‘Loki’ Isn’t The First Time Tom Hiddleston And Owen Wilson Played With Time Together, And People Are Remembering

On Wednesday, the MCU spinoff Loki began its six-episode run on Disney+, and critics were pretty much unanimous about one thing: Tom Hiddleston’s titular trickster god and Owen Wilson’s multidimensional bureaucrat make a killer team. Hiddleston’s gonzo energy, many agree, mixes well with Wilson’s laidback mien, while the latter is surprisingly adept at making its convoluted premise and dense expository dialogue go down smoothly. But we should have known they’d make a delightful pair. After all, it’s not their first rodeo together.

Amidst the social media clamor for Loki came this: Some people pointed out that they first teamed up, albeit briefly, 10 years back, in Woody Allen’s hit time travel rom-com Midnight in Paris. That film found Wilson’s sadsack screenwriter, vacationing in the City of Lights, with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams), learning he can magically saunter back to the 1920s, allowing him to hang with all the iconic artists and American ex-pats who’d made it their home. Those include Corey Stoll’s Ernest Hemingway, Kathy Bates’ Gertrude Stein, and Adrien Brody’s Salvador Dalí.

And then there was F. Scott Fitzgerald, played by no less than Tom Hiddleston. (Alison Pill played his also famous wife, Zelda.) Midnight in Paris was released in America in late May of 2011, mere weeks after the first Thor opened that year’s summer movie season. Granted, Hiddleston, as the author of The Great Gatsby, had far shorter locks than he did as Loki, as well as different accents. So who knows how many realized it was the same guy. (Also, how many people who saw Thor also saw Midnight in Paris? Probably not a huge Venn Diagram crossover there.)

So there you go: Gil Pender (Wilson’s Midnight in Paris character name, as if you didn’t know) and F. Scott Fitzgerald are back in action!