And though she be but little, she is fierce!

Now that I am not terrified of accidentally posting a spoiler This show was the most incredible project to work on. @itssophiadimartino thank you for trusting me to help with Sylvie’s action & being an incredible friend💚 @moganderton: The Time Keeper of Loki Stunts & 2 unit Directing also The Photographer. Thank you for having me on & the constant learning & pushing to grow💚 @loydbateman The Time Keeper of The Fights. Thank you for badass fights & so much knowledge. You are the 💣 @herronthatkate thank you for being an absolutely amazing director & the photo💣 💚 @stuntsurfer thank you originally bringing me on👊🎉 @nadialorenczstunts & @gugumbatharaw thank you for being great fight partners 💪💚 So much Loki family, thank you for being such an awesome team 🐊🐊🐊  @nadialorenczstunts @jess_merideth @marcheallday @matty_long_legs_ @travisegomez @benaycrigg @aironarmstrong @_drknite @califfguzman & so many other amazing stunt performers & crew

'LOKI' COMPOSER ON HOW HER MCU SCORE REFLECTS THE MAIN CHARACTER'S FLAIR FOR THE DRAMATIC

By Josh Weiss, 5th July 2021

Natalie Holt's timeline was turned upside down last fall when she landed the highly-coveted composer gig for Marvel Studios' Loki series on Disney+.

"My agent got a general call-out looking for a composer on a Marvel project," she tells SYFY WIRE during a conversation over Zoom. "So, I didn’t know what it was. It was [described as] spacey and quite epic ... I sent in my show reel and then got an interview and got sent the script and then I realized what it was for. I was like, ‘Oh my god!’ It was amazing ... Loki was already one of my favorite characters, so I was really stoked to get to give him a theme and flesh him out in this way."

***WARNING! The following contains certain plot spoilers for the first four episodes of Loki!***

Imbued with glorious purpose, Holt knew the score had to match the show's gonzo premise about the Time Variance Authority, an organization that secretly watches over and manages every single timeline across the Marvel multiverse. The proposition of such an out-there sci-fi concept inspired the composer to bring in uniquely strange sounds, courtesy of synthesizers and a theremin.

"I got my friend, Charlie Draper, to play the theremin on my pitch that I had to do," she recalls. "They gave me a scene to score, which I’m sure they gave to loads of other composers. It was the Time Theater sequence in Episode 1. The bit from where he goes up the elevator and then into the Time Theater ... I just went to town on it and I wanted to impress them and win the job and put as many unusual sounds in there and make it as unique as possible."

The end result was a weird, borderline unnatural sound that wouldn't have felt out of place in a 1950s sci-fi B-movie about big-headed alien invaders. Rather than being turned off by Holt's avant garde ideas, Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige embraced them, only giving the composer a single piece of feedback: "Push it further."

Holt admits that she was slightly influenced by Thor: Ragnarok ("I loved the score for it and everything"), which wasn't afraid to lean into the wild, Jack Kirby-created ideas floating around Marvel's cosmic locales. Director Taika Waititi's colorful and bombastic set pieces were perfectly complimented by an '80s-inspired score concocted by Devo co-founder, Mark Mothersbaugh.

"To be honest, I tried not to listen to it on its own," Holt says of the Ragnarok soundtrack. "I didn’t want to be too influenced by it. I watched the film a couple of times a few years ago, so yeah, I don’t think I was heavily referencing it. But I definitely had a memory of it in my mind."

After boarding Loki last September, Holt spent the next six months (mostly in lockdown) crafting a soundtrack that would perfectly reflect the titular god of mischief played by Tom Hiddleston. One of the first things she came up with was the project's main theme — a slightly foreboding cue that pays homage to the temporal nature of the TVA, as well as the main character's flair for the dramatic. "He always does things with a lot of panache and flair, and he’s very classical in his delivery."

She describes it as an "over-the-top grand theme with these ornate flourishes" that plays nicely with Loki's Shakespearean aura. "I wanted those ornaments and grand gestures in what I was doing. Then I also wanted to reflect that slightly analog world of the TVA where everything has lots of knobs and buttons ... [I wanted to] give it that slightly grainy, faded [and] vintage-y sci-fi sound as well."

"I just wanted it to feel like it had this might and weight — like there was something almost like a requiem about it," Holt continues. "These chords that are really powerful and strident and then they’ve got this blinking [sound] over the top. I just came up with that when I was walking down the street and I hummed it into my phone. There’s a video where you can just see up my nose and I’m humming [the theme]. I came home and I played it."

As a classically-trained musician, Holt drew on her love of Mahler, Dvořák, Beethoven, Mozart, and most importantly, Wagner. A rather fitting decision, given that an actual Valkyrie (played by Tessa Thompson) exists within the confines of the MCU.

"I would say those flourishes over the top of the Loki theme are very much Wagner," Holt says. "They’re like 'Ride of the Valkyries.’ I wanted people to kind of recall those big, classical, bombastic pieces and I wanted to give that weight to Loki’s character. That was very much a conscious decision to root it in classical harmony and classical writing ... There’s a touch of the divine to the TVA. It’s in charge of everything, so that’s why those big powerful chords [are there]. I wanted people almost to be knocked off their socks when they heard it."

With the main theme in place, Holt could then play around with it in different styles, depending on the show's different narrative needs. Two prime examples are on display in the very first episode during Miss Minutes' introductory video and the flashback that reveals Loki to be the elusive D.B. Cooper.

"What was really fun was [with] each episode, I got to pull it away and do a samba version of the theme or do a kind of ‘50s sci-fi version of the theme," she explains. "I can’t say other versions of the theme because they’re in Episode 5 and 6…or like when Mobius is pruned, I did this really heartfelt and very emotional [take on the theme] when you see Loki tearing up as he’s going down in slow motion down that corridor. It was cool to have the opportunity to try out so many different styles and genres. And it was big enough to take it all. It was a big enough story."

The other side of the story speaks to the old world grandeur of Loki's royal upbringing on Asgard, a city amongst the stars that eventually found its way into Norse mythology.

"I went to a concert in London three years ago and I heard these Norwegian musicians playing in this group called the Lodestar Trio," Holt recalls. "They do a take on Bach, where they’re kind of giving it a folk-y twist … [They use] a nyckelharpa and a Hardanger fiddle — they’re two historic Norwegian folk instruments. I just remembered that sound and I was like, ‘Oh, I have to use those guys in our score.’ It seemed like the perfect thing. I was like, ‘Yes, the North/Norwegian folk instruments.’ It just felt like it was the perfect thing for his mother and Asgard and his origins."

That folk-inspired sound also helped shape the music for Sylvie (played by Sophia Di Martino), a female variant of Loki with a rather tragic past. "Obviously, we’ve seen in Episode 4 what happened to her as a child," Holt says. "I just feel like she’s so dark. She’s basically grown up living in apocalypses, so she has that Norwegian folk violin sound, but her theme is incredibly dark and menacing and also, you don’t see her. She’s just this dark figure who’s murdering people for a while."

And then there were all the core members of the TVA to contend with. As Holt mentioned above, fans recently lost Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson), may he rest in prune. We mean peace. What? Too soon? During a recent interview with SYFY WIRE, Loki head writer Michael Waldron said that he based Mobius off of Tom Hanks's dogged FBI agent Carl Hanratty in 2002's Catch Me If You Can.

"There’s this thing that he loves jet ski magazines," Holt says. "I had this character in my head and then when I saw Owen Wilson’s performance, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s actually a lot lighter and he plays it in a different way from how I’d imagined.’ But I was listening to Bon Jovi and those slightly rock-y anthemic things. ‘90s rock music for some reason was my Mobius sound palette."

Mobius is pruned on the orders of his longtime friend, Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), after learning that everyone who works for the TVA is a variant who was unceremoniously plucked out of their original timelines. A high-ranking member of the quantum-based agency, Renslayer has a theme that "is quite tied in with Mobius and it’s like a high organ," Holt adds. "It doesn’t quite know where it’s going yet. But yeah, we’ll have to see what happens with that one."

Wilson's character isn't the only person fed up with the TVA's lies. Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) also became disillusioned with the place and allowed Sylvie to escape in the most recent episode

"Hunter B-15 has this moment in Episode 4 where Sylvie shows her her past, her memories. I thought that was a really powerful moment for her," Holt says. I feel like she’s such a fighter and when she comes into the Time-Keepers and she makes that decision, like, ‘I’m switching sides,’ so her theme is more like a drum rhythm. I actually kind of sampled my voice and you can hear that with the drums. I did loads of layers of it, just like this horrible sliding sound with this driving rhythm underneath it. So, that was B-15 and then her softer side when she has her memory given back to her."

Speaking of the Time-Keepers, we finally got to meet the creators of the Sacred Timeline...or at least we thought we did. Loki and Sylvie are shocked to learn that the red-eyed guardians of reality are nothing but a trio of high-end animatronics (ones that could probably be taken out by a raging Nicolas Cage). Even before Sylvie manages to behead one of them, something definitely feels off with the Time-Keepers, which meant Holt could underscore the uncanny valley feeling in the score.

"When they walked in for their audience with the Time-Keepers, it was like this huge gravitas," she says. "But you look up and there’s something a bit wrong about them. I don’t know if you felt that or if you just totally believed. You were like, ‘Oh, this is so strange.’ I just felt like there was something a little bit off and musically, it was fun to play around with that."

Holt is only the second solo female composer to work on an MCU project, following in the footsteps of Captain Marvel's Pinar Toprak. Her involvement with Loki represents the studio's growing commitment to diversity, both in front of and behind the camera. This Friday will see the wide release of Black Widow, the first Marvel film to be helmed solely by a woman (Cate Shortland). Four months after that, Chloé Zhao's Eternals will introduce the MCU's first openly gay character into the MCU.

"I just feel like it’s an honor and a privilege to have had that chance to be the second woman to score a thing in the MCU and to be in the same league as those incredible composers like Mothersbaugh and Alan Silvestri. They're just legends," Holt says. "Another distinctive thing about [the show] is that all the heads of department are pretty much women. Marvel are showing themselves to be really progressive and supportive and encouraging. I applaud [them]. Whatever they’re doing seems to be working and people seem to be liking it as well, so that’s awesome."

Holt's score for Vol. 1 of Loki (aka Episodes 1-3) are now streaming on every music-based platform you could think of. Episodes 1-4 are available to watch on Disney+ for subscribers. Episode 5 (the show's penultimate installment) debuts on the platform this coming Wednesday, July 7.

Natalie isn't able to give up any plot spoilers for the next two episodes (no surprise there), but does tease "the use of a big choir" in one of them. "Episode 6, I’m excited for people to hear it," she concludes. "That’s all I can say."

For SYFY WIRE's official recaps of everything we've learned so far, make sure your reset charges are safely turned off and check out the links below:

Fandom: What Was It Like Creating ‘Loki’s Rules For Time Travel

Eric Goldman, 28th June 2021

As inevitable as Thanos himself, time travel was destined to make its way into the MCU. After all, it’s a staple of the Marvel Comics that this incredibly popular cinematic universe is based on, so it’s only natural to see the live-action versions of these characters deal with it.

Following the use of time travel in Avengers: Endgame, the new Disney+ series Loki is making it a central conceit, as a Variant of Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has been captured by the Time Variance Authority and tasked with hunting yet another version of himself throughout time. Of course, as the series has progressed, that situation has become complicated now that Loki has actually met this other Variant, Sylvie.

Beyond those specifics though, time travel itself is an especially complicated element to add to any story. Read on for what Loki’s creators, along with cast members Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Wunmi Mosaku, had to say about the show’s depiction of time travel and making sure they all had it straight in their heads.

FIGURING IT ALL OUT

When it came to figuring out the rules of time travel for their show, Loki head writer Michael Waldron told Fandom that he and his fellow writers spent, “A lot of time; so much time. That was probably our most important job at the top of the writers room, after we really laid the groundwork through the emotional arc of the story. We had to then get very granular about the time travel laws of this world and what does it constitute to break a time law. So that required drawing a lot of lines with squiggly other lines on whiteboards in the writers’ room and creating just an institutional knowledge to be shared among the writing staff.”

Waldron noted though that once they had figured out their rules, “Then the charge became, okay, how do we explain that to the audience in an entertaining way? And then [have them] put it to the side, so they never have to really think about it again, because the last thing you want is for people to be bogged down with the rules of all that stuff as they’re watching the show.”

Loki director Kate Herron recalled, “When I joined the show, it was helpful in a way because [Waldron and the other writers] were so in the weeds with it.” Waldron’s aforementioned squiggly lines came in handy, as Herron explained how he drew her “a line with the branches coming off it and it kind of clicked in my head for me. I was like, ‘Oh, we’ll just use that!’ I remember they were all like, ‘Oh, no, we can’t use that image.’ And I was like, ‘No, no, no, honestly, I’m coming in with fresh eyes and I understood it all with that drawing, so we have to use that drawing because that means the audience are gonna understand as well.”

Herron added, “Obviously, there’s been time travel in the MCU before, as we all know, and it was kind of building off that but also building within that the new rules for the TVA and how their rules work, because they’re outside of time. There’ve been a lot of conversations and I cannot tell you how many times I’ve drawn that drawing with the line to actors, to crew members, to myself. I think everyone on the team has notebooks just full of that drawing, but it works.”

THE TVA LEARNS ABOUT THE TVA

Gugu Mbatha-Raw (“Ravonna Renslayer“) said she got immersed in the time travel rules of Loki‘s story very early in the process, recalling, “My first creative call about this was with Kate Herron and Kevin [Feige] and they really just pitched me, over about two hours on the phone, the whole show. So that was kind of an epic call to have, really. I was like ‘Oh my god, Time-Keepers? What!?’ It was a lot to hold in my head.”

Mbatha-Raw said she then was able to sort it out better, “When I got to see the scripts and see the imagery. It’s a whole world and what we’re doing with the show is a lot of worldbuilding. So there’s a lot of [new] vocabulary, even if I had been a Marvel expert. This is a whole new facet of the universe. There was a lot of new stuff to learn about but it was really exciting.”

Wunmi Mosaku (“Hunter B-15“) similarly felt that the cast were helped by the fact that the TVA and all its trappings were a new element of the MCU for everyone, both on the show and for fans as well. When it came to being told the rules of it all, she remarked, “It was very straightforward, in a way. They were very good at explaining this new world to us, because it is brand new. We had no preconceptions, no ideas of how this works, how the TVA works.”

TO CONQUER?

The Loki crew of course are, as one expect with the MCU, tightlipped on what’s to come. Regarding how the rule-abiding Hunter B-15, feels about Loki so far and if he’s something of a worst nightmare scenario for her in her workplace, Mosaku said, “I don’t know about the worst nightmare, but we do not see eye to eye on many things. She’s a stickler for the rules and he is the God of Mischief…”

As for Ravonna, there is a ton of speculation about Mbatha-Raw’s character, given her comic book counterpart has major ties to Kang the Conqueror, the time traveling villain who will be seen in 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where he’ll be played by Jonathan Majors. In the comics, different versions of Ravonna have both rejected Kang’s attempts to woo her and embraced them and many wonder if something more nefarious could be going on with this Ravonna – all while the Time-Keepers and the TVA in general is coming under scrutiny as we learn more about them.

Following the third episode, we now know that the TVA staff is made up not of people created by the Time-Keepers, but rather mindwiped Variants. So beyond that, could what we’re being told about the timeline itself and how it all works also be false? On Fandom’s MCU wiki, many wondered about this, with @BEJT saying, “I believe there to be some lying by either Ravonna, the Time Keepers, or the TVA,” while MJLogan95 wrote, “I don’t take the TVA at their word.”

While she obviously couldn’t give any yes or no answers when it came to potential revelations about her character’s allegiance or truthfulness, nor the TVA in general, when it came to potentially seeing her version of Ravonna meet Kang at some point, Mbatha-Raw said, “It would be cool! I don’t know. There are lots of rumors swirling around and obviously there are the comics and the history of the characters. Certainly where we’re at in Loki is a bit more of an origin story for my character. So we’ll see. There’s definitely a lot of potential there…”

New episodes of Loki debut Wednesdays on Disney+.