Loki production designer Kasra Farahani has detailed how the Disney+ series’ production team recreated the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair for Victor Timely’s (Jonathan Majors) on-screen debut.
In an exclusive interview with Variety, Farahani discussed his Marvel Cinematic Universe directing debut in the Loki Season 2 episode “1893”. The episode follows the God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston) and Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson) traveling to the branched timeline in pursuit of Renslayer (Gugu-Mbatha Raw). At the World’s Fair, they encounter a young Timely. Farahani applied his production designing experience to directing this ambitious period setting.
“I try in my production design work to create sets that really suggest camera angles, that present the cinematographer and director with how they want to be shot. A lot of the time, it works out, but sometimes people choose different angles,” Farahani said. “I love that on this episode, I got to guarantee that these sets would be shot the way I wanted them to be shot. More importantly than all of it, the biggest joy of all was working with Tom and the rest of the cast to inhabit this space and to tell this story, and to get to explore the other part of the filmmaking palette that’s not available to the production designer, which is working with the actors.”
While the World’s Fair scenes have the size and scope of an MCU theatrical release, it’s the Loki episode’s climax in Timely’s Wisconsin laboratory that has fans talking. The episode concludes with Miss Minutes revealing her love for the He Who Remains variant, followed by Renslayer, Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie fighting over Timely. Farahani detailed his choice of filming this sequence primarily in wide shots, marking an aesthetic shift from previous MCU shows on Disney+.
“I mean, I like wide shots,” Farahani said. “I think [cinematographer] Isaac [Bauman] likes wide shots. And we were trying to take advantage of the fact that most of the sets — the mannequin factory, which was Timely’s laboratory at the end, the Hofbräu, where we meet Timely the first time, Timely’s apartment — were all fully intact, 360 degree sets. That is also partly why maybe you don’t see [wide shots] done more often, because you don’t always have the ability to do that without requiring set extension with CG. We had the ability to shoot more wides — we didn’t have to worry about every shot cost adding up because it was going to have to rely on VFX.”
What is Loki Season 2 about?
“The next season picks up in the aftermath of the shocking season finale when Loki finds himself in a battle for the soul of the Time Variance Authority,” Loki Season 2’s synopsis reads. “Along with Mobius, Hunter B-15, and a team of new and returning characters, Loki navigates an ever-expanding and increasingly dangerous Multiverse in search of Sylvie, Judge Renslayer, Miss Minutes, and the truth of what it means to possess free will and glorious purpose.”
Loki Season 2 is currently streaming on Disney+. New episodes are released on Thursdays.
