On the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast, Tom Hiddleston said farewell — again — to playing Loki, on the heels of the show’s second season finale.

“Again,” of course, because Loki has died more than once in the MCU, and “farewell,” because the series finale shows him literally taking the strands of time in his godly hands, redeeming himself by saving reality, but essentially removing himself from it.

But as Hiddleston acknowledged, with Marvel Studios, there’s always a possibility he could turn up again at some point.

The English actor expressed that “never in a thousand years” could he have predicted he would still be playing the character in 2023. “It has been a journey of a thousand miles,” he said graciously.

“I was cast in 2009 by Kenneth Branagh to play Loki in Thor, and I recognized then that I had been given this extraordinary gift of playing a really interesting, complex tragic poignant character, and I could never have imagined that this journey would continue into chapter upon chapter upon chapter,” Hiddleston said.

He said “the joy” for him in playing the god of mischief “is that there is in human imagination some need to characterize chaos, and playfulness, right inside of a character” across all cultures.

“Somehow it’s necessary … for someone to embody the disruptor, the trickster, the boundary crosser…somebody dangerous, somebody occasionally necessary,” he said.

And if the second season of the show is indeed the last time he plays the character, Hiddleston said, “I do feel very proud and satisfied with where we landed, because I think as a team we brought it full circle.” He called Loki, the series, “an ultimate story of redemption.”

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