Ke Huy Quan’s character is the key to making Loki season 2 work

Loki The scripts for Season 2 were already written when Marvel casting director Sarah Halley Finn saw an early screening of Everything everywhere at the same time in 2022. It was March 2022, the film was about to release nationwide and take over the cinematic landscape over the next few months, and she was sure they had to grab Ke Huy Quan . Fast.

“We had a lot of casting, but we were starting to fill these new roles,” Loki » says executive producer Kevin Wright. “(Finn) said: I can give you a list of other people, but I think you should meet Ke, I think that should Be Ke, and you have to make a bid, like this weekend, or we’ll probably lose it because this movie is about to blow up.»

Wright says things moved quickly from there: He and others hopped on Zoom with Quan one Friday evening and sent him pages of an early scene. Luckily for them, Quan was already a “big Marvel fan” and particularly loved Loki season 1.

Really, it’s lucky for all of us – in a single scene (actually, the very one he got pages for) in episode 1 of Loki season 2, Quan not only proves once again that he is It’s goodbut also shows how wacky and fun it is Loki can really be.

The scene is simple: Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson) try to understand why Loki keeps slipping through time in the Time Variance Authority office, which should be impossible. Ouroboros (Quan) is the guy they go to see in the research basement, who is especially surprised that his old buddy Mobius (who totally remembers him and his nickname, OB) came back to see him. As Loki continues to slip through time, OB slowly— slowly – remembers that, oh, that’s right, he’s seen this guy before! Once in the past, where are Loki (and a young OB) right now! And come to think of it, he also had a time lag problem back then.

It’s the exact intersection of technobabble and Marvel banter that could easily blend into the background or make your eyes sparkle. But Quan keeps it all afloat like he’s throwing a beach ball. As Mobius and Loki each independently attempt to keep him focused on his task, he seems genuinely delighted with each revelation of his time-travel-altered memory. And at every turn of the scene – from the comical to the genuinely plot-relevant – Quan is playful and capable.

With Quan as the funny backbone of the scene, Loki launches into classic time travel humor with aplomb. OB reacts the same way in the past and present to Loki’s slip, or remembers that he actually has this thing. just there, literally just for an occasion like this. This is exactly what Loki needs. While the first season had a lot of ground to cover – setting up this Loki variant, and the other Loki variant, Sylvie, and the whole TVA concept, just in time to make Kang the next big bad – season 2 can take the time to realize how comical these time nodes are, even when the stakes are high. This is the first time Marvel has offered a second season of a live-action show, Loki is actually able to build on what’s come before and have a little fun with its premises instead of just paving the way for the next big thing.

While TVA and its many players are having fun, no one can sit in the middle like Quan does at that R&A office. There’s a verve to his energy that the show lacked, and a sense of whimsy, whether he’s hammering something home or perfectly warning Loki (and, by proxy, the audience) of what would happen in the event of mission failure. With a lesser actor, any moment could seem fake, and the whole TVA conceit would collapse. Luckily, we never have to worry about that timeline – or the one where you fall into a black hole and turn into spaghetti. As OB wisely warns us: “The less you know, the better.” »