The Big Picture

Loki and Mobius go back in time to the 1893 World’s Fair in search of Miss Minutes to help fix the unstable TVA after He Who Remains’ death. They stumble upon another Kang variant, Victor Timely, who could potentially save the TVA, but Miss Minutes and Ravonna Renslayer are also after him. Director Kasra Farahani discusses the inspiration behind the World’s Fair setting and the decision to portray Timely as a con man and Miss Minutes’ unexpected feelings.

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 2 Episode 3 of Loki.Season 2 Episode 3 of Loki jumped back in time to 1893 to the Chicago World’s Fair. In the episode titled “1893” we see Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson) go on the hunt for Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) in order to enlist her help in fixing the TVA. After the death of He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), the temporal loom at the heart of the TVA has been struggling to handle the growing amount of branching timelines that is spinning out from the central timeline. Without He Who Remains’ temporal aura to open the blast doors, the entire TVA could be destroyed as the timeline and loom becomes more and more unstable.

Since Miss Minutes is someone who has administrative access to the system, she might be able to help them. But in their search for the animated AI clock, Loki and Mobius stumble on Victor Timely (Majors). Another Kang variant means they can use his temporal aura to try and save the TVA. The only problem is Miss Minutes and Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) are also after him, and when Sylvie (Sylvia Di Martino) learns that there is another Kang variant, she is also after him.

We spoke with director Kasra Farahani, who had his directorial debut with this episode, about creating the look for the World’s Fair, deciding to go with this version of Kang, turning him into a trickster, the reveal of Miss Minutes’ feelings for He Who Remains, and Sylvie’s decision to spare Victor. Farahani also acts as the production designer for Loki and is one of the writers. He is also known for his work as a concept artist and illustrator on films like Black Panther and shows like A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Image via Disney+

COLLIDER: Just to kick things off, can you tell me how you got involved in directing this episode?

KASRA FARAHANI: Basically, after the first season, we had such a good working relationship between the art department and the writing team and the creative executives that, kindly, Kevin Wright, our EP, and Eric Martin, our head writer, asked me to join the writers’ room for Season 2. So I was in the writers’ room for Season 2, helping to come up with some of these essential ideas of the season, and one thing led to another, and I got an opportunity to direct one of the episodes. The exact episode that it was going to be was a little tricky to figure out because it was a function of schedule because I had to design the whole season first. So we had to kind of see which one was gonna be the last one to shoot because that was gonna be the one that was most realistic for me to direct because most of the design work had already been done at that stage. I was very lucky that the one that fell to the end of the schedule was 203.

I feel like it’s the perfect one for you, especially because it’s so design-heavy and there are so many new things to look at. That just takes me to my next question, which is about this whole Chicago World Fair. It looks amazing, and I’m so glad that you guys went there because that’s one of my favorite aspects of history to look at, especially American history. Can you talk about just the look of this season and creating the look of this season and especially of this episode? I mean, even the production of seeing the loom and seeing the stage performance, it was all great.

FARAHANI: Thank you so much. It’s nice of you to say. In terms of the TVA, there was a great opportunity this season in that we’re going to new corners of the TVA that we didn’t get to see in the first season. And because we’re spending a lot of our time dealing with the loom and dealing with the RnA, basically, it’s all taking place on a level that I call the systems level, which is the infrastructure or the foundation of the TVA. These spaces had to exist first before the spaces that we saw in Season 1 could exist. If you think of the temporal loom as, like, a power plant mixed with this maintenance apparatus for organizing time and you think of the RnA as the kind of nexus of TVA technology and maintenance, these places had to exist first. So, if the first season was inspired by the mid-sixties, this season was inspired by the mid-fifties, as more of a Cold War earlier feeling in terms of the palate of greens, which are a very institutional palate from that era to the fortified feeling of a bunker.

In terms of the World’s Fair and the 1970s, this was a season where we got to do some more of that. We’re jumping around to different eras, and that was super fun to do. Yeah, the World’s Fair was fantastic because it was a challenge in that, like I was saying, most of the season, we spent a lot of time in the TVA. So when you’re building a big set that you get to use in multiple episodes, it’s easy to sort of justify the cost of it. It’s trickier with the episode I ended up directing because we’re only in those sets for one episode, and yet they need to be big and feel fully realized and fleshed out. So that was the challenge: always building as much as you need, but not more than you need, and finding the smartest way to ask for help from our brilliant VFX team, led by Chris Townsend and Sandra Balej, to help us flesh out the work.

Image via Disney+

I think it paid off. I think this whole season has looked really great. I love seeing all these very tangible sets. It’s amazing. So, looking at this episode, we finally get to meet Victor Timely in the show, and he’s obviously very different from these other versions of Kang that we’ve met before, which I think is great, but what made you guys decide to focus on this version of his character and turning him into almost like a con man or like a trickster?

FARAHANI: I think that we were sort of trying to find an interesting new version of a Kang variant and one that would sort of subvert expectations but, most importantly, feed the needs of this season’s story arc. And in terms of Timely himself, he was just inspired by the Einsteins of the world, this archetype of this creative, quirky thinker who’s operating on a level, you know, seven levels higher than everybody around him, and yet in some ways, as a result, is as awkward and can’t connect on a more basic level. So we took this person that had all this brilliant potential in the form of this child and then Renslayer and Miss Minutes give him this critical piece of super-advanced technological knowledge that sets him on this path.

In terms of the charlatan/con man element of it, to me, I’ve always thought of that as it’s a sort of survival mechanism. You’re talking about a Black man who’s trying to be an inventor in the late 19th century, and the very nature of even the World’s Fair, like, why is he presenting this in the Hofbrau at the Midway instead of the Machine Hall in the White City? You know, all those things are sort of part of it. And so I think it’s a survival mechanism on the one hand, and on the other hand, he’s stuck with the fact that these ideas are not cons, his technological designs are truly brilliant, but the technology to execute them doesn’t exist in his era. So that’s sort of where you’re seeing him, stuck in between.

Yeah, definitely. I think it’s interesting, calling it a survival mechanism, I think, is very accurate because you see him, he’s on the move at all times, and he’s not actually trying to fool people, I think, in the way that Loki might. I think it’s an interesting sort of play on that dynamic. Another big twist that we see in this episode comes in the form of Miss Minutes, when it’s revealed that she has some unrequited feelings for He Who Remains and, of course, every Kang variant, I guess by proxy. Can you talk about digging into that character more and making her more human, and also are we seeing the rise of a new villain because of this?

FARAHANI: That was honestly one of the most fun and weird curveballs we got to chase this season, for me at least. Yeah, I mean, this is this idea, I think we’re flirting with this notion of a singularity, and this is what happens when you get an AI that’s getting too real, that’s getting too sophisticated. Then, in the case of Miss Minutes, one that’s been around a long time, that’s been around since the beginning with him. There’s the comedy of seeing her show up with all this baggage and projecting it on Timely, who’s just a new variant. He has no context for any of this. He doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and she’s projecting all the baggage that she has from He Who Remains onto him. Then, of course, there’s this triangle between her and Renslayer, who are allies of convenience. They’re not naturally bonded, but they need each other, and then they both, in parallel to that relationship, have their own connection to Timely that’s distinct and at odds. So that was just super fun to play with this episode.

Image via Disney+

It surprised me the most on my first watch, but then I’m like, “Yeah, no, this kind of makes sense.” [Laughs] Then there’s this big fight scene that we see at the end of the episode, and we see Ravonna and Loki and Mobius and Sylvie all come together with Timely. We’ve kind of seen this throughout the episode of Loki and Sylvie kind of facing off, and it’s kind of a duplicate of their argument from the last season, which is, you know, do we kill him or do we take his place? Do we fix this? I’m just curious if you fall on one side of that argument. Do you think there’s a right or wrong in their responses?

FARAHANI: Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think that it’s hard to say. I think that they both have valid points and because we can’t know how it’s gonna turn out, it’s hard to say either of them is wrong. But I do feel like there’s maybe an easier way to– The easier way to say it is that there is a more empathetic view and one that maybe we’re, as a species, better served taking if giving the benefit of the doubt. I think that the plea that Timely makes to Sylvie, that he is not who she says he is, she doesn’t know that he’s not going to become He Who Remains. I think it highlights in her the hypocrisy of her own view of free will, that we have the potential to determine our own destiny and who we’re gonna become, and yet she’s here to kill this man because she thinks she assumes she knows who he’s going to become. So I think that that’s generally…I don’t know, I think the world would be better if people made fewer assumptions about other people, you know?

You can watch Loki Season 2 on Disney+.

Loki Release Date June 9, 2021 Cast Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Richard E. Grant Main Genre Superhero Genres Superhero