‘Loki’ Composer Natalie Holt Has Been Seeding Clues to the Finale Since the Beginning

Though we still have about a week until Disney+’s Marvel TV series Loki finishes its six episode run, given all the turns and likely betrayals, it’s pretty clear you’re going to want to go back and watch all the episodes again once that final twist airs. And according to composer Natalie Holt, you’re probably going to want to listen to the full score again, too.

“Everything’s connected,” Holt teased to Decider about her original score. “There is definitely an overarching narrative to the whole thing. It becomes clear at the end of Episode 6.”

In case that sounds mysterious? Well, that’s part of the point. The time-twisting series has taken Loki (Tom Hiddleston), and thrust him into the middle of a war for the fate of the multiverse. On one side? A host of Lokis from different timelines, including Sylvie (Sophia di Martino), and their ally, Mobius (Owen Wilson). On the other side? The Time Variance Authority (TVA), led by Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and someone — or someones — behind the scenes, pulling the strings.

Like Holt mentioned, all will become clear when Episode 6 airs — and in fact, she further noted that the main TVA theme that plays over the opening credits “calls to a moment at the very end” — but until then, even elements of the score remain under Marvel’s tightly guarded veil of secrecy. Still, Holt was able to share some details, including how she got hired for the job, how Bon Jovi helped inspire Mobius’ jet-ski dreams, and the surprising inspiration behind Sylvie’s theme: not Loki, but his mother, Frigga (Rene Russo).

[NOTE: This interview was conducted before Loki Episode 5, “Journey Into Mystery,” began streaming on Disney+.]

Decider: How were you first approached for Loki? Was it a bake-off situation?

Natalie Holt: Definitely, it was a bake-off situation. It was a general call out, I think they were hoping to get a female composer because there was an incentive on upping the female heads of departments. And so, I got the call that it was a Marvel project, looking for something epic and spacey. I sent in a show reel, with things I’ve done that might fit that brief. Although, to be honest, nothing much I’ve done before would indicate that I’d have been able to score Loki. I think they took a bit of a risk on me to be honest, but I’m glad they did.

So what did you send them that sold them on the idea of you composing for Loki?

I guess it was just the connection from the meeting, I haven’t asked them what they went for in the end. But I it was all on the pitch, which was, you got to read the first two scripts. And then you got sent a scene, which was him coming down the elevator with Mobius, Loki and Mobius in the elevator, going through into the time theater. And the first half of that time theater sequence, which was quite different since last August. It’s developed a lot since then, but that was what I had to do, that was the pitch.

How do you craft a theme for somebody like Loki, who isn’t exactly a villain and isn’t exactly a hero?

Tom’s performance is the thing that I think I was–like, it’s lucky that it wasn’t just this abstract character that I’ve not got any chance to know… I had all these things that I could research and watch to see how this character is performed, and how Tom plays it. I had an enormous amount of resources that — if I’m just coming cold to a project, that there’s no established style or footage to watch. And so that was a bit of a gift, because Tom does play it big and grand and over top. I needed the theme to suit Tom’s performance. And I already thought Tom’s performance before was great.

On that note, as a composer, you’ve got three previous Thor movies, you’ve got previous Avengers movies, you’ve got all these previous appearances of the character where he has been scored… Was that anything that you looked at at all, or did you specifically put that out of your mind when you were tackling the show?

I asked that in the meeting, in the job interview, I was like, “how attached are you to the previous music?” and they’re like, “no, no, we’re not attached’. We don’t feel that there’s a strong Loki theme yet, there’s nothing that you can have in your mind that connects you to him.” So they were just like, “it’s really a blank slate, you can kind of do what you like,” which is great.

Let’s talk about the title theme, which comes in so big and powerful… What was the goal there? How did you start to approach crafting that, over those Loki letters that appear in different variations?

So the genesis of that theme came when I was walking down the street — and actually, I have to say, the TVA theme, it calls to a moment at the very end. it’s overarching. There’s a reason, it’s going somewhere, so that version in Episode 6 is the one that I did first. I was just walking down the street and I was like, I want it to just see this grand, almost like a religious experience where you’re feeling these huge swells of cords and feeling the power of an entity. But yet there’s this kind of thing, this taking thing, going on over the top that’s driving you forward. So that was like [humming the TVA theme] I was humming that first and then I was just singing it in my phone. I’m so lucky to have such amazing musicians, collaborators to play my stuff. Because if it was just me, I don’t think anyone would be very impressed, if they had the Natalie singing in the phone version [laughs].

You mentioned the ticking, and there are sections that seem to almost run the notes backwards, like they’re traveling through time… How do you layer it all together?

Yeah, that kind of thing [humming] was a kind of high sense, which was a … plug-in actually. It wasn’t analog to start off with, and then I recorded it and played it through a tape machine and then did loads of layers. I think there’s a layer of a Moog in there as well. There was just a very synth version and I played orchestral strings with, I think they’re spitfire strings, playing on those chords and really horrible, nasty, EX 24 brass as well, which is again distorted. And then, with a tape machine, you can kind of slow it down, and you get that feeling of it going backwards and speeding up. And that analog tape sound really feels like it sort of sets that off. That really low-fi demo version of the TVA theme, with no orchestral or anything on it, is what stayed as the opening title cards. That is the demo version, because everybody liked it so much. I recorded it with the orchestra and I was like, “oh, I’m so attached. I’ve heard that demo version for such a long time I don’t want it to sound all posh and nice with the orchestra playing it” …. So we kept that, and it’s on the album as well.

It’s interesting to hear you’re referring to this way even though it’s over the title that says Loki, Loki, Loki over and over… Is that the TVA theme, versus the Loki theme?

That’s the TVA theme, yeah.

Is there a separate Loki theme then?

Yeah, the “Loki Green Theme” is Loki’s actual theme. And the TVA theme is just kind of where he is in this series. I wanted it to juxtapose his own theme and interplay with it. There’s moments where those two were going at the same time.

At the end of Episode 4, we meet all of these other Loki variants. We’ve also, of course, spent a lot of time with Sylvie, who presumably is a Loki variant, herself. How, if at all, do you differentiate the themes there? Are you trying to play off of that main Loki theme for say, Sylvie and Classic Loki, Kid Loki, etc? Or are they all sort of their own thing?

Well you’ll have to see in Episode 5 [laughs].

For Sylvie, then, I’m not fishing for spoilers.

With Sylvie, I feel like she’s so different. She’s been pruned, and she’s obviously lived in apocalypses. She’s been kidnapped as a child and had this extremely traumatic upbringing, which is very un-Loki. And then I felt like the feelings that Loki was having towards her, that we see at the beginning of Episode 4… We’re like, “ooh all this staring.” He looks at her like he looks at his mother, and so I connected that, actually, Sylvie’s theme and Frigga’s theme are connected. They’re both played in those historic, Norwegian folk instruments, the Hardanger [fiddle] and Nyckelharpa, to just feel that sense of past and sense of history and this emotional grounding as well. But Sylvie seems very dark and orchestral and driving and murderous [laughs].

The Miss Minutes theme is so much fun. It certainly struck me, very specifically, like those old Wonderful World of Disney videos Walt Disney used to do.

Well definitely, yeah, that’s what we were calling on was those instructional 1950s videos. That was a moment where [director] Kate [Herron] was like, “oh, it’d be really cool if we had time to score this rather than just use source tracks.” I was really keen to do this, to score those moments as well, and we did have time. So yeah, I got to do the “DB Cooper” and “Miss Minutes,” which I think if on a normal TV show, those would have been left over to their music supervisor as source cues. But it was so fun to get to write those, and expand the themes, because in that Miss Minutes video, we hear the TV thing when we see the Time Keepers that TVA thing comes in, really creepy theramin layers. I’m just tight connecting the TVA thing with the Time Keepers, right from Episode 1. And everything’s linked and being seeded, up until Episode 6.

How much is hidden in the score throughout the first couple of episodes that people may not pick up on until Episode 6?

There is something quite fundamental, but we’ll have to see where it goes [laughs]. There’s a lot–Everything’s connected. There is definitely an overarching narrative to the whole thing. It becomes clear at the end of Episode 6.

What, if anything, was exciting for you to score Episode 5 in particular?

I’m not still not allowed to talk about Episode 5. But it’s already– I accidentally let slip that I had a giant choir, the last two episodes. So there’s big forces being played with in Episode 5 and 6.

Are we going to see return of the jet-ski theme?

Um, well, that’s another spoiler [laughs].

I had to try! I do love that theme, though, because it’s so wistful, it’s so sad and channels the way Mobius is thinking about those jet-skis.

I was just imagining, what would he listen to in his downtime in that mad world… I reckon he’d be listening to Bon Jovi [laughs].. That’s where that came from.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Stream Loki on Disney+