If you love true crime and Loki — and let’s be real, who doesn’t? — we’ve got great news for you. In the upcoming Disney+ series, it looks like the God of Mischief might just be stirring the pot even more so than usual by placing himself at the center of (or at least, heavily referencing) one of the FBI’s biggest unsolved mysteries: the case of D.B. Cooper. Now, while it might seem strange for this straight-out-of Doctor Who plot to pop up in a Marvel series about a villainous god, bear with us as we explain.
In all the trailers that have been released leading up to the show’s premiere this June, clips of Loki aboard an airplane and dressed in an unusually dapper manner have made an appearance. Based on both the model of the plane, retro flight-attendant outfit that a woman on board is seen sporting, Loki’s appearance, and the show’s premise heavily involving time travel, all signs point to Marvel deciding to have a little revisionist history fun with one of the wildest extortion cases around. And hey, if you’re still not sold, just take a look at this pretty damning piece of evidence:
So now that you are undoubtedly sold on this idea, there is a chance you might be wondering what the deal with the actual D.B. Cooper is. While we may not be able to provide you with as many details as your favorite unsolved mysteries podcast, here’s the gist.
D.B. Cooper is the name the FBI gave to a gentleman named Dan Cooper, who still remains the only person to ever hijack a commercial airline and get away without a trace — literally. The incident took place back on November 24, 1971, on a Boeing 727 aircraft making a trip from Portland to Seattle. While aboard the flight, Cooper managed to hijack the plane and successfully extort $200,000 and four parachutes from the airline before jumping off the jet somewhere above the Pacific Northwest. The case was investigated for, get this, 45 years before it was eventually suspended (not solved) in 2016.
Despite us approaching 50 years since the incident took place, interest in the case still remains, and even as recently as last year we’ve gotten full-length documentaries on the subject. One of the most notable ones, and our recommendation if you’re looking to brush up on your Cooper lore before Loki, is HBO’s The Mystery of D.B. Cooper (that features the FBI/AP drawings shown in the above image), which “brings to life the stories of four individuals fervently believed by their family and friends to be D.B. Cooper.”
All in all, it looks like Loki has a lot of mysteries to solve for us, such as what’s going to happen when this Loki variant discovers his family’s fate, how will Loki fix the timelines and potentially return in the MCU, how did D.B. Cooper get away with it, and, most importantly, will he also get his own catchy jingle? Here’s hoping we get some answers starting on June 9, 2021, when Loki premieres over on Disney+.