Marvel Gave Loki One Freedom Almost No Other MCU Project Has

Franchise fans often make contradictory demands. There's a lot of criticism of the Marvel Cinematic Universe output post-Infinity Saga and a lot of that criticism is aimed at how they feel Phase 4 and Phase 5 aren't really building to anything in the way that Phases 1-3 were. The very angry comic book movie fans want to feel like all the TV shows and movies are building to a giant confrontation, but they also decry the "samey" feeling of Marvel movies. They want Kevin Feige and the Marvel braintrust to weave a complicated tapestry for a larger overall story throughout all of MCU TV and Movies and also they hate the mass-produced micro-managed feeling of a lot of Marvel's output.

You can't have one without the other, my dudes. 

This reminds me a lot of the crowd that demands every single series have a detailed, unwavering plan from moment one. You see this a lot in the "Star Wars" fan community as well as DC and Marvel. That's not how the MCU grew into a franchise powerhouse (or the original "Star Wars" trilogy for that matter. Remember when Luke and Leia kissed before George Lucas decided to make them siblings?) and I'd put forward that Marvel is at its best when it allows interesting filmmakers to really lean into the source material and make it their own. It's risky, sure, but I'll take a whiffed wild swing over an over-produced placeholder decided upon by a committee and executed by a journeyman who just shows up to shoot whatever they're given.

All this is to say that the reason "Loki" has been a standout series for Marvel is that they've largely been left to their own devices and allowed to get weird as hell without having the burden of tying itself into the wider MCU plan.

In an interview with Collider, "Loki" producer Kevin Wright was asked point blank how many demands Marvel had for the creative direction they took. The response? None at all. As Wright said:

"The one headline we got from Kevin (Feige) from season 1 was, 'I love this world, I want to see more of it, and I want to meet more people there.' Because it felt like we were dealing with a smaller kind of corner of this organization, and from there it was basically a mandate to go further, push it further, lean more into the drama, lean more into the world, and just build. And, frankly, season 1 was that way too."

Essentially, the creative team at "Loki" was only tasked with playing in their corner of the multiverse sandbox and any potential seeding into future MCU stories was totally up to those creatives to take and run with. And that should be how it's done. That's how the MCU started, anyway. Early on there was a roadmap to get to "The Avengers" but it all started with "Screw it, let's have Nick Fury show up in a post-credits scene and say 'Avengers initiative' and we'll figure out the rest of it later." 

Marvel has a lot of things to sort out, from the first real signs of superhero fatigue hitting, the whole Jonathan Majors situation, and a real problem with stakes in their films, but doubling down on micro-managing their creatives isn't what you want, MCU fans, and "Loki" is proof positive of that.