Production for two of the most anticipated shows on Disney+ have started up recently with a vengeance. The Marvel Cinematic Universe-based Loki and WandaVision series are currently in production and as such, photos and videos from both sets have hit the web in the last few months to get Marvel fans salivating over the possibilities these shows will explore without giving any essential details away.
Most recently, Tom Hiddleston posted a video of his personal stunt training and rehearsal for Loki on his Instagram for all to see. It’s obvious from the video that Loki will find himself in exciting action scenes during his series, even if Hiddleston isn’t quite back to full stunt mastering form, yet.
Still, it must be a relief to finally get cameras rolling for Loki, which will debut next year. Hiddleston has been looking forward to the series for quite some time now. “I knew about six weeks before the worldwide release of Avengers: Infinity War,” he said in an interview last summer with MTV News. That would have been March 2018, which makes it nearly two years of patient waiting and keeping quiet about the Disney+ series until he finally began filming. One could say that would take truly Asgardian patience to endure.
Since Loki’s unexpected escape during Infinity War, fans have been wondering and speculating where and when Loki’s series would take place. For my money, I think it will take place either in the original 2012 that Loki escaped, or in the years shortly thereafter. Remember, the Tesseract that Loki stole hid the Space Stone. Loki can travel to any point in space with it, but not through time. So even if he spent a few years back at Asgard or Jotunheim, he’d still be bound to the alternate timeline of the 2010s. This would be before Captain America returned each of the Infinity Stones to their proper place and time in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, even though Cap took his own sidetrack to live out a timeline with Peggy Carter.
I think the matter of Time, or at least Mind, will be dealt with in the upcoming WandaVision show, which is also in full production and slated for release later this year. A first look photo hit the web in December 2019 that showed 1950s versions of both Wanda and Vision, seated together in apparent domestic bliss. Later that month, pictures of Wanda and a woman whom many speculate to be Agatha Harkness facing a 17th century witch trial together surfaced.
How do these strange scenes fit in with Wanda Maximoff, and her (as of 2018’s Infinity War) beloved but very deceased Vision? It seems like these “historical scenes” are more in the arena of the Time Stone, which was held by the Ancient One, played by Tilda Swinton, before being passed on to Dr. Stephen Strange in 2016’s Doctor Strange movie. Dr. Strange guarded it and apparently had sole possession of the Time Stone until all the Stones were destroyed in the Infinity Gauntlet by Thanos when he activated “the snap” at the end of Infinity War. So, how can Wanda seemingly appear in two different times?
Are these historical scenes from WandaVision actually conjured pocket realities connected to Wanda and the Mind Stone that gave Vision full life? Remember that she focused a great deal of her “hex” energy trying to remove the Mind Stone from Vision before Thanos got a hold of it in Infinity War. Perhaps this resulted in some kind of feedback or backlash that transforms images from Wanda’s thoughts and mind into hard reality or realities unbounded by time?
For now, we can only speculate and hope that the shows will give us entertaining and fascinating answers to our questions. Until then, I’m sure a few more leaks and teases will come our way to keep us interested until the long-awaited premieres of both series.