LOKI 003: Real-World History Skydive @ Loki Academy!
Welcome back to class at Loki Academy, Marvel Blog Untrue Believers! As you know from our ongoing class schedule, we’re providing you with the required reading list you need to be fully prepared when the Marvel Studios’ Loki series arrives on Disney+ for streaming on Wednesday, June 9th, 2021! Naturally, you’re accustomed to the Marvel Cinematic Universe moive and television adaptations pulling from the Marvel Comics universe for inspiration. But today, our lesson plan concerns real-world history.
What! Are you surprised? Remember, Marvel Blog Untrue Believers: just when you think you have a trickster nailed down, that’s when they do something you just don’t expect!
D.B Cooper
This is a true story.
Loki 003: Is Loki already messing with the timeline? Photo: Marvel Studios
In late November 1971, a man who said his name was “D.B. Cooper” successfully hijacked a commercial airliner. Using a bomb, he extorted a suitcase full of money, and after releasing the passengers from the plane, he ordered the crew to fly him to Mexico. On the way there, he parachuted out of the plane, vanishing – never to be seen again.
Loki 003: Is this your flight? Photo: Marvel Studios
What? That’s right: decades later – and in spite of a decades-long investigation by the FBI – there is still no clue as to who the true identity of Cooper might be.
Loki 003: D.B. Loki. Photo: Marvel Studios
However, we do know one person who was involved in the incident: Florence Schaffner, a stewardess who was working on the plane when Cooper hijacked it. According to the Internet Movie Database cast listing page for Loki, this role will be played by Erika Coleman.
Photo: Marvel Studios
Knowing all this, it seems as though the shots in the Loki trailer which feature a plane — not to mention Loki (Tom Hiddleston) diving out of said plane with a suitcase — suggest that this real-life historical event will play a role in Loki when it arrives this June.
But that’s not the only historical event that seems to be a part of the story of Loki on Disney+…
Pompeii
The trailer for Loki also features a few scenes in which Loki and Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) appear to be visiting the city of Pompeii.
Loki 003: Visit beautiful Pompeii! Photo: Marvel Studios
This historical city was located in southern Italy. An exceptionally prosperous Roman urban center, the sudden eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried the city (and everyone in it) under volcanic ash, instantly preserving the location and its denizens in stone.
Loki 003: Vesuvius blows up like Thor after snake-Loki stabbed him! Photo: Marvel Studios
In the trailer, it looks as though Mobius and Loki are visiting Pompeii in 79 A.D…. the point in the timeline at which Mount Vesuvius erupts. Look out, Loki!
History’s Greatest Messes
Jeez, Loki! Where else will you be visiting when Loki arrives on Disney+ on June 9th, 2021? Tunguska, Russia on June 30th, 1908? An iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on April 12th, 1912? In movie theaters across the globe on May 4th, 2007?
Photo: Marvel Studios
Your homework assignment, Marvel Blog Untrue Believers: tell us where (and when) you think Loki will be visiting when Loki arrives. And don’t be tardy: you’ll want to be back for the next class in the curriculum here at Loki Academy!
