Credit: Marvel StudiosWith the premiere of Loki Season 2 right around the corner, Marvel is shining the spotlight on the series’ leading man in a newly-released blooper reel that showcases his, well, assets.
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It’s been a long time coming for the sophomore season of Marvel’s smash hit Loki series, which still holds the crown for the most-viewed MCU TV show on Disney+ today.
Fans have waited patiently for the new batch of episodes since Season 1 concluded in July 2021, and based on the looks of it, audiences are in for an equally good time with Season 2, which promises even more time-hopping shenanigans and adventures across the Multiverse.
Related: Upcoming ‘Loki’ Series Set for Disappointing Premiere
Starring fan-favorite MCU actor Tom Hiddleston as the titular God of Mischief, it’s not difficult to understand why Marvel decided to resurrect the character after his death at the hands of Thanos (Josh Brolin) in Avengers: Infinity War (2017) for his own spinoff series.
Season 1 introduced audiences to the ever-elusive TVA (Time Variance Authority), a mysterious bureaucracy responsible for maintaining the Sacred Timeline. After using the Tesseract to escape in an alternate version of The Avengers (2012), ultimately interfering with his fate, Loki is apprehended by a group of TVA agents and interrogated by Owen Wilson’s Mobius M. Mobius.
Mobius, who’s somewhat sympathetic to Loki and his plight, recruits the Asgardian trickster to help the TVA with an especially dangerous variant known as Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), who’s been wreaking havoc throughout the timeline. In a bizarre sort of metaphor for self-love, Loki falls for this female variant of himself, and the two attempt to get to the bottom of what — or rather, who — really controls the TVA.
In Season 2, a different version of Kang (Jonathan Majors) is poised to take center stage, as Sylvie vengefully murdered He Who Remains at his Time Citadel during the Season 1 finale. We’ve already gotten a glimpse at this new Kang variant in the post-credits for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), a cunning inventor called Victor Timely.
Hiddleston, Wilson, and Di Martino are all set to reprise their roles, in addition to returning cast members like Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Ravonna Renslayer, Eugene Cordero’s Casey, and Tara Strong’s Miss Minutes. New additions to Loki include Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan, who plays TVA technician OB, and Rafael Casal, whose exact role remains unknown.
Check out the official trailer for Marvel Studios’ Loki Season 2 below:
While the entire cast of Loki brings their all to the Emmy-winning show, it’s safe to say that Tom Hiddleston is — and has always been — a standout. Loki is perhaps the most beloved anti-hero in MCU history, helped only by Hiddleston’s charmingly wicked personification of the character.
And, yes, Tom Hiddleston’s strikingly good looks doesn’t hurt, either.
Marvel played into fans’ decades-long Loki crush in the first season of the Disney+ with one scene in particular: his arrest by the TVA, who take him into custody and have robots instantly remove his Asgardian garb, leaving him butt-naked before he stands trial in front of Judge Renslayer.
The brief moment marked Hiddleston’s his first-ever shirtless scene in his then 10-year tenure as the God of Mischief, displaying the incredible physical work he put into playing the character for Loki. And according to a newly-released blooper reel from Season 1, getting viewers to make heart eyes at his ripped body was all part of the plan.
Entertainment Tonight (via Zsuzsanna Uhlik on YouTube) recently shared an 85-second blooper reel from Season 1 of Loki, which highlights Hiddleston’s toned upper body from Episode 1. In the clip, the actor jokingly points to the camera and says, “I’m doing this for you,” making light of Loki’s shirtless scene that took the MCU fandom by storm:
And thirsting after Hiddleston isn’t the only thing the blooper video is good for. We also get plenty of footage of the Loki actor showing off his best dance moves during a break from shooting, wearing a colorful face mask (Season 1 was partially shot post-pandemic, after all) as he twirls around the TVA set.
This hilarious behind-the-scenes video comes as Loki is made available for purchase in a new Blu-ray disc collection, which hit shelves on September 26. While the new disc is likely being released to hype up the Season 2 premiere, it also comes among a surge of physical Disney merchandise, which is more than likely a response to the company’s costly streaming service fees.
There are undoubtedly some major surprises in store for the second season of Loki, and only time will tell if Hiddleston’s shirtless scene was a one-off incident, or if we can expect to see the titular God of Mischief share a little more skin in Season 2.
Loki Season 2 will begin streaming on Disney+ at 6 p.m. PT on Thursday, October 5.
Are you looking forward to Loki Season 2, or are you a victim of “superhero fatigue” as Marvel continues to expand into Phase Five? Let us know in the comments below.