When the second season of “Loki” picks up, the Temporal Loom becomes central to the Time Variance Alliance, and the Sacred Timeline is endangered.
Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, the god of mischief, sets out to try to repair the damage. Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) — better known as OB — help him. As they dart between different time periods, it was up to the show’s costume designer, Christine Wada, to build on the outfits she had created for Season 1 and expand the Marvel costume universe.
One key costume was the temporal core suit. In the first episode, Mobius ventures into the malfunctioning Temporal Loom wearing a core suit. Wada knew the suit needed to feel outdated, as if it came from the 1940s or ’50s. The outfit also needed to feel authentic and organic, as if the TVA had built the suit to sustain the harsh environment. Yet, it couldn’t look referential to a diving suit, a bomb suit or even a NASA space suit.
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So she found a wetsuit from the mid-century and examined the fabric: “The ribbing groove in the suit came from there.
A happy accident occurred when she painted over the latex. “It created a beautiful effect. We came back a few days later and it changed colors. So we found a stabilizer, and everything worked out,” Wada notes.
From there, she kept building, beginning with an inner cage, making sure that it wasn’t too heavy. Since the suit needed volume, she constructed the armholes with metal rings as support for the sleeves, which the actors could remove between takes to cool off.
When it came to the faceplate design, she needed to consider the established aesthetic of the TVA and a few practicalities — like the fact that the actor needed to see while they walk around with the helmet on, and they would need peripheral vision. She had tried a rectangular design, but it too closely resembled a diving or NASA helmet. Wada eventually landed on a triangular design. As weird as it was, it had a practical element and “felt like a repeated pattern of the TVA.”
The pale mint color of the suit came from Wada rooting it in OB’s color palette and industrial-like world. He’s a technician who lives in the lowest depths of the TVA as the head of the Repairs and Advances Dept. “It feels a little communist, but it was great juxtaposed against the upper levels of the TVA,” Wada says. Overall, when it came to creating anything to do with the TVA, she wanted to keep it consistent, and so she didn’t “try to up my game.”
But she did get a chance to flex her creative muscles for Loki.
In the third episode, the main cast of characters visit the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. It was one of the largest tasks that Wada faced, as it featured more than 300 extras. Photography was key to helping her build those costumes.
“A lot of the research was colorized photography, and I wanted to pick up on that because that’s how we see that era, in this colorized black and white way,” she says.
With that in mind, she gave a lot of thought to how the color palette would work. Wada kept the values restricted by not using bright contrasting colors, particularly on the main fairgoers. “It allowed our main characters Loki, Mobius and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) to not look too out of place,” she explains. In the beer garden scene, that becomes apparent when they seamlessly blend in.
As for the titular character in the series, Wada wanted to reflect his emotions. Indeed, by the end of the first episode, she says, Loki is in a position where he’s feeling humbled and has come to terms with his purpose.
“It’s a royal purpose, so it was important that he had this organic element of a god and not a warrior version. So, there’s a little bit of a nod to a king’s robe, but there’s a humble, almost monklike aspect to that costume,” Wada adds. “There was an intentional stripping of any armor.”
Wada was keen to keep his outfit, particularly his cape, practical and not enhanced through CG. For the finale, as Loki finally learns how to control time and ascends to the throne, his tunic was made from suede with gold flecks. His cape was designed with form and functionality in mind, made from dyed wool with quilting down the front and embroidery. Those additions added weight to the fabric, which helped create movement in the wind, and Wada could keep it completely in camera and not have her design enhanced through visual effects.
With Sylvie, Wada didn’t change her silhouette too much. Sylvie had decided to settle in 1982 in Oklahoma, no longer following her destiny.
While it doesn’t last for long, Wada explains, “I wanted her to have movement of a coat for fight sequences, mirroring the cape effect but also someone hiding out in the world. You got the sense she is carving out a place and normal life for herself.”
The houndstooth coat she sports was rooted in the ’80s, particularly in rockabilly: “It helped her be Sylvie but gave a nod to the 1980s and it also carried her through the different eras in a timeless way,” notes Wada.
