Tom Hiddleston shot new footage set during Avengers: Endgame for his Marvel show, Loki. Following a month-long break after The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s finale, Marvel Studios’ third MCU-set series finally premiered on Disney+ June 9. Early reviews are in, and they are praising the show as a cerebral time-bending adventure with stellar performances from its two leads. Over the next six weeks, the series is set to chronicle Loki’s run-in with the Time Variance Authority, an organization helmed by Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson) and charged with maintaining the proper flow of time.

Loki picks up right where Hiddleston's mercurial villain was last seen in Avengers: Endgame, quite literally. The first episode, titled "Glorious Purpose," begins with a flashback to the events of Endgame. Since it's been a few years now since the blockbuster’s release, the scene serves as a reminder of the Avengers’ bungled time-heist which allowed the 2012-era Loki to escape SHIELD custody and abscond with the Tesseract, but it also reframes these events through Loki’s perspective. Unfortunately for the God of Mischief, he’ll be taken into custody by the TVA shortly after.

Related: Loki's Complete MCU Timeline Explained

Now that Loki has premiered on Disney+, the series' director Kate Herron is breaking down the show’s opening scene. In an interview with THR, Herron said she wanted to depict the events that led to the Tesseract falling into Loki’s hands from his perspective. In order to keep this flashback consistent with the sequence in Endgame, Herron reveals that they used alternate takes from the film and shot entirely new footage with Hiddleston. Read Herron’s full explanation below:

So basically, there are some new shots that we filmed. So with the Endgame moment, we deliberately used footage, takes and angles that hadn’t been in that film, mixed in with the structure of the scene that people recognize. We wanted to put it more into Loki’s POV, so I filmed the shot in the elevator where he waves. I almost think of it a bit like Rashomon; it’s a scene we’ve seen before, but now we’re putting it through a different lens. So we did film some of it, as it’s a mixture of both [new and old footage].

Loki Avengers Endgame

Since Loki was killed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, that version of the character is gone, including his redemptive character arc that was developed over the course of five MCU films. The version of Loki at the center of the new series is the same character who opened a wormhole and invaded New York City with the Chitauri fleet in the first Avengers film.

However, the old Loki is quickly brought up to speed after he is shown various events the future Loki experienced, including the death of his mother Frigga (Rene Russo) in Thor: The Dark World. Loki is set to be a wild time-bending adventure, so it's probably a wise creative decision that Herron and head writer Michael Waldron decided to provide some context and revisit the show’s inciting incident in Endgame.

Next: What TIME Loki Releases On Disney+ (& How To Watch)

Source: THR

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