'Loki' showrunner talks 'selfcest,' curbing fan expectations, and how close we were to seeing Tom Hiddleston's character having sex with an alien

The plan to do a second season of "Loki" didn't exist until far into the production of the first season. That led to some changes in the season one finale, Waldron said.

But he added that showing the evolution of the Loki character was always their guiding light.

"The show was always constructed to be a story on its own," he said. "The story of Loki starting out as a villain and going through this adventure that turns him into a hero in his own way, doing the right thing, but losing anyway — that was always the complete story we wanted to tell."

But the details within that story — the characters around Loki in his journey and who he would encounter at the end of it — were always changing, Waldron said.

To set up a tease for what would take place in season two (and let's face it, for a lot of the MCU properties going forward), Waldron and his team turned to introducing Marvel villain Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) in the finale.

Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie's (Sophia Di Martino) encounter with Kang (aka, He Who Remains) results in Sylvie killing him and the "sacred timeline" going into shambles. It also presumably birthed more evil Kang variants.

Now Loki is back in the TVA but in a different timeline as Mobius (Owen Wilson) doesn't know who Loki is anymore.

It's a cliffhanger ending that has had fans of the show buzzing. But Waldron admitted it was one of many.

"There's many permutations of endings that exists over the course of the whole thing," he said. "But I'm not going to tell anybody about those."

The internet went nuts when it became evident that Loki was falling for his variant, Sylvie. And with that, the term, "selfcest," aka having a relationship with an alternate version of yourself, entered the popular lexicon.

Waldron had a good laugh about the whole thing when Insider brought it up.

"Were we sitting in the writers' room saying we hope people are talking about selfcest? No. We weren't," Waldron said with a chuckle. "We told a story about a character falling for a variant of themselves. It's an interesting atypical type of story, and we knew that."

Waldron said he knew that, because of the passion people have for the Loki character, he was not going to satisfy everyone with what happens in the show.

That included inadvertently touching on the selfcest debate.

"As creators we have to pick a path and tell a story," he said.

"I guess I'll set the record straight on that," Waldron said when asked about the reveal in Disney+'s behind-the-scenes special, "Assembled: The Making of Loki," that showed a writers' room whiteboard outline revealing they wanted to show Loki have sex, including with aliens.

"That was actually a breakdown, kind of a story circle breakdown for episode one," Waldron said.

One of the ideas they had was Loki would take the Infinity Stones from the TVA in the first episode and go out into the world and "make all his dreams come true," as Waldron put it.

"We were exploring if Loki escaped from the TVA in episode one with a handful of Infinity Stones would it have been compelling to watch him get out into the world and wield an Infinity gauntlet?" Waldron said.

"But we ultimately realized that it's kind of empty because he knows that the TVA exists and that's the greatest power in the universe."

So, although Loki sex was "briefly an idea," Waldron said, it was scrapped.

Instead, they went with the scene of Loki finding the stones at the TVA thrown to the side, and learning they are as worthless as a paperweight.

"We were able to execute that in a single shot just with Tom Hiddleston being an incredible actor," he said.

Though Waldron would not confirm to Insider that he will be involved with the show's second season, he did say that, despite the popularity of the show and the passion by its fans, it will not go out of its way to fulfill the wants of loyal viewers.

"Part of any creative team's job is trusting their own instincts, especially working in big IP projects like this," Waldron said. "That's what you have to do. You have to understand the parts of the expectations that are delicious and worth biting into and the parts where you're better off creating something totally new."

He continued: "Our philosophy on this was it's a time travel show about Loki, so people expected Loki influencing historical events — he's going to ride with Paul Revere. How can we turn that on its head as much as possible?"