Loki season 2 is being hailed as Marvel Studios' greatest TV show by many fans, with some fans going so far as to say it's the best MCU content we've had during the entire Multiverse Saga.
Eric Martin replaced Michael Waldron as Head Writer, though he recently revealed that he rewrote big chunks of season 1 after Waldron was tasked with working on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The writer is clearly a very special talent, something that's evident from the fact he had to pen season 2's fifth episode in the space of a single weekend!
Yes, that standout effort with the God of Mischief rounding up his friends before they were plucked from the Sacred Timeline by He Who Remains was dreamed up in the space of just a couple of days!
Talking to Script Magazine, the Loki scribe opened up on the original version of that penultimate chapter being "nuked" by Marvel Studios.
"I think [Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead] did just incredible work across [episode 5]. And that was the one that we were most intimately involved in together," he says. "Our [original] episode five had gotten nuked. The previous version was the one that they came on because of. It was their favorite episode."
"And so then that one got nuked and we had to come up with something new, there was this mind meld. In writing that, that was just something I had to go write in a weekend. There was no time. We were in prep and this thing just needs to be done."
"I'm just so focused on telling this story and doing it in the most emotional way possible and trying to envision some of these things, but really seeing what they did with that; that final moment where everything is just falling apart for Sylvie in that record shop? What was in my head was quite emotional," Martin continues. "But what they did with all of that, with everything slowly creeping, and then finally she sees Lyle, the record store guy, just dissolve in her hands."
"It worked on such a level that I really thought they elevated that scene beyond what I even had in mind."
Asked to elaborate on why the original version of the episode was scrapped, Martin says it boiled down to it being "something that the studio wasn't into." However, as great as what we ended up with was, it sounds like we missed out on a wild hour of television.
"It would have been one of the stranger things that the MCU had ever done. It was a big swing," he teases. "It was a really big conceptual swing and I think dramatic swing. When that got nuked, it was funny because that was the thing where people would stop me in the hallways like, 'Oh man, I'm so sorry. Like, that was my favorite episode.'"
"People were really bummed about it. But, you know, again, I think the studio was right. I think what we had was really good, I think really interesting, but it may not have fit within the show the way that this episode did. There was no time to question it or to even mourn it. It was just like, 'All right, well, whatever. We just have to jump in and just do it.'"
Chances are we'll never find out what Martin had planned and it's hard not to wonder whether it might have been a good idea for Marvel Studios to try something off-kilter enough to make them nervous. Still, without knowing what was previously in store for this fifth instalment, we can't fault what proved to be a brilliant lead-in to the jaw-dropping finale.
All six episodes of Loki are now streaming on Disney+.