Tom Hiddleston Explains What ‘The Night Manager’ Has in Common With ‘Loki’: “They’re Very Powerful” [Exclusive]

Actors making a grand return to roles they originated years earlier isn't as rare a feat as it once was, given how prolific legacy sequels have become. Appropriately enough, Tom Hiddleston joining Avengers: Doomsday's sprawling cast of established comic book icons, including several other actors who helped define the Marvel Cinematic Universe's early days, is still a unique situation. Of the founding MCU names on Doomsday's roster, Hiddleston's character is the only reformed villain of the bunch, and Loki's the lone figure on either side of the moral alignment who's maintained enough enthusiastic popularity and story potential — that lightning-in-a-bottle dream — to warrant a two-season Disney+ series.

Natural time gaps separate the eight times Hiddleston has lent his talents to playing the beloved trickster. None of those interludes rival the decade between The Night Manager Seasons 1 and 2. Initially a standalone miniseries based on the events of John le Carré's novel, the television version of The Night Manager has more tale to tell — a coincidence that echoes the way Loki's creators maneuver around the antihero's death.

Ahead of The Night Manager's Season 2 finale on February 1, Hiddleston spoke with Collider about reprising these two roles for 15 years and counting, and how a god of mischief and a civilian spy are more similar than one might assume.

Tom Hiddleston Explains Why Loki and Jonathan Pine Parallel Each Other

Comparing Loki and Jonathan Pine against the rest of his genre-diverse career, Hiddleston described both experiences as a "privilege" and emphasized how "fortunate" he felt to receive characters with "limitless [potential]" that "have been written with such care and complexity. What I take great meaning from in my work is being afforded the opportunity to go very deeply into these explorations." As Hiddleston elaborates:

"When you get asked to come back to tell more story, you get to go more deeply, you get to investigate more profoundly, think more carefully. It's an honor for me, and it's one I'm extremely grateful for. They're almost like you're having a long-term relationship with an idea. You get to invigorate these questions. Both Pine and Loki are complex characters. They contain multitudes. They contain great depth and great range. They're very powerful. They're very capable. They're very capable of great charm, but also, they carry with them deep wells of private pain. The tension between the exterior and interior is something I find fascinating."

'Loki' and 'The Night Manager' Both Utilize Tom Hiddleston's Strengths

These similarities provide a wonderful synchronicity. Roles like Loki and Pine fit his strengths like a glove: two men motivated by anger, pain, loss, and revenge. Beyond pursuing the object of their respective fixation, neither is truly secure in their identity; they're chameleonic, always adopting the right personality to sway people and situations to their will. Their cunning, sometimes vicious intelligence lets them just as effortlessly command a room as slink through its shadows — and donning different masks is the easiest metaphor in the world for a protective shield.

Once Loki and Pine's hidden depths are forced to the surface, there's a compelling subversion in how their softer, raw characteristics manifest. They're each highly internalized. If they don't suppress their emotions with white-knuckled restraint, they'll volcanically erupt. Neither will admit how profoundly lonely and isolated they are, either; they deceive themselves about how much living in the world's darkness — either as a protector or a harbinger of evil — has shaped their inner demons. Even when they long for companionship, they're elusive by default.

Despite appearances, Loki and Pine are profoundly loving and protective of others to the point of sacrificial. Pine's righteous cause is obvious from the start, and despite the danger his association brings, he's unable to stop himself from empathetically investing in the wounded people his quests have deemed collateral damage. Loki's tenderness, of course, is more deceptive, but his motivations have always teetered between selfish grief and genuine vigilance for his family. By the time Loki reaches the apex of his emotional development, he has gained enough maturity and perspective to align himself, at the cost of his own comfort, with his original goal.

Both roles' longevity is a celebratory testament to Hiddleston's capacity to evoke power, presence, and strikingly weighty vulnerability. Those skills have resulted in Loki's ongoing hold upon enthralled audiences. Comparatively, Jonathan Pine hasn't had the platform to become a giant cultural presence. Nevertheless, both seasons of The Night Manager surging high atop Prime Video's streaming charts attest to viewers eagerly returning for more. With both Doomsday and The Night Manager Season 3 on the way, Hiddleston isn't vanishing off our screens anytime soon. No matter where his future creative ventures take him, hopefully, they continue to be as fruitful.