‘Loki’ Season 2: Into the Multiverse and Adding Ke Huy Quan

Loki has worn many hats since his initial appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2011.

In the first “Avengers” movie, the God of Mischief, played by Tom Hiddleston, descended on New York City with an alien army. In “Thor: Ragnarok,” he teamed up with his brother to protect the people of Asgard, morphing from villain to antihero. And now, in the second season of the “Loki” television series, which premieres Thursday on Disney+, he embarks on a new and unlikely mission — saving the Time Variance Authority.

Season 2 of “Loki” takes place in the aftermath of the mayhem from the first installment, in which Loki and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), a free-spirited Loki variant, arrived at the end of history. There, they discovered He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), the time-bending scientist who masterminded the T.V.A. to prevent another war between the many variants of himself.

When Sylvie stabs He Who Remains, she plunges the T.V.A. and the Sacred Timeline into chaos, unleashing the multiverse. As Season 2 commences, new worlds branch from the timeline, T.V.A. forces splinter into factions and Loki grapples with a problem called time-slipping as he is caught in a tug of war between past and present.

To preserve the T.V.A., Loki reunites with familiar characters — including the wry Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) — as well as new ones, such as O.B., a T.V.A. fix-it man played by the Oscar-winning actor Ke Huy Quan, and Victor Timely, a 19th-century inventor and Kang variant played by Majors. (Majors is facing charges related to a misdemeanor assault case after being arrested in March in New York. Filming for Season 2 of “Loki” had already finished before the arrest.)

With the original director Kate Herron leaving the project, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who helped direct “Moon Knight,” became the new lead directors on a majority of the episodes. Eric Martin, who helped write some of the first season’s episodes, has become head writer.

In a video call from his writing studio in Los Angeles, Martin spoke about crafting the plot and characters of Season 2 and working with Quan in his new role.

What were some of the themes you had in mind as you wrote the script for this show?

I think the most important thing to me is just character and emotionality. I wanted to have everything driven by the wants and needs of our characters and really just focus on their emotional journeys first and foremost. That is the basis for all the drama: Who are our people? Where are their heads at? What do they need? Those are the dramatic questions that drive everything.

As for themes, we still have the ideas of free will and destiny that continue on from Season 1. But for new things, I think order versus chaos is a continual theme. And then a power vacuum. What happens in a power vacuum? I think like the overarching concept of Season 2 is, “You break it, you buy it.” That’s what happened at the end of Season 1. They broke the system. And so now they own this nebulous thing, and it needs to reform and become something new.

How do you see Loki evolving as a character through the first season and into the second?

Season 1, and like Episode 1 especially, scrambled his brains. He sees his own death by the end of that. He realizes that even the infinity stones are pointless at this new level of things. And so he had to completely reset and figure out who he was. And so I think Season 1 we see him make this hero turn although he is still an antihero or villain. But I think Loki had kind of forgotten who he was, and Season 2 is like rebalancing that. So we still have this hero Loki, but we’re getting back to the meat and potatoes of who this guy is. We’re getting back to the God of Mischief. So we see him using all those talents of the God of Mischief but as a hero now.

All these characters are so intertwined across multiple different movies and TV shows in the MCU. So, I’m curious, how much creative freedom do you have in writing for this particular show?

We’re fortunate that we really have our own little sandbox here where we’re able to be really creative and branch off into other directions without stepping on other projects. And some of that’s by design, while some of that is just what we found along the way. In terms of actual marching orders, there have been certain points where it’s like, “Oh, you know what, this character is being used by another project,” and you just have to pivot. But in terms of our drama and our story and where we’re taking our characters, it really is just following them and their needs and proving them on the page. And if we can prove that then nobody steps in and says you need to do something different.

The interactions between Loki and Mobius and between Loki and Sylvie were captivating in Season 1. What should we expect from those interactions in Season 2?

Let me start with Loki and Mobius. They’re a lot of fun to write because they’re an odd couple. They are very different in how they do everything. They are on the same side. They’re on the same page, but they’re reading different books. They do not have the same path to getting the same thing done, and that’s what’s fun. You have that friction to play with, but they are on the same side. So scene to scene, there’s so much fun to have with them.

And with Loki and Sylvie, they’re a little bit of friends, couple, I’m not sure how you even want to look at them. These are two people that have had this intense experience together, and they split apart and went separate ways. Inevitably they’re going to come together, but how have they each changed? Where have they each gone? And are they going to be able to mesh again?

So O.B. is definitely an important character in Season 2. What was it like to create this character?

O.B. was born out of a desire to see the rest of the T.V.A. I feel like Season 1 we existed on a couple different levels, but this is a massive place. Like, what else is there? Who else is there? And as I was getting into the first episode of Season 2, I really started to think about who’s the person who is down there in the engine room of the ship. He’s the one who is looking over everything. He’s the fix-it guy. I just started to imagine a guy who was so busy running the machinery that he just doesn’t see anybody. But he loves his job. It very much is like the seven dwarfs and Snow White. They’re just whistling while they work because they love it.

And so Loki and Mobius show up there, and they’re like the first visitors O.B. has had in years. O.B. is just happily doing his job. It really crystallized in my head who that person was — somebody who loved his job. That conception of the character stuck and stayed. And when Ke came on, he just added a layer of sweet humanity to it that I thought brought a whole different level to what O.B. is.

How was Ke brought on for this role?

That was Kevin Feige. He saw him in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and Kevin fell in love with O.B. on the page, and I think he just saw him and then he’s like, “This is our O.B. He’ll just step right in and be perfect for this.” The first day Ke came, he hadn’t started yet. He just wanted to visit the set and say hi. That’s who Ke is, he wants to know everybody. And we got to talking and had lunch together and it was just this nice lunch talking about his character and getting to hear him dig in and get under the skin of that character and how he was going to approach it. And all just over some cold Chinese noodles.