Source: Collider
As part of Marvel and Disney’s MCU series releases, Loki saw its first episode air on June 9 on Disney Plus. For audiences who haven’t followed the entire MCU, spoilers abound in this article, so be warned. During the original timeline of the films released prior to Loki, the God of Mischief saw his demise during the tragic events of Avengers: Infinity War.
However, as timelines crossed, the character got another lease of life during Avengers: Endgame, where the Avengers visited the timeline of Battle of New York, where Loki was being held captive. The events of this MCU series kick off from the very moment where Loki grabs hold of the Tesseract and completely vanishes.
“I think what’s really interesting is that the audience broadly has a better perspective on Loki than Loki does. Because the audience has seen the events of The Dark World, and Ragnarok, and Infinity War, and Endgame, and this is a Loki that doesn’t have any of that self-awareness. He hasn’t been on this arc of redemption and catharsis, and upon being apprehended by the TVA, he’s a very confused and destabilized being. He’s out of his comfort zone, a fish out of the water, and not happy about it,” said Tom Hiddleston in a recent interview.
The show also stars Owen Wilson as Mobius M Mobius, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna Renslayer and Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15. The show follows Loki as he is apprehended by the Time Variance Authority (TVA), an organization that captures people trying to play with the timelines. Mobius joins forces with Loki in trying to capture other dangerous Variants.
Audiences who were expecting the show to be entirely funny surely didn’t expect the emotional rollercoaster that was the first episode of the show. The show is set to be released per episode on Wednesdays, unlike most streaming shows today that see entire seasons being dumped all at once.
The success of Loki has also impacted how Disney Plus approaches its releases. The streaming network’s release schedule shifted massively due to the success of Loki’s Wednesday releases. So, Disney decided that it would rather stick to the Wednesday release schedule for everything else rather than follow the typical Friday schedules of other streaming services.
This includes any original programming for Disney Plus, from any new Marvel shows, to existing programs, to original streaming-only films. All of these will now be dropping on Wednesdays, Loki-style, rather than the Fridays that were originally the norm.
The show’s warm reception has proven that people usually don’t care that much which day their streaming content arrives. There isn’t much of a difference between Friday and Wednesday, anyway. Secondly, the fact that Netflix usually releases its content aggressively on Fridays means that Disney would presumably like to let its content breathe a little better in the wake of these usual content dumps.
There’s also the fact that the world does appear to be turning back on, and Disney doesn’t want its audiences to get stuck in a dilemma, debating whether to go out to see one of its movies in a movie theater or stay home and watch one of its television shows. Disney obviously wants people to do both.
