‘Loki’s Lead Writer Eric Martin Talks Working in the System and the Rules of Time Travel

Eric Martin was tapped early on in the production of season one to become the head writer of Loki’s second season. As a veteran writer from the first season, it was a natural choice. The second season of Loki took the climactic final status quo and broke it further, leading us through a winding labyrinth of time and multiverses through the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Starring Tom Hiddleston as Loki and Owen Wilson as Mobius, season two deepens the relationships between the characters and further explores Loki as a character, transforming him into something new altogether.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

SCRIPT Magazine: I read that you'd been approached during the filming of Loki’s first season about the possibility of this happening. From that moment to turning in drafts, what does working on a show like this look like as the writer?

Eric Martin: Early on it's just kind of a search for the big idea of the series to sell that up the line as the identity for the series. For me, I'm very character focused, so I'm looking at what's going on with our people. That's kind of every question for me. And it's just like, 'OK, where is everyone? After everything that happened in season one? Let's talk about that. We all agree on who these people are now, right now, and then we start to try to build that greater show around them.'

I think it was just a lot of conversations early on. You know, you steal a little time away here, here and there before we really got into it. Kevin Wright, my executive at Marvel, would read something in a comic and come in like, 'What do you think about this? Like, do you think there's something there?”' We’d bat that around for a little while. It really is just kind of like testing those story fences to see where we can break through into something. And that whole time I'm just tracking character. What is going to be the most interesting thing to test all of these people in their current worldview?

SCRIPT Magazine: You have a lot of different characters with a lot of different status quos, but the same big overarching events have to test them all in different ways. When does that start coalescing for you in the process?

Eric Martin: That first layer of work is just character, character, character. I lay all of that down where I think of who they really are right now, what they want, what they think they want, and what they really want. If I can get those things down in my head and have that fully formed picture of those people, it almost doesn't matter what the event is because they're all going to react differently to it, right? Any group of people that you put in a room and then something happens, they're all going to react differently on the basis of who they are, where they've been, what their worldview is. That's the fun of it, where it's like, 'OK, here's this idea. Now let's start having the conversations about how everybody reacts.'

What starts to feel really juicy in that? What starts to feel meaty and meaningful? There have been a few different ideas early on by this point. And we're getting there and you start to feel like some of the ideas are going to leave some of these characters behind or like, 'This is great. It's going to send these characters off in this really interesting direction, but this isn't an overarching idea that affects everyone.'

That's when you wipe something off. 'No, that's not quite right. It's a good and interesting thing, but it doesn't impact everyone. And I don't want to have to have two overarching ideas.'

So what is that thing that's going to send that cataclysm across the society of our show? Just finding that, there’s starts and stops, but that's the hard part in the beginning, right?

SCRIPT Magazine: For sure. What's the actual writing process like and who's typically involved? When I talked to Tony Gilroy when he was working on Andor, he talked about the value in having the production designer there. Who are the people involved as you're writing on a show like Loki, and what sort of constraints are there on you as you're working, or if there are production logistics or story things for broader things, what are those forces pressing down on you as you start to write?

Eric Martin: Because the writing goes all through production, there are very many different facets of this in periods in which the writing changes and what you're having to deal with. Very, very early on when it's just me and Kevin Wright talking about ideas and seeing what's going to be interesting to the Marvel braintrust, and the ideas we think are going to be able to get people excited on, that's the very first chunk of it. It's just the two of us talking about this and starting to make those decisions. Some of them are kind of business decisions. Some of them are art decisions, like, how can we take the most challenging idea and sell it to everyone above to get this thing through that first process? And then after that, we're going to build the team for the writers' room.

The very first priority—because Kasra Farahani, our production designer and a filmmaker in his own right—is we didn't want to lose him. We thought he was so valuable in Season One. And Kasra and I have become very good friends, he's someone I trust on a creative level. So my first step in putting together a writers' room was to try to get Kasra involved. People trying to poach him away to do some big feature somewhere else. Kasra is a very sensitive, interesting human and we wanted to have him for the whole show, but I thought he could be really useful in the room too. And maybe that would be just enough of a sweetener that he can be involved in the early stages of it.

Then I'm just looking around at the writing landscape. Who else is out there that I know that I want to work with? I'm reading scripts, trying to put together that team.

I think we put together a really interesting team of thoughtful, creative humans. By that point. I had done a quite a bit of creative work before we ever got that room together. We were pretty far down the line in terms of where this series was going to go even before the room got in there.

SCRIPT Magazine: You're working on a pretty complicated tapestry where not only are you dealing with like a linear cause-to-effect amongst the characters, but you're dealing with time travel, which always requires its own rules and storytelling. But you're also working with variant timelines across the time traveling. What rules did you come up with to juggle all of those things so that it seems that it works all very cohesively? For people trying to write things in a milieu like that, what advice would you give them?

Eric Martin: I'll give them the same advice as the rule I had for myself: You must track the emotional story first. This can all sprawl out in crazy directions. You’re going to have to tamp that down. But I think audiences will forgive you if they lose a little bit of the time travel logic there as long as they understand the emotional logic. I don't want to ever lose the emotional logic of the characters. Right? The human story is the important thing and don't want to lose focus with that. I wanted to use the time travel as a dramatic device, but I didn't want it to just overwhelm the story. So how can we keep this as simple and intuitive as possible?

I look at the time travel stuff as like, this is a toolbox that we can go into, and when we have a story thing where our characters can use it. In episode one, the way we used time in that in an interesting way, I think, is that conversation with Loki happening in two different moments of time. Between Mobius and Loki. That was something that just popped up as an idea and it's like, 'Oh, wait, no, I can understand how that would work…'

It's a slightly complicated idea, but in execution, it's very simple. I think everybody can understand that. I'm not trying to shove time travel stuff in. This is part of the canvas for our storytelling. I'm going to pull parts of it in as needed, but I'm never trying to write time travel. I'm never trying to force it. It is just part of the toolbox.

You do have to be careful because it can spiral out of control if you start chasing too many darlings with it. If that conversation confused the overall story, it would have to go. It might be one of my favorite things in the whole series, but it would have to go.

I would be pretty ruthless with all of that. Just keep it about the emotional experience of the characters, and the time travel is just part of the canvas. It's one of the tools that you can use, but don't let that drive everything. Otherwise, you're just going to end up with a mess.

SCRIPT Magazine: Is there anything that you had come up with that got written, that got shot, that got through editing and you had to kill it like that?

Eric Martin: You know, it was just killing some of those darlings. There were definitely things that you loved. You loved how it went in the room. Everybody always laughed at the joke, or they appreciated the drama, but it would ask a question later on. [Let’s take] episode three. When we go to the Chicago World's Fair, that was originally conceived as this side quest episode where we're following Renslayer and Miss Minutes as they are finding Victor Timely. Loki, Mobius, Sylvie, and everybody else, they didn't show up until the very, very end of that.

In a vacuum, that episode worked really well. It was one of those ones where, you know, random Marvel executives would pull me aside in the hallway and they're like, 'Great episode. Let's grab coffee.' So I know that one's really working. But at some point, Kevin Feige looks at that and he's like, 'No, we're not doing it like this. I need Loki and Mobius in there. I need to be with our main character. I need to have those two trying to solve a similar mystery.'

It was easy at first to look at that and think the studio is missing the point. This is a great episode. We should run with that. But once we got into it, I realized he was totally right. I think our audience would have felt betrayed. It would have made Miss Minutes and Renslayer more interesting characters, we would have deepened them. But I think we were able to do that anyway, while also forwarding our story with our main characters. That was something I really learned there. Maybe if we had ten episodes, you do that episode like that, but with a smaller tapestry like this, I think you stick with your players.

That's one of those studio notes that you might chafe against at first and then realize, 'Oh no, they're right. You have to please the audience.'

SCRIPT Magazine: What are those movies or shows or screenwriters in general that you study and look up to?

Eric Martin: Mad Men is a favorite of mine. The character work is so great, and it's a great example of doing deep dramatic work, but it's so entertaining. It wants to entertain you while also showing you deeper parts of the human experience.

I think if there's one show that I just find myself going back to over and over again, it's The Sopranos, because it does everything. It really is so entertaining, but there's so much depth and care with the craft and the characters. If there's one thing I'm trying to emulate, even with Loki, it’s The Sopranos because they allow you to get deep into these characters and see these people lie to themselves. It's like this salacious material that's dealt with in a very grounded way, but never it never veers into boring territory. It really wants you to be entertained and it can be artful at the same time.

I think that's really inspiring because we work in a system where you have to entertain people, and the hard thing is to walk that line of entertaining them, but also feeding them something good, something worth their time. I get frustrated that there's a lot out there that it's either it's feeding you the health food or it's feeding you nothing at all and I don't think you have to choose. It's just difficult.

In terms of writers, I look at Scott Frank and actually, you already mentioned him, Tony Gilroy. I mean they’re God-level writers, right? They can kind of do everything, but they never lose sight of their characters. Everything is just flowing through character. It has to matter for them, which I think is the secret sauce in doing something on an epic level and making it work on a high level. You have to build those stakes through character. The whole world—the whole universe—can be in danger every time. People are just going to get bored because it's going to be meaningless unless the characters involved have very deep stakes. It has to matter for them because that's how we all interface with stuff. It's easy to lose sight of that and those guys never lose sight of that. They always hit that target and I find that really admirable because I'm imagining there are a lot of fights along the way to get there, because I think it's not the normal path in a lot of these big enterprises.

SCRIPT Magazine: Is there a particular moment, looking at the finished product, where you felt that the actors or production really elevated the material in ways that were still surprising to you?

Eric Martin: Episode five. [Justin] Benson and [Aaron] Moorhead. I think they did just incredible work across that episode. And that was the one that we were most intimately involved in together. Our [original] episode five had gotten nuked. The previous version was the one that they came on because of. It was their favorite episode.

And so then that one got nuked and we had to come up with something new, there was this mind meld. In writing that, that was just something I had to go write in a weekend. There was no time. We were in prep and this thing just needs to be done.

I'm just so focused on telling this story and doing it in the most emotional way possible and trying to envision some of these things, but really seeing what they did with that; that final moment where everything is just falling apart for Sylvie in that record shop? What was in my head was quite emotional. But what they did with all of that, with everything slowly creeping, and then finally she sees Lyle, the record store guy, just dissolve in her hands. It worked on such a level that I really thought they elevated that scene beyond what I even had in mind.

SCRIPT Magazine: That was a really terrific moment. And watching all the character work that felt really deep and and not only deep but consistent with everything that had come before as part of this working whole. I'm surprised to hear that you put that together in a weekend.

Eric Martin: Yeah. I think that that was probably one of the more difficult things, because it was one of those moments where it's like that scene from Apollo 13 where they come in and dump a bunch of stuff on the table and go, 'We need to make this connect with this using only this.'

I'm a firm believer that tight constraints create the best work. It forces you to be more creative and to not overthink things. Sometimes you're just going to get middling results if you just don't have enough time, but this was one of those things that just worked out. The episode that it replaced was even more emotional. So it was like, OK, I take some of that and make sure that DNA is in there. I had a little bit of a head start because there was that at least, in this ethereal way floating around in my head. But yeah, it was a task.

SCRIPT Magazine: Can you can you talk about what caused that need to replace the episode?

Eric Martin: It was just something that the studio wasn't into. It would have been one of the stranger things that the MCU had ever done. It was a big swing. It was a really big conceptual swing and I think dramatic swing. When that got nuked, it was funny because that was the thing where people would stop me in the hallways like, 'Oh man, I'm so sorry. Like, that was my favorite episode.'

People were really bummed about it. But, you know, again, I think the studio was right. I think what we had was really good, I think really interesting, but it may not have fit within the show the way that this episode did. There was no time to question it or to even mourn it. It was just like, 'All right, well, whatever. We just have to jump in and just do it.'

Luckily everything turned out well with five. There was never a point where I just really mourned that episode disappearing because we got something good anyway.

SCRIPT Magazine: There's this idea that people aren't doing their best creative work when they're working in a franchise or something. I work in franchises writing novels and I find those boundaries actually really creatively inspiring. It sounds like as a writer, you have to be prepared to do that same thing. Like when I was a kid watching ILM documentaries where George Lucas would come in and be like, 'OK, this is what we're doing.' And they're like, 'That's not possible. But I guess the movie comes out in four weeks, so we’ll figure it out.'

It seems like you have to have that ability to roll with things if you're working in these universes, but also the ability to make it good and to thrive under that circumstance. How do you prepare yourself to be able thrive in that sort of environment?

Eric Martin: I don't think there's anything I could do to prepare myself. I think it really is just what I've lived prior has prepared me for it. It prepares anyone for it. I guess maybe there is one thing: coming in wanting to collaborate is necessary.

Coming in with an attitude of like, 'No, I'm going to see through my art to the fullest!' that’s just not going to work because you're spending however many millions on a thing like this. There’s a corporation paying for this. They need to feel safe enough with you that they're going to give you that money. And it's hard to break those boundaries and help them feel safe. Just wanting to come in and collaborate and talk people through things and not feel like they're working against you. You just have to find where you connect with that whole pipeline and the needs of that and not bemoan it. Sure, there are downsides, but there are incredible opportunities, and even those downsides you can adjust them to not have it be a downside.

I think we created a show that's very creative and interesting. It's extremely expensive, too. Those don't often happen, but I think you can do that if you are just willing to have that mind meld and find where do you connect.

SCRIPT Magazine: That's all the time we've got. I want to thank you so much. Not only just for talking to me, but for the show. I think Loki has been some of the best written stuff in the MCU. I've greatly enjoyed it both as a general Marvel fan, but also just as a writer, it's been really phenomenal to watch.

Eric Martin: Thank you very much for the kind words. I hope you enjoy the finale!

The season finale of Loki’s second season airs on Disney+ November 9, 2023.