And though she be but little, she is fierce!

The Miss Minutes Scene From Loki You’ll Never Get To See

By Joseph Stanichar, 14th July 2021

Contains spoilers for “Loki, Season 1, Episode 6: "For All Time. Always.”

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has plenty of highs like “Avengers: Endgame,” and the occasional lows, (looking at you, “Thor: The Dark World”), but there’s one universal truth that every single fan can get behind: Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) is brilliant in “Loki.” The mascot/A.I. helps run the Time Variance Authority in the MCU, but sshe also charmed fans from the instant she’s introduced. Loki (Tom Hiddleston) first sees her in the informational videos playing in the TVA’s waiting area, shortly after being apprehended post-“Endgame.” Basically, Miss Minutes is a splash of bizarre creativity in the cosmic bureaucracy that makes the idea of the TVA go down a little easier for the audiences in the first episode.

However, audiences quickly deduced that there is more to Miss Minutes than meets the eye. During Episode 6, “For All Time. Always,” the adorable anthropomorphic clock is revealed to have a direct line to the man behind the curtain, He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors). When Loki and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) manage to enchant their way through Alioth into the Citadel at the end of Time, Miss Minutes revels in offering the pair everything they’ve ever wanted in exchange for taking over the TVA.

Miss Minutes might be some kind of virtual A.I., but she’s clearly got a devilish side — something she’s likely inherited from He Who Remains, AKA Kang the Conqueror. The script originally gave Miss Minutes much more to do in the finale.

Miss Minutes nearly got her hands dirty

Aside from making audiences jump when she swirled into frame in the finale, Miss Minutes was supposed to fight Loki and Sylvie when they arrived in the citadel. How would that work? It’s not clear how Miss Minutes can affect the real world, although we did see Loki try and swat her with a magazine in Episode 2. Director Kate Herron opened up about Tara Strong’s adorable (yet sinister) talking clock to Marvel.com, explaining, “Early on in the scripts, we all were definitely united on, ‘We’ve got to keep Miss Minutes in the story somehow.’”

The director pointed out that she tempts both of the variants with all they’ve ever wanted: “That devil on the shoulder and trying to tempt both Loki and Sylvie.” She added, “It was fun that you got a sense of there’s something a bit more sinister going on here with her.” And it sounds like Miss Minutes was also meant to keep reappearing throughout the finale: “We always had a version where [Loki and Sylvie] kept meeting her at the Citadel. At one point, we had a fight scene with Miss Minutes in the Citadel; we had all kinds of stuff.”

Because much of “Loki” Episode 6 was dedicated to He Who Remains explaining exactly who he is in exposition-heavy monologues, it’s easy to see why Herron and creator Michael Waldron kept the focus on the new villain. With Season 2 on the way, it would be criminal for Miss Minutes to not return, so here’s hoping she finally gets that fight scene in the next batch of episodes.

Dir. Kate Herron

Alioth is the first being who broke free from the constraints of time.[1] His empire is larger than that of Kang himself, stretching billions of years to before the rise of man on Earth. His domain is approximately x2 to x3 as large as Kang's temporal empire.[1] It is because of Alioth that Kang never attempted to expand his empire vertically into more distant time eras and therefore extends only as far back as 2000 BC.[2]

Kang created a barrier preventing Alioth from entering his domain. After Kang was left on the brink of death, Ravonna the Terminatrix assumed his identity and took over his Empire. While investigating eras earlier in time, she accidentally released Alioth who then threatened Kang's former domain and all other temporal dominions further up the timestream. Ravonna and Revelation were able to revive Kang who provided the Avengers with the Chrono Key to use against Alioth. Which was in reality Tempus who upon being released inside Alioth grew to match it in power, locking the two in eternal combat.[3] Later Kang would as part of his machinations to keep his rival temporal empires occupied, weakened Tempus so that Alioth would break through, invading the dominion of the Congress of Realities.[4]

Powers and Abilities

Powers

Alioth is a trans-temporal entity, existing across divergent timelines as an enormous cloud destroying all it touches, causing massive temporal disturbance, and devastation across entire dimensions. It can extend pseudopodia to attack focal beings or locations and grow in size and mass by absorbing the bodies of time travelers into its mass. Once it occupies a time period, it spreads out to engulf the adjacent realities. Alioth also negates temporal energy, preventing travel through it to a time before it exists. Attempts to travel through Alioth usually result in absorption into its mass.[5]

See Also

Dir. Cate Shortland

It’s hard to believe nowadays, but back in 2009, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was far from a sure thing. Iron Man had been a huge hit, but The Incredible Hulk had a much more lukewarm reception. So when acting legend Kenneth Branagh was hired to direct Thor, it was made clear to him that the importance of finding the right tone and the right cast was paramount. Essentially, the future of the MCU would live or die based on how much audiences connected with the God of Thunder.

Branagh sat down with us for an extended interview on the most recent episode of Collider Connected in anticipation of the release of his Disney+ movie Artemis Fowl, and he recalled how Thor was important to the future of the MCU: 

“There was no question that tonally Thor was critical after the massive success of the brilliant Iron Man from Mr. Favreau and Robert [Downey Jr.], and then slightly less successful in their terms The Incredible Hulk. Thor became critical to being the sort of tonal bridge—featuring literally a rainbow bridge as well—between as it were the Earthbound and space-bound and fantasy-bound parts of the Marvel universe. So there was a kind of connective matrix that Thor, Asgard, the Nine Realms and everything that it involved could provide inside that large Marvel Cinematic Universe that was enormously important that couldn’t be done by the brilliant Captain America, because it wasn’t the same material. This was the one that said, ‘Is there a fantastical future?’”

Beyond that, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and Co. were also planning The Avengers and a storyline that hinged on the strained relationship between Thor and Loki. So casting these roles, Feige told Branagh, was the most important decision the company would make:

“I’ll never forget the moment that we cast those two boys [Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston]. It was like a sort of meditation or a sort of incantation… Kevin Feige must’ve walked around this long oval table a hundred times on that Saturday morning as I kept sort of saying, ‘I think we should call them.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yeah, I think we should call them.’… and I knew how profoundly serious that decision was. Kevin said, ‘We’ll never make a more important decision in this company than what’s happening in this room, Saturday morning at 10:30, when you pick up the phone to Chris Hemsworth and then Tom Hiddleston. It’s either going to work or it’s not. Good luck.’”

Obviously the decision turned out to be the correct one, as Thor and Loki became fan-favorite characters thanks to the performances of Hemsworth and Hiddleston. To be honest, I never considered just how important Thor was to the MCU—if that movie hadn’t worked, it would’ve been impossible to introduce Thanos or the Infinity Gems, or get into the really weird stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy and Doctor Strange.

As for why Branagh didn’t return for Thor: The Dark World, the filmmaker says he needed a “re-charge” after spending three years of his life making the first movie:

“The way things work, there was a version of events where… sometimes with these stories I like to plan them as trilogies, but it’s much harder in this world for that to work out because the stakes are so high you’ve gotta really see how the first one does. When the first one was finished, essentially it had been three fantastic years of my life, but I needed to recharge on something else. I was too close to the glass on that one, so I would definitely never say never again because it changed my life and changed my career and I’m profoundly grateful for it. I wasn’t ready to go straight into another one, but I like the idea of… I’d love to be planning something that was a three-parter in movie terms. That hasn’t come along yet but maybe it will.”

5. Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Because sass. And strutting. And mischief. And vambraces. And tears, tantrums and tight leather. And well... I do love a complex, misunderstood, horny antihero. 😉

It's so pretty 😍

Dir. Joss Whedon

Dir. Kenneth Branagh

EXCLUSIVE: Coming off Apple’s The Morning Show, Gugu Mbatha-Raw is heading to another streaming drama. The British actress has been cast in Loki, the Disney+ series starring Tom Hiddleston as the trickster demi-god and brother to Thor, I have learned.

In the new Marvel Studios series, Hiddleston returns as the mercurial Loki, the Asgardian god of mischief and everyone’s favorite Marvel villain, in stories that take place after the events of Avengers: Endgame, with a likely tie-in to the May 2021 supernatural sequel Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.

Like all Marvel shows for Disney+, Loki is executive produced by studio chief Kevin Feige. The series’ writer, Michael Waldron, and director, Kate Herron, also executive produce. Filming is underway in Atlanta for a targeted spring 2021 debut.

Mbatha-Raw was a series regular on the first season of Apple TV+ drama series The Morning Show, starring opposite Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell. On the big screen, she most recently starred in Motherless Brooklyn, alongside Edward Norton and Willem Dafoe. She will next be seen in the British comedy-drama Misbehaviour, starring alongside Keira Knightley and Jessie Buckley, and in Come Away, starring opposite Angelina Jolie and David Oyelowo. Additionally, she has completed production on World War II drama Summerland.

This marks Mbatha-Raw’s return to the Disney fold after her co-starring roles in