There’s a long-standing argument, that has continued from the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe through to today, that the villains of the MCU movies are rarely particularly interesting on deep. They usually have little going on. If you sit and watch the Marvel movies in order it’s difficult to argue that this isn’t broadly true. Still, there are certainly exceptions, and the greatest of them is Tom Hiddleston’s Loki.
First appearing in the original Thor movie (which is streaming with a Disney+ subscription) before becoming the main antagonist of the first Avengers film, Loki was the best MCU bad guy, before he eventually became one of the heroes. Marvel Studios lucked out when Hiddleston agreed to play the role, which is wild since he never auditioned for it.
A clip recently went viral on Instagram of a Tom Hiddleston appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in which the actor reveals something I hadn’t known before, that he never actually auditioned for Loki. Instead, he only ever auditioned to play Thor and was then offered the other role only after he wasn't picked to play the title character. Check out the clip below for the whole story, as well as a clip of his Thor audition tape.
Hiddleston says the whole audition process took three months, which is a pretty extensive audition. Auditioning for that long you must feel like you have a strong shot and getting the job and Hiddleston admits he briefly thought he might have gotten the role. It might have been disappointing, especially considering Chris Hemsworth bombed out of his audition early. It was only after his brother Liam Hemsworth was deemed too young that the older brother was given another look.
Still, it says something about the folks at Marvel Studios, and on the Thor movie, that they saw something in Hiddleston when he was auditioning for Thor that showed them he would be perfect to play the movie’s second most important character, Loki. They never asked him to audition to confirm that he'd be good. Somehow they just knew he was the right choice, and they certainly weren’t wrong.
Loki would go on to have the most complete arc of any “villain” in the MCU, from an antagonist of the Avengers to a reluctant ally of his brother Thor to a true hero who would become the star of his own Disney+ Marvel series, the only one so far to get a second season.
What the future holds for Tom Hiddleston and Loki in any upcoming Marvel movies is anybody's guess but at this point, I think we’re all quite happy that he didn’t get the gig as Thor. He likely would have been good, but who else could have played Loki so well?
