Disney+ released a new episode of Assembled today, though no one would blame you for not knowing. It wasn't promoted at all before arriving on the streaming service, a surprise considering how much the making-of documentaries for WandaVision and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier were hyped in advance.
Regardless, this Loki special is a must-watch and features heaps of new behind-the-scenes footage, concept art, and insight from the cast and crew (including narration from Tom Hiddleston).
The final few minutes put the spotlight on Jonathan Majors' MCU debut, with the actor explaining what he brought to the table as He Who Remains. Revealing that "the Wizard of Oz, Sunset Boulevard, Citizen Kane, [and] Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" were among the pop culture references he turned to for inspiration, Majors adds that he was looking to tap into "The archetype of the wizard and what happens to him when he gets bored and becomes a trickster."
"I think when we meet He Who Remains he's on the borderline of those two things. You don't really know where he's at and I think the ambiguity of that is one of the wicked things about it."
"He Who Remains has lived forever," Majors continued. "One of the great things I got to experience with our costume designer is that every piece we decided on was from a different place. The cape I had on was from the Victorian era. The shoes were from Genghis Khan. The pants from Mongolia, etc. You just mix and match it together and it informs the character."
While we know that the actor will play one of the Kang Variants in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, he went on to tease how any other versions we meet could differ from He Who Remains.
"I think with He Who Remains, the objective for me was to give me the largest canvas possible. From that, as Kang begins to rear his head and do his deeds, in many ways, he has no choice but to be in opposition or be different from He Who Remains," the Loki star explained. "That was the thing that grabbed me and pulled me into the role. Kang lives in so many iterations as He Who Remains says: 'Reincarnation, baby.'"
In other words, it sounds like we should expect Kang to be a vastly different character to He Who Remains; he'd clearly lost his mind during the countless lifetimes he spent ruling the TVA, and given how frightened he was of his Variants...well, something tells us those Kangs won't be quite as affable.
The Loki episode of Assembled is now streaming on Disney+.