VFX Supervisor Christopher Townsend counts a long list of MCU movies among his credits, including Captain America: The First Avenger, Iron Man 3, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Captain Marvel, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Loki season 2 marked his first foray into streaming and, as we're sure you'll agree, it's one of Marvel Studios' most visually stunning projects out of all those we've seen on the big and small screens.
Last week, we were fortunate enough to sit down with the Emmy nominee ("Outstanding Special Visual Effects In A Season Or A Movie") to discuss his work on the God of Mischief's return to Disney+ last year.
He calls Loki "one of the highlights of my MCU career from a visual point of view" and we started at the end by asking about the already-iconic moment Loki transforms into God Loki.
"Initially, when we were doing rehearsals, we were trying to put things in his hand to hold on to because this is the moment Loki finally, once he's transitioned into his God Loki moment with his horns and his cape and his costume, he had to actually hold on to these things. We tested with stunt guys trying to put pool noodles into his hands that he'd grab hold of and ropes and cables and things. Eventually, we said, 'It's going to be so hard to Tom to grab this thing, it's not worth it.' Once we established what the physicality was, he was able to mime it. The performance he brought was just phenomenal and so much intensity."
"That moment before as he's walking on the gangway and his clothes shred, it was great costume design by Christine Wada. She was wonderful to work with. We had a flowing cape which, for the first few shots, was real and practical and slowly it transitions to a digital cape which extends. We shot him in different parts where he'd have the cape fully and then we'd take it off for the next bit. It was constantly asking, 'Which clothing is it?' Those two or three shots, it's pretty interesting trying to use the same aesthetics we had created up until that point in terms of the stringiness and shredding. It was a culmination of everything we had done up until that point."
Just like in season 1, Miss Minutes remained a standout during the stellar second batch of episodes. When Loki and Mobius travel to 1893 and encounter Victor Timely, the TVA's mascot follows and changes up her appearance to better blend in.
In the video below, Townsend talks in great detail about both that and the intensely creepy moment Miss Minutes reveals her love for this Kang Variant. However, it was finding the right look for the former which presented his team with perhaps the greatest challenge.
"Trying to create something where Miss Minutes goes to black and white and, what does she look like if she's trying to turn into something...it's very odd, the whole idea. 'An orange clock in colour is terrible, let's go to black and white!' If you think about the logic, it makes no sense! The world isn't black and white. We were all scratching our heads saying, 'We're not sure the logic works' but the storytelling works. That's the real key with all of this stuff. There is a very well-considered thought-out process that goes through every decision you make."
He'd go on to tell us that they, "[tried] to create a Miss Minutes where she was much more harkening back to the 1940s Disney cell animation. That was our original idea. We had, at one point, played around with the idea of going back to fully hand-drawn animation. We looked at it and it just felt a little too off-putting and out of character with what we'd established Miss Minutes to be."
As well as breaking down the VFX team's approach to spaghettification, time slipping, and the Multiverse's new look, Townsend later revealed his favourite hidden effect in Loki season 2: the creation of the 1980s-era McDonald's which, after its inclusion in the show, spawned the must-have "Loki Sweet and Sour Sauce."
"One of the things that stand out to me that I look at and go, 'That was great' is the McDonald's scene. The interior was a restaurant we found in England. It was an old Indian restaurant and was unused. We found the location on a road next to a field pretty spaced out from anywhere else which was pretty ideal for the state we were pretending it was. The interior of the set was totally transformed by the art department. They created a 1980s McDonald's. It was amazing. McDonald's was there advising. The whole crew had McDonald's while we were shooting it; they brought in trucks with classic McDonald's burgers. It was brilliant."
"The exterior of the set, they did a little bit. They put the logo in one particular place, but other than that, it was still the same. We had to replace the roof. It's called a mansard roof which is classic McDonald's. Then we put a sign on top and cleaned things up. That was work done by Fuse Effects and it was beautiful. It's one of those things you look at and go, 'Yeah, you wouldn't know that's not real.' We were very conscious to only use visual effects where necessary on this show and I think it shows. It feels, hopefully, pretty tangible and real because it is tangible and real and everyone did an amazing job. It was a real collaboration between so many different departments."
These are just a sampling of the incredible insights shared by Christopher Townsend during our interview and, below, you can hear further insights into how Loki season 2's jaw-dropping visuals were created.
That includes new details on the Multiversal Yggdrasil, that unforgettable sequence in the record shop, and much, much more.
0:15 - Why he was excited to work on Loki season 2
0:43 - The transformation of Loki into God Loki and the evolution of the Multiverse
7:25 - Why they needed to make sure the moment felt earned
8:56 - Working on spaghettification and its importance to the wider MCU after Deadpool & Wolverine
10:38 - The challenge of tearing apart sets and characters as the Multiverse spaghettified
12:44 - Miss Minutes new look and original plans for her in the show
16:15 - The horror-inspired scene with Miss Minutes confessing her love to Victor Timely
17:45 - The exploration of time-slipping and how they achieved the right balance of gory and PG-13 visuals
23:23 - His favourite hidden effect in the series and recreating McDonald's
Loki season 2 will pick up in the aftermath of the shocking season finale when Loki finds himself in a battle for the soul of the Time Variance Authority. Along with Mobius, Hunter B-15 and a team of new and returning characters, Loki navigates an ever-expanding and increasingly dangerous multiverse in search of Sylvie, Judge Renslayer, Miss Minutes and the truth of what it means to possess free will and glorious purpose.
The series stars Tom Hiddleston, Sophia Di Martino, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wunmi Mosaku, Eugene Cordero, Rafael Casal, Tara Strong, Kate Dickie, Liz Carr, Neil Ellice, with Jonathan Majors, Ke Huy Quan and Owen Wilson.
Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead, Dan Deleeuw and Kasra Farahani direct episodes. The Head Writer is Eric Martin.
All episodes of Loki season 2 are now streaming on Disney+.