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'Loki' solves 50-year-old American mystery MCU-style in series premiere. Turns out? He lost a bet to Thor
You are now free to move about the cabin... and watch the season premiere of Loki. Clocking in at a meaty 52 minutes, the new MCU show's debut episode introduces viewers to the Time Variance Authority, a seemingly all-powerful organization that monitors and maintains the "Sacred Timeline." When Loki Laufeyson (Tom Hiddleston) steals the Tesseract, aka Space Stone, in the middle of Avengers: Endgame, he becomes a Variant, prompting the TVA to arrest him and reset his timeline.
Instead of wiping this wayward version of Loki from the very fabric of existence, however, one of the TVA's leading agents, Mobius (Owen Wilson), decides to make use of the untrustworthy Asgardian. During the duo's initial briefing, Mobius provides a rundown of Loki's naughtiest acts throughout the millennia, including a transgression that solves a 50-year-old American mystery about the infamous robber known as D.B. Cooper.
For those unfamiliar with the story, Cooper managed to hold a commercial aircraft hostage in exchange for $200,000 and four parachutes in November of 1971. He let all of the flight's 36 passengers walk free once he received the cash in Seattle, but kept certain crew members aboard and instructed them to fly to Mexico City.
The brazen thief never made it to his intended destination, as he decided to jump out of the back of the plane between Washington and Nevada, bag of money in hand. Cooper was never found — and it's unclear if he died or landed safely — but nearly $6,000 of the ransom was discovered nine years later (by that point, the neglected money was disintegrating).
Loki posits that D.B. Cooper was never apprehended because he left Earth right after the caper and returned to his home planet... of Asgard. Yes, the MCU iteration of the trickster god robbed that plane — all because he lost a bet to his brother Thor! With no need for the pathetic legal tender of Midgard, Loki returned to Asgard via the Bifrost (shoutout Heimdall) and allowed the money to rain down upon the U.S. along with a legendary tale that remains unsolved to this day. Turns out one of the greatest robberies ever perpetrated was simply a prank being pulled by a couple of immature gods.
Damn immortal kids!
"That was me writing the pilot, or writing the first episode, having fun with Mobius showing Loki the scenes from his life,” head writer Michael Waldron told Decider. “People, I think when they heard about this show, they always thought, ‘Okay, it’s Loki traveling through time influencing historical events. So we’re gonna see Loki riding with Paul Revere and doing the most basic, PBS sort of stuff.’ And I got excited about, what is the deep cut, really fun stuff that we can imagine [for Loki]? And I just love D.B. Cooper. It’s a great piece of American folklore and now it’s canon: Loki is DB Cooper [in the Marvel Cinematic Universe]. We solved the riddle."
Written by Waldron and directed by Kate Herron, Episode 1 of Loki is now available to stream on Disney+. The second episode (there will be six in total) arrives on the subscription platform next Wednesday, June 16.
Check out our recap of the series premiere of Loki right here.
