up with the job of directing this episode, breaking down the scene between Loki and Sylvie, collaborating with the other creators and actors of the series, and filming more complicated scenes like the fight with General Dox (Kate Dickie) or the scene with X-5 and the Time Cube.

Watch the interview in the player above, or you can read our conversation below.

Image via Disney+

COLLIDER: I want to congratulate you on your TV directorial debut. Can you talk about how you ended up directing this episode of Loki?

DAN DELEEUW: I’d always wanted to work towards directing, and I’ve been fortunate with a lot of the directors I’ve worked with that supported me in terms of beyond just visual effects, and especially the Russo Brothers just helping to design sequences. I pitched the crazy idea with the helicarriers in [Captain America: The] Winter Soldier just opening fire on each other and blowing each other out of the sky and crashing into the river, so it was something [where] they’re like, “Oh, he’s got fun ideas.” So on every show, it just kind of amped up more and more, and they gave me the opportunity to go shoot on splinter unit and go shoot additional photography on [Avengers] Endgame. So, just being with them, I learned a lot about story. Then working with visual effects in Loki Season 1, Kevin Wright, our executive producer, saw how much I would talk about story and why sequences should be put together a certain way, and he’s like, “Wow, this guy really kind of knows a lot about crafting shots and sequences,” and invited me onto Season 2.

Well, that’s amazing. I want to talk a little bit about this episode because we get to see Loki and Sylvie reunited again, and that’s my favorite. Can you talk about the feelings these characters are experiencing in that scene, and was it meant to be this big emotional reunion, or is there something supposed to be sort of stunted there because of their last meeting?

DELEEUW: I think what happened at the last meeting definitely overshadowed. I think it led to trepidation on Loki’s part. All through the episode, Loki’s saying, “Hey, we have to find Sylvie, we have to find Sylvie. We have to find out what she knows.” You know, part of what he’s not saying out loud is, “Hey, I want to see Sylvie, I wanna see Sylvie.” But he goes in saying, “Well, she pushed me through a door,” so he’s feeling trepidatious. He doesn’t know where she’s at. And for her part, I think she wants to see Loki, but she’s also found a place for herself on the timeline, found a place that she’s never had because she was on the run for so long. So you’ve got a lot of emotions going on.

There’s a scene that we wanted to play with very little dialogue until the end, so the actors had to show it with their performance, and I think they both did a wonderful job. You kind of see Sylvie as he comes through the door, and Sophia [Di Martino] played it a little bit like she’s trapped. And I think one of the things that doesn’t initially come across on the first viewing [is] you realize that for Loki, it all just happened – he just got knocked through the door. For Sylvie, she’s been down on the timeline, right? Hair in this episode helps us show the idea that time has passed, so she’s gone in and, you know, her hair has changed, and everyone at the McDonald’s knows her. So she’s built a life, and now Loki’s come in. “Why is he there? Is it a romantic thing? He’s just trying to track me down?” And so that’s kind of a lot of what they’re feeling.

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I mean, it’s all there. This episode was written by Eric Martin. Can you talk about collaborating with some of these fellow creators like Martin, and also if you collaborated with Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead on the series?

DELEEUW: So it’s something that they did on Season 1, as well, with Kevin Wright, our executive producer, he brought into Season 2. Then Tom [Hiddleston], with his experience, I think a lot of his theater experience and his openness to the collaboration as an executive producer. Basically, what we would do is we would, as the scripts were getting closer to being finished, we would all go down to the writers’ room. So we’re there with the writers, with Eric and the staff writers, and then Justin and Aaron, and Kasra [Farahani], when he could because he was busy building sets. Then we’d also have the cast come in, and what we did is we went through everyone’s episodes. So it wasn’t like it was just, “Okay, now we’re doing Dan’s episode, we’re doing Justin and Aaron’s episode…” We’d all sit there, and everyone would contribute. So, you’d get Tom and then Owen [Wilson], and Ke [Huy Quan] and Sophia and everyone would just kind of go through the scripts and see, “How can we make this better? How can we push the scene a little bit farther?” We were fortunate that we had Tom and then Owen’s a writer, Rafael [Casal] is a writer. We had Eric there so that everyone was able to contribute on amazing levels, and Justin and Aaron write their own films, so we had this amazing room where all these ideas came from.

That’s an amazing collaborative process. I’m glad that that’s how it went through. In this episode, there’s a final fight sequence, and we see Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie take on General Dox as she’s trying to prune all these timelines. What challenges did you face with the scene with so many moving parts like this?

DELEEUW: It has to have weight. They came in at the end of it, right? A lot of the timelines have been disappearing while they were trying to solve the mystery and find out where Dox was. We shot at Chatham Docks outside of London. We had a day, so we had to get when they first come through the portal, we had to get that scene, and then we had to shoot the fight choreography that Tom learned and Sophia learned. So, we had to get through that through the day, and then there’s a little tag at the end of the scene, so it was a busy day. You’re in London, but it was probably one of the hottest days of the summer, so by the end of the day, we were all dragging pretty hard.

Image via Disney+

A scene I really enjoyed in this episode is the scene where we see Loki and X-5, or Brad as we’ll call him, and he’s using his magic on Brad. Then later, he’s torturing him in that cube. I was wondering, because you have experience as a special effects artist, did you take any of that experience into filming these scenes that require that type of post-production work?

DELEEUW: Yeah. We had a great visual effects team. We had Chris Townsend as the supervisor, and he supervised [Avengers: Age of] Ultron and Iron Man 3 and Guardians [of the Galaxy Vol] 2. So we had a really amazing team. But for myself, by the state of my experience, I can just design things that aren’t there kind of knowing where it needs to be done and inviting the visual effects team in. It was something that, kind of knowing what’s hard and what’s not and kind of feeling guilty sometimes when we made it hard. But when we had Brad in the Time Cube, it was something we thought it would be fun to put him on a platform, so we raised up towards the end of it, but it was also something that, unless they had that physical interaction, it wasn’t really gonna sell. So, we worked with special effects to design different plex walls with mounts on them, so it was about as unsophisticated as you get because it was basically a little plexiglass wall with a handle and then grips and stunt people pushing the plex into them. So, the actual shots, it’s great, the performance is amazing, but the shot is just swamped with people standing in the shot that we’ll edit out later, so it turned out great, but it was like, “Oh, dude, sorry!”

Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize that he was actually being pushed into a wall. I guess that makes sense.

DELEEUW: He did a nice job of pantomiming it, but it was just something that when we rehearsed it, he was like, “Yeah, it’d be great to push against this.” I’m like, “Okay!” Then we brought out the plexiglass and started pushing against him. Rafael was great.

Image via Disney+

That’s amazing. Do you have any highlights for filming this episode with it being your first sort of full go? Do you have anything that you’re gonna take away with you when you go to your next project?

DELEEUW: I think definitely what we did in pre-production with everyone collaborating on the script and on the show. I think the experience with all the actors was amazing, and understanding all their different styles and how best to kind of give adjustments and things like that. It was truly a wonderful experience, and I found myself very fortunate that I was able to work with that cast and crew.

Well, that’s amazing. Are we gonna see you do any other projects moving forward, or do you have anything in the works?

DELEEUW: I hope so! Yeah, there’s always conversions. There are always conversations going up on the second floor