A fitting finale of the Infinity Saga as it was, Avengers: Endgame opened the door for many more subsequent MCU adventures. One of the most overt was the timeline-altering beat when 2012 Loki picked up the Tesseract, teleporting out of the events of The Avengers before he could be returned to Asgard. This was the starting point for the Loki show, which Rick & Morty vet Michael Waldron had to run with. The result, releasing new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+, is the MCU's most overtly timey-wimey entry yet, using the Brazil-styled TVA as an entry point into the fan-favorite character.

To mark the premiere of the latest Marvel Studios series, Screen Rant caught up with Waldron to discuss the metaphysical narrative, plucking an existing character from earlier in the timeline, and his future in the MCU as writer on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Loki is given a document with everything he has ever said at the TVA in Loki

When you came on, was the Loki Endgame setup that kicks everything off established as the starting point for this show, or was that something you got input on? 

From very early on, we knew - well, I learned and was told under cover of darkness - what was going to happen in Endgame with Loki, and that he was going to disappear through that portal with the Tesseract. And so we knew that was what was going to kick off the events of our story; that's what fans would see in Endgame.  Then the question would be where the hell does Loki go? And so, our job became, "Alright, what's on the other end of that portal?"

Endgame's time travel is quite heavily debated, in terms of the internal logic. Even the writers and directors don't fully agree. I wanted to get your take on that whole thing, specifically the ending, and whether Captain America was in a new timeline or the existing original timeline at the end.

I think to get my take on the time travel in Endgame, you're gonna have to watch Loki. Because the time travel in Endgame, that's time travel is the Avengers and as those characters understand it and experience it. This show, it's experienced and explained by the Time Variance Authority. And so, maybe you'll get a slightly different answer to some questions and perhaps posed some new ones.

How did the existing use of time travel in Endgame and the multiverse, which has been mentioned many times, play into how you built the TVA?

Yeah, it was really exciting to just say, "Alright, we're gonna build a whole new corner of the MCU that polices all of time." That was especially exciting coming off of 10-11 years of the MCU, where there quite literally is so much history to draw from and to reference and everything. That made our lives as writers easier.  Then it was just: when you're making a show about a time travel agency, how do you establish them in a way that doesn't undo the excitement and the stakes of everything that came before, but perhaps shed some new interesting light on all that stuff?

When it came to coming up with the TVA, the Timekeepers and all of that's in the comics. But this is quite different, and you're building in the MCU rather than Marvel Comics. Where do you draw inspiration from for all this?

A million different sources. Blade Runner, for sure, was one. Mad Men, Toy Story, Armageddon. So many things. We all talked about our favorite movies, about our favorite science fiction stories and everything. There was nothing off-limits in terms of inspiration for this show, because it truly felt like, "Wow, we can go anywhere, we can go any time. So, don't put any cap on our imaginations."

Loki picks the Tesseract up and uses it to escape

Another big challenge with this show is Loki, because this isn't the Loki that we saw die in Infinity War, but is from earlier on the timeline. You have an audience that knows Loki's entire history, but then a version of the character rooted in the past. How did you approach writing that, and was that a challenge?

I think it was a challenge in one way, but also perhaps the most important opportunity of the show. A challenge in the sense that, yes, the audience has seen 10 years of stories with this character. They've seen him arc out, in a way, and have one version of a redemptive arc. This is another version of Loki, who hasn't had all that experience. It was really important to me that we tell a totally new story; that we're not just treading old ground. And so, in that sense, I was very excited to have a slightly less developed Loki to play with.

Looking at the whole MCU, every character goes through amazing journeys. Loki is perfect to dip into at a certain point. But if you were to pick another character to explore from an earlier stage in their journey, who would you pick? 

That's a great question. I love Bucky. I think Bucky is a great character. Like Loki, that's somebody who has a lot of trauma that they're working through, but there's a real vulnerability and likeability there. So, I like Bucky a lot.

Speaking of Bucky, we recently saw him on Disney+. Has the success of WandaVision and The Falcon on the Winter Soldier made this more nerve-wracking for you? How has it changed the view, after making Loki in a bubble, to know these shows can have a phenomenal impact?

Look, it was nerve-racking from the moment that I realized our writers' room was right next to the WandaVision room. I would walk by and see what Jac Schaeffer and those guys were doing next door and realize, "Wow, that show is going to be something special."  We always knew that the expectations were going to be great; we're gonna have big shoes to fill, following those two shows. So, nerves have been wracked for quite some time now.

Hiddleston's Co-stars Weren't Invited to the Loki Lectures

For next year, you've worked on Doctor Strange 2. Do you begin to feel that you're becoming the custodian of the MCU multiverse now?

I don't know. I think that everybody - all the filmmakers and writers of the MCU - are all custodians of this thing, because we all end up both creating problems and solving problems for one another. So, if I can just create problems for myself and not for some other poor writer, I guess that makes life a little bit easier.

Next: Loki: Every MCU Easter Egg In Episode 1

Loki releases new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

Key Release Dates