Entertainment NOW

2 • October 1 - 7, 2023 Entertainment Now By Sarah Passingham TV Media W e've all done the time warp and explored the multiverse, but it's high time to sort out the timeline. A brand-new season of "Loki" premieres Friday, Oct. 6, on Disney+. Tom Hid- dleston ("The Essex Serpent") re- turns as the God of Mischief, ev- eryone's favorite troublemaker, Loki, who has developed a myste- rious problem this season. Owen Wilson ("Haunted Man- sion," 2023) is back as Mobius M. Mobius, the Time Variance Authority agent tasked with help- ing Loki right his wrongs across the multiverse. The first season of "Loki" saw the Norse God meet his match in an alternate version of himself. Sophia Di Mar- tino ("The Electrical Life of Louis Wain," 2021) is Sylvie, a variant of Loki who interrupts the Sacred Timeline. After coming together to set things right across space and time, Loki returned to what he thought would be the TVA head- quarters he left before his mission, but something still wasn't right. In the official trailer for the upcoming season, Mobius brings Loki to a repair shop of sorts, manned by TVA repair guy OB, portrayed by Ke Huy Quan ("American Born Chinese"). Be- fore the pair have time to explain what's brought them there, Loki suddenly, uncontrollably disap- pears in a timeslip, leaving Mo- bius looking to OB for an answer. "It's impossible to timeslip in the TVA," is all he can say, though they just watched it happen. "Loki" executive producer Kevin Wright told Entertainment Weekly in September that "[OB's] job is basically every piece of tech, every computer, every thing that is running at the TVA. ... He either designed it or he fixes it and keeps it running." Having recently picked up an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2022's "Everything Everywhere All At Once," Quan is well suited to help repair another multiverse. While Quan's character is the latest to join Loki's crew as he chases chaos across the multi- verse, several cast members re- turn for the new season, including Gugu Mbatha-Raw ("Surface") as Ravonna Renslayer, an ambi- tious judge in the TVA who over- sees Loki's case. Literally backing up Loki at one point in the sea- son's trailer alongside Mobius, Sylvie and OB is Wunmi Mosaku ("We Own This City") as Hunter B-15. Eugene Cordero ("Star Trek: Lower Decks") returns as Hunter K-5E, former TVA receptionist. The upcoming seasons also star Neil Ellice ("Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn") as Hunter D-90, Jonathan Majors ("Creed III," 2023) as He Who Remains and Tara Strong ("Teen Titans Go!") as the voice of Miss Minutes. Rafael Casal ("Blindspotting"), Kate Dickie ("Annika") and Liz Carr ("Silent Witness") all join the cast this season in as-yet-unnamed roles. Odd couple Mobius and Loki unsurprisingly have different ap- proaches to their world-saving mission spanning space and time. While the former admits in the "Loki" teaser trailer that he pre- fers his "slow, deliberate, cerebral approach" honed by years in the bureaucracy of the TVA, while the Norse god is "a man of action, which is fine." Unconvincing, given Loki is the source of the destruction that they are trying to stave off. While Disney has remained characteristically tight-lipped about the new season of "Loki" ahead of its premiere, Mbatha-Raw promised in a December 2022 interview with Entertainment Tonight that fans "are gonna be in for a real treat because the show is bolder and more surreal." She added that the upcoming season "goes to some bigger, bolder places than Season 1, which is really exciting." Wright promised something similar in his September EW interview, saying, "We made a weird show [in Sea- son 1], and people responded to how weird it was ... so, we wanted to push it further." Marvel introduced the multi- verse in the 2016 movie "Doctor Strange," and since its release, it has opened up a far-reaching world of timelines and possibili- ties within the Marvel universe. The later so-called "phases" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe following the 2016 film utilize time travel to connect Marvel films and TV series. Following the wildly successful first foray into a Marvel live-action TV series with "WandaVision" in 2021, Disney and Marvel archi- tects have been turning to the epi- sodic format to expand on stories that simply can't be done justice in the films. Wright told EW, "In our [Marvel] movies, sometimes you have to keep moving forward very rapidly to get to the next thing." Embracing the extra hours in a season of TV that you can't fit into a theatrical release works for a complicated, expansive story like the one in "Loki," Wright adds, "Here it's like: 'No, we can sit in these moments.' And dramati- cally, that's an exciting thing." Though Majors currently faces allegations of domestic violence, his character, Kang the Conqueror, is seen in the "Loki" trailer as vari- ant Victor Timely, and Wright con- firmed that he is "a big part of the show" in the upcoming season. Plant yourself firmly onto the couch, try not to timeslip and tune in to the "Loki" Season 2 pre- miere when it drops on Disney+, Friday, Oct. 6. Cover Story Owen Wilson and Tom Hiddleston in "Loki" Beyond time and space: 'Loki' returns with uncontrollable powers Farmers Insurance 2 x 2 Letters & Numbers Sudoku Fill in the grid so that every row,every column, and every 4x4 box contains the digits 1 through 9 AND the letters A-F. Solution on page 12.

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