According to director Bryan Andrews, a canceled episode of Marvel’s What If…? saw Loki acquire glorious new purpose and wield Mjolnir.
According to director Bryan Andrews, a canceled episode of Marvel’s What If…? saw Loki wield Mjolnir. Based on the comic of the same name, Disney+’s first animated series taking place within the Marvel Cinematic Universe explores its titular question regarding iconic events and characters. Its pilot is a riff on Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) and sees Peggy Carter (voiced by Hayley Atwell) take the Super Soldier Serum instead of Steve Rogers.
Upcoming episodes of the series are set to see Black Panther’s T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) become Star-Lord instead of Peter Quill and Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) reign as King of Wakanda. Fresh off of the multiversal madness introduced in Loki, What If…?’s stories are the result of Nexus Events causing branches from the Scared Timeline and are narrated by Uatu the Watcher (Jeffrey Wright). The showrunners are working in a sandbox of limitless possibilities and presented many ideas to Marvel president Kevin Feige in the early days of answering What If…?.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, head writer A.C. Bradley and director Bryan Andrews, who worked as a storyboard artist on previous Marvel films, discussed pitching Feige What If…? ideas via concept art. One of these original concept art pitches saw Loki (Tom Hiddleston) worthy of Thor’s hammer. As long-time MCU fans know, only those pure of heart (ex. Steve Rogers) can lift Mjolnir—which isn’t a characteristic attributed to the God of Mischief. Therefore, having Loki wield Thor’s hammer would mean something major about his character/story has changed:
“At first it seems superficial, but how do you get to that point without changing who he is?” said Andrews. “You’re given a thousand questions to answer. It’s like, Oh, did he stay a Frost Giant? Was Odin not a dick and taught him better? You know what I mean? There are so many aspects of that life you can explore…they didn’t want us to go there because basically they were doing that in the Loki series.”
What If…? wasn’t allowed to focus too heavily on characters who were already leading Disney+ shows. While the image of Loki wielding Mjolnir is certainly alluring, it would’ve felt redundant following the heroic character arc of another Loki variant. In Loki, the titular character confronts his “cruel, elaborate tricked conjured by the weak to inspire fear,” his insecurities and duplicity being a byproduct of always feeling like an outcast. In a deleted scene from Thor: The Dark World, Loki imagines himself wielding his brother’s hammer, worthy not only of the throne but similar adoration.
Other unused What If…? pitches included an episode that saw Dave Stevens’ Rocketeer fight alongside Captain America, a Kafkaesque Spider-Man, and Steve Rogers become Captain Hydra. The latter idea would’ve featured a Steve version of the Winter Soldier—something audiences thought was going to happen when Steve seemingly met his demise instead of Bucky Barnes in What If…?’s pilot. However, like Loki’s pruning in episode 4 of his series, this was a fake out. Even if we never see Captain Hydra or a mischievous God of Thunder, we’ve already seen a slew of interesting variants and are about to see a whole lot more. New episodes of What If…? premiere Wednesdays on Disney+.
Source: Vanity Fair