Marvel and Disney have a lot riding on Loki’s shoulders; as the most immediately exciting—Tom Hiddleston back in the green-and-black, smirking at people on the teevee!—of the slate of limited series MCU shows the two companies have cooked up for Disney+, it’s going to have to do a lot of work to draw mischief-loving Marvel dorks into the streaming service’s grasp. Today, The Hollywood Reporter dug up some new details on the show, hinting at what kind of tone it’s going to take with Marvel’s favorite least-favorite son. One good indicator: Picking Rick And Morty alum Michael Waldron to pen the pilot, and serve as executive producer on the show.
THR describes Waldron as a writer on the Adult Swim series, although he’s never been officially credited as anything other than a production assistant, at least per IMDB. (He did write for Dan Harmon’s HarmonQuest, and serve as production staff on Community, so he’s definitely part of the Harmon/Rick And Morty ecosystem.) He’s also a Black List-recognized screenwriter (for the upcoming feature The Worst Guy Of All Time (And The Girl Who Came To Kill Him)), so his credits aren’t entirely Harmon-based, either.
The Loki show’s alleged premise even sounds like something we could imagine Rick Sanchez having some fun with, as it follow the immortal godling throughout his dalliances with human history, repeatedly screwing with important historical events. “Loki fucks with Napoleon and Julius Caesar” has a lot of potential for comedy, while also getting around, you know, “The Incident” that happened at the start of last summer’s Infinity War that might otherwise make a Loki series hard to pull off.
Marvel’s other Disney+ shows include a series centered on Vision and Scarlet Witch, and one based around Captain America sidekicks Falcon and Winter Soldier. There’s no definitive word yet on when any of these will see the light of day, but Disney+ is expected to launch late this year, so they’ll presumably want at least one of them ready to get people willing to log in.