In a recent interview, the head writer of Loki, michael waldrontalked about the process of including a variant of kangas well as the handling of the multiverse, in the television series of Disney+.
When Waldron was asked if the One Who Remains in control of AVT was a concept the studio already had in mind for the series, the writer revealed that it was actually his idea, along with incorporating Sylvie as a Loki variant. . Waldron also added that one of the first things that had to be done during the creative process was to define the actual rules and nature of time travel.
No, that wasn’t there. I brought them the idea of Sylvie Lushton, a version of Enchantress, which we merged into an idea of a Loki variant. And then it was clear from the beginning because one of the first things we had to do in the writers’ room was define the actual rules and nature of time travel in this series. And what does the AVT do and why does it do it? And it became clear to us that according to the rules of time travel that had been introduced in Endgame, and according to the rules of time travel that made sense to me and that we wanted to execute within the series, Actually, time travel was kind of a multiverse like… it’s like time travel. We thought, ‘We’re really making a series about the multiverse, rather than a time travel series.’
According to Waldron, he needed to convince the studio to change He Who Remains from a creepy old guy in the comics to a variant of Kang in the film franchise. The writer says that Marvel Studios were very receptive to the idea, and that it was the turn of the writers’ room for Loki justify their role within the series.
AVT went on to say, ‘Okay, these guys are actually protecting themselves against a multiverse.’ And that’s when He Who Remains is just kind of a creepy old guy from the comics, and I pushed and Marvel was very receptive to the idea that this should be a Kang variant. Because I knew that Kang was coming down the chimney as a villain in the MCU and it felt too delicious not to have him intertwined in our time travel story in some way. So, it came down to us to justify his role in this place, but Marvel was very supportive of all of that.
Much of Loki was dedicated to Sylvie, specifically her efforts to hide from the AVT, as she was a variant outside of her own timeline. When Waldron was asked if there were any specific moments during the creative process worth highlighting, the writer referenced Sylvie’s plot.
I mean, there were a lot of moments like that, a lot of them that turned out to be false victories in the writers’ room. Surely knowing that Kang was at the bottom of it all, that the Guardians of Time were fake, was a big one. But weirdly, one of the biggest ones was finding out what Sylvie was doing, how she was actually hiding from AVT, just because I thought it was really funny and clever sci-fi that I hadn’t seen before, which is, ‘Oh, what a way great to hide from the time police, go relive the apocalypses over and over again’. And that gave us the climax. That really gave us the backbone of episode two and the whole of episode three. Episode four is about trying to figure that out. In episode five, he even plays with the ideas. So for me, that was the idea. I remember that lightbulb moment in the writers room saying, ‘Oh shit, this show is going to be good because it’s such a great idea.’