‘Loki’ Cinematographer Uses One Word to Describe Final Episodes of Season 2 (Exclusive)

Two episodes are remaining from the second season of the Disney+ series Loki, and fans are wondering what happened with the title character and the rest of the TVA after the Temporal Loom exploded at the end of Episode 4. PopCulture.com spoke to Loki cinematographer Isaac Bauman who used one word to describe the penultimate episode and the season finale.

“Spectacular,” Bauman told PopCulture. “They’re spectacular, but the thing that you need to know about the last couple episodes that I’m so proud of, and I think everyone behind the scenes is super excited about the last couple episodes. And really what people are excited about isn’t that they’re spectacular, it’s that they’re emotional. These episodes are major heavy-lifting storytelling episodes for character journeys. This is a show that understands its characters and loves its characters. And these last two episodes do a beautiful job of handling the characters and bringing their stories to, not a close forever, but just bringing resolution to the story of this season, the second season in a very meaningful and satisfying way.”

The fourth episode, titled “Heart of the TVA,” featured Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors) working to stop the Temporal Loom from exploding. While it looked like the team had a strong plan, Victor was spaghettified as he went outside to launch the Throughout Multiplier due to the increased radiation. Bauman said that scene was fun to flim because of the challenges it presented. 

“That temporal core gangway, that’s what that set is called when they exit out of the airlock,” Bauman said. “The gangway was a lot of fun. It was in a big, cavernous blue screen, massive stage. The gangway itself is much shorter than it appears in the show. It appears to be like a quarter mile long on screen, but it was actually 60 feet long.

“So the trick was how do you shoot it in a way that it feels like the pod that launches the rockets is super far away when it’s actually just right there. And it involved a lot of trickery and bringing intermediate blue screens in and shooting things in different directions. But the challenging thing, shooting on the gangway and that Timely sequence is no exception, was just the light. The light of the Loom is supposed to be coming from really, really far away.”

Loki Season 2 has earned strong reviews as it has an 83 percent score from Rotten Tomatoes. Bauman explained why working on the Marvel show was the most challenging and least challenging project he worked on in his career. “I think it was incredibly challenging because of the scope of it. There were dozens of sets. They were all big. The stakes are high. It’s the MCU, it’s important. You’ve got to get this right. People care about this, and there’s big expectations,” he said.

“So doing a production on a massive scale and fulfilling people’s expectations is enormously challenging in kind of like just the burden that you feel on your sort of way, and the amount of work that needs to be done, the amount of time you have to spend in the office, the amount of conversations you have to have, the amount of illustrations and charts and diagrams, and just the scope of it is huge.”

Bauman continued: “But it was also maybe one of the least challenging productions I’ve ever done because Marvel has built it in such a way that you have enough time to do all this in a way that you don’t feel rushed. We had enough time to plan everything and work at a reasonable pace. We had enough time to shoot everything and work at a very professional, slower sort of pace that’s conducive to getting high-quality material. We had the resources that we needed to execute what was on the page.”

New episodes of Loki premiere on Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on Disney+.