Small Details You Missed In The Loki Trailer
The trailer for the forthcoming Disney+ Loki series starring Tom Hiddleston is here, and it is...weird! There's a lot going on in this trailer, almost too much to deal with. We've got time travel, we've got space travel, we've got exploding planets, wood-paneled office buildings, a drab-looking retail experience, vicious warriors gathered from multiple time periods, and, to top it all off, a strange, hooded figure cast in darkness.
But in the interests of trying to give you as much information about the mighty MCU multiverse as possible, we're going to do our best to break down some of the stuff we recognized, while still raising questions about some of the things we can only guess about.
Hold onto your helmet horns — here are just a small smattering of the small details you might've missed in the new Loki trailer.
What is the TVA?
One of the first things we after the Marvel Studios logo flashes on screen is an elevator descending a huge building of some kind. Next we see Loki in that very elevator with an awful lot of weird buttons. As the trailer continues, we see multiple shots inside this building, which seems to be some kind of cosmic office building, filled with strange statues, signs, and vaguely threatening looking people. And over and over, we see three letters: TVA. So what's that mean?
TVA stands for the Time Variance Authority, an organization first appeared in 1986 in Thor #372. They've popped up a few times in the intervening years, and their main mission is to maintain the integrity of the timeline and prosecute those who threaten to screw with it. They've tangled with time travelling knuckleheads like Kang the Conqueror, who's been rumored to be coming to the MCU soon. They're basically time cops, time judges, and time bureaucrats.
So what could they have to do with Loki and Marvel's Asgard? Well, the group's first appearance was in a Thor comic, which makes them inextricably linked with the God of Mischief. In that first appearance, one of the TVA's agents was chasing an immortal, demonic-type bad guy named Zaniac back through time to stop him from causing massive chaos in the future. Could Zaniac have something to do with the weird stained glass demon we see at about 1:56 into the trailer? Or could that be some other devilish Marvel villain — like Mephisto?
Who's with Loki in the elevator?
So let's rewind a second back to that first shot inside the elevator. Standing next to Loki is none other than Owen Wilson, playing a mysterious character whose name is never uttered. Dead end, right? Well, if you hit the closed caption button on the video, it reveals his character name without any guesswork necessary: Mobius M. Mobius. Let this be a lesson — always hit the closed captioning button.
Now, it's a safe bet that most fans of comics both old and new have probably never heard of Mobius M. Mobius. Don't feel bad — this guy first appeared almost 30 years ago, showing up in Fantastic Four #353 in 1991. In that comic, Mr. Mobius is in charge of prosecuting the Fantastic Four — who's also just been revealed to be coming to the MCU in the next few years — for their time traveling shenanigans. And that tracks with what we see in the trailer. At around 1:45, we see a high-tech looking film strip, and Mobius sitting at a table with Loki, who's clearly being held prisoner by the TVA. The film strip features imagery from the first Avengers film, in which Loki played the villain. That seems to tell us that Mr. Mobius is similarly taking Loki to task for his crimes against time — and possibly putting him to work to set some things right. Maybe to track down an immortal, time-traveling bad guy named Zaniac, perhaps?
Three heads are better than none
You no doubt noticed three very ominous looking figures looming large in the offices of the TVA. First they show up as three giant heads hanging behind Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who's playing an as-yet unrevealed part in the show. We see them again as three gigantic statues — but at no point is it clear who, or what, they're supposed to be. But, as ever, the pages of Marvel Comics hold the most probable answers.
The most likely comic book counterparts for these three figures are the Time-Keepers — characters whose origins are tied to the Time Variance Authority. Like all good comic book characters, their story is very, very complicated, and involves multiple timelines, imperfect past versions of themselves called the Time-Twisters, and some dude named Zarrko the Tomorrow Man. Needless to say, the three big guns are probably the Time-Keepers, though whether or not we'll see or hear more of them other than these statues is totally unknown so far.
Shop smart...shop Roxxcart
At 1:51, we see a bunch of TVA agents, along with Loki, marching into a store that seems to be called Roxxcart. That name bears a striking similarity to one of the many fictional corporations that have shown up in Marvel Comics over the years: Roxxon. If you've played through 2020's Spider-Man: Miles Morales video game, you're already very familiar with Roxxon and their nefarious corporate misdeeds. But the Roxxon company — often an competitor of Stark Industries — has been in the MCU from the start, with their logo appearing on a building during the climactic fight in Iron Man. The president even says the name in Iron Man 3. Roxxon has also been a key part of several MCU TV shows, and the Roxxon logo also appeared on a gas pump in the Marvel One-Shot short film "A Funny Thing Happened on the way to Thor's Hammer."
As to whether or not Roxxcart will have anything to do with Roxxon is anybody's guess. Even more than that, it's not entirely clear what larger role Roxxcart might even play in the overall show. But considering how evil they tend to be in the comics and games, and the fact that we need some new bad guys to show up in the MCU, don't be surprised if we hear from this evil corporate conglomerate throughout Loki — and possibly even beyond.
Rock the vote
What would a trailer for a Loki-centric series be without a shot of the trickster god's dazzling smile and a characteristically condescending bit of dialogue to cap things off? Pretty lame, that's what — and Disney knows better than to be lame in front of Marvel fans. The first trailer for Loki did indeed end with a moment in which Loki, flanked by what appears to be a group of battle-worn warriors from various historical periods, looks down at someone off screen, opens his arms, smiles, and says, "Come on, what did you expect?" Loki's not-so-merry band of fighters immediately turn their weapons on him, so there's obviously a lot more going on here than we can fully understand at this point.
What's especially intriguing is the fact that both Loki and a few of the warriors behind him are wearing red-white-and-blue buttons with Loki's name on them. This indicates that Loki will amass some kind of passionate (but maybe not completely loyal) following during the events of the show, and that he's campaigning to become ... something. The buttons appear to be a callback to the 2016 comic book storyline Vote Loki, which finds the Norse god launching a controversial campaign in an effort to be elected the President of the United States. Written by Christopher Hastings, Vote Loki is a satire of the actual 2016 U.S. presidential election, and features fictional ex-Daily Bugle reporter Nisa Contreras working to expose Loki's web of lies.
It's unknown how big an influence the Vote Loki storyline has on the plot of the Disney+ series — it may not be very much, considering Loki is slated for just six episodes — but the connection between the two is undeniable, and this is certainly something to chew on.
Is that ... D.B. Cooper?
One of the most intriguing parts of the Loki trailer happens a little over two minutes into the footage, squished between a montage of action-heavy scenes. There's a shot of a massive plane sitting on the tarmac at an airport, followed by another shot from inside the plane. The camera pulls back, and there's Loki — except, he really doesn't look like Loki. Where's the flowing black hair, the costume of green and gold, the horned helmet that makes him look like some kind of royal deer?
What happens next only adds to the confusion: Loki gives the flight attendant a wink, grabs a bag from her, then jumps out of the plane, cash fluttering in the wind behind him as he appears to zap to Asgard via the Bifröst. Weird, right? The strangest part about this series of events is that they actually happened in real life — minus the whole "riding a rainbow bridge from Earth to the home of the Asgardians" thing.
Our best guess is that in Loki, the god of mischief will masquerade as Dan "D. B." Cooper, the pseudonym of a still-unidentified man who hijacked a Seattle-bound plane on November 24, 1971. To make a complex story short, the man — who wore black sunglasses, a black suit jacket and matching slacks, and a black tie, just like Loki does in the trailer — told a flight attendant that he had a bomb, then managed to extort the equivalent of nearly $1.3 million in ransom. Ultimately, Cooper parachuted out of the plane and was never seen again.
The D.B. Cooper hijacking became the focus of exhaustive investigations (that have yielded no results) and has attracted the attention of millions around the world, apparently now including the folks at Disney and Marvel. Loki is said to follow the titular character throughout various decades, so it's not at all surprising that we'd see Loki in the '70s. Passing himself off as the subject of one of the most bizarre unsolved mysteries in history that happened to take place in the '70s? Very surprising.