#DAUNTE WRIGHT

[whenweallvote]

Three years ago today, 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot and killed by a Minnesota officer during a traffic stop. 

The Police Chief later said the officer meant to fire her taser, not her gun. She was found guilty of manslaughter eight months later and sentenced to two years in prison. The city agreed to pay a $3.25 million settlement to Daunte’s family in June 2022.

None of this makes up for Daunte no longer being here with his family. He deserved to grow old, and to raise his son. Daunte’s life mattered. 

[kyrsteniopsis]

According to CREW, a nonpartisan group, beyond this promise of police immunity (which is already happening as we've seen time and again), Trump has plans to militarize the police against "people experiencing homelessness, 'wag[e] war' on drug dealers, crack down on border crossings and ramp up the use of the death penalty. Many of these plans would represent an unprecedented expansion of presidential power and could lead to a slippery slope of weaponizing the federal government against civilians and infringing their civil liberties."

If you want to sit this election out (and I would encourage that you don't), the least you can do is know what the stakes are.

More lives lost to police violence and yet more vulnerable people like Sonya Massey dead.

Yes, the Democrats aren't perfect, blah blah blah. I'm tired of this one-sided argument. Go yell at a tree, be an adult, and vote on behalf of people who aren't as privileged as you are.

[chaddavisphotography]

Daunte Wright Memorial at George Floyd Square in August 2024. Wright was killed by Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter in April 2021. Potter was found guilty of 1st and 2nd degree manslaughter and sentenced to 2 years in prison in December 2021.

[callese]

[uvmagazine]

Former Minnesota police officer Kim Potter Released From Prison After Serving 16 Months For Daunte Wright shooting

Kim Potter, the former Minnesota police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright during a traffic stop, has been released after spending 16 months in prison.

Kim Potter, the former Minnesota police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright during a traffic stop, has been released after spending 16 months in prison. Her conviction and sentence Potter was convicted of two counts of manslaughter for the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Wright, an unarmed Black man killed during a April 2021 traffic stop near Minneapolis. Wright was pulled over for having…

[kaydub80]

Disgusting

[whenweallvote]

Your life mattered, Daunte.

On this day in 2021, Daunte Wright was killed during a traffic stop by Minnesota police officer Kimberly Potter.

[mariacallous]

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — With the calendar-page turn to 2024 on Monday comes 320 new state laws that Illinois residents will need to navigate.

Some will have a widespread effect, including a law banning semi-automatic rifles and another requiring paid time off. But others won’t have an immediate or noticeable impact, including a law that lets county governments consider a potential contractor’s participation in an approved apprenticeship program in determining the winning low bid for a project.

One law that took effect in 2019 but is still impacting tens of thousands of workers is an increase in the minimum wage. It increases to $14 an hour on Jan. 1 for non-tipped workers and will reach $15 in a year.

Here are some of the other major changes to Illinois state law as of New Year’s Day:

BAN ON SEMI-AUTOMATIC WEAPONS

The U.S. Supreme Court has failed to take up the case of Illinois’ ban on the sale, possession or manufacture of automatic weapons like the type used in a mass shooting at a 2023July Fourthparade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park.

The law bans dozens of specific brands or types of rifles and handguns, including .50-caliber guns, attachments and rapid-firing devices. No rifle will be allowed to accommodate more than 10 rounds, with a 15-round limit for handguns.

Those who previously purchased such guns must register them with the Illinois State Police by Jan. 1.

BOOK-BAN PROHIBITION

Libraries that indiscriminately ban books will not be eligible for state funds. They must adopt the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights stating “materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.”

The library association reported that attempts to censor books reached a 20-year high in 2022, especially those with LGBTQ+ themes and those written by people of color.

PAID TIME OFF

Employers will be required to offer paid vacation for any reason. Workers will accrue one hour of paid leave for every 40 hours worked, up to 40 hours total. Employers may offer more than 40 hours and employees may take time off after working for 90 days.

AIR FRESHENERS ALLOWED

Police will no longer be able to pull over a motorist solely because there is an object hanging from their rearview mirror. The law was approved after Daunte Wright was pulled over in Minnesota in 2021 for having a dangling air freshener. He was shot when the officer, reaching for her stun gun, instead grabbed her sidearm.

NO VIDEOCONFERENCING ON THE ROAD

Video meetings, streaming or accessing a social media website while driving will be prohibited. There will be an exception for video on a hands-free or voice-activated device or an application requiring the push of no more than a single button to activate or terminate it.

NO INDOOR VAPING

Vaping or smoking an electronic cigarette or cigar in a public indoor space will be prohibited. The law adds electronic smoking devices to the list of items prohibited in indoor public places under the 2008 Smoke Free Illinois Act, which banned regular tobacco products’ indoor use.

LICENSE-PLATE READER RESTRICTIONS

Interstate agreements between law enforcement agencies must specify that license-plate reader technology not be used on cars driven by women coming into Illinois to have abortions.

SURVEILLANCE DRONES

Following the Highland Park parade shooting, lawmakers approved the use of drones by law enforcement to surveil “routed” or “special events.” The drones may not be equipped with weapons or facial-recognition technology.

DEEPFAKE PORN

Victims of digital forgeries known as deepfake pornography may file civil lawsuits against anyone who shares or threatens to share an image that falsely depicts a person exposing genitalia or other private parts or engaging in a sex act. Identifying the image as materially altered is not a defense to liability.

RESTROOMS MAY BE ALL-GENDER MULTIOCCUPANCY

Businesses have the option of installing restrooms that may be used by any gender simultaneously. Current restrooms may be renovated to accommodate all genders. Urinals may not be included and stalls must have floor-to-ceiling, locking dividers.

VOTER REGISTRATION FOR TEENS

Teenagers may pre-register to vote at age 16 or 17 while obtaining a driver’s license or state identification card at a drivers’ services office run by the secretary of state. When turning 18, the legal voting age, they will already be registered to vote.

[frankenfossil]

13 books

What’s up readers?! How about a little show and tell? Answer these 13 questions, tag 13 lucky readers and if you’re feeling extra bookish add a shelfie! Let’s Go!

Tagged by @quarkscooljacket

This is perfect because I had an extremely slow start to the year in terms of reading and then SUDDENLY in the last few weeks I got my library card un-blocked and then maxed out my reservations and am now reading a bunch of books!!!!!!!

1) The Last book I read:

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan! I extremely liked it! Very contemplative novel/nonfic/memoir mishmash threading through such things as the way scifi writers & physicists prefigured & led to & failed to prevent the bombing of Hiroshima, his father being a POW in Japan who almost certainly would not have survived (and had him!) if the bombs had not been dropped, the history of Tasmania, his own near drowning while kayaking in the Franklin river, and the way history and memory shapes us and is eternally carried forward with us while also being forgotten/rewritten/impossible to pin down for certain. At least, that's my best go of describing this book.

2) A book I recommend:

This is... so open-ended... if you want to identify native trees in Victoria and nearby areas I would recommend Leon Costerman's Native Trees and Shrubs of South-Eastern Australia lmao. I really like The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, a historical fiction/urban fantasy book about a golem and a jinni living in immigrant communities in New York in the early 1900s, and also the sequel.

3) A book that I couldn’t put down:

Not a book per se but one of the webcomics I got into relatively recently is What happens next https://whathappensnext.webcomic.ws/ which reminds me a bit of Nevada by Imogen Binnie except if all of the characters were youtubers and/or tumblrinas and either involved in a murder or just big into true crime (in universe, fictional). It's very gripping. Of course now that I'm caught up there's the usual wait for updates but such is life.

I also read The Wicked + the Divine last week, since I'd never previously read the final 2 volumes, and that was good. I'm glad to find out I liked the ending. Comics are always a quick read but nevertheless some are more action-packed and fast paced than others lmao, and I just ripped through these in every spare second.

4) A book I’ve read twice (or more):

Naomi Novik is probably my most read author because I've read most of her books twice or more... So far I've read Spinning Silver & His Majesty's Dragon three times each; those are 2 of my absolute favourites. I've read most of the rest of the Temeraire series 2 or 3 times too but few of them grab me quite as much as the first one, & I read the first Scholomance book twice. I feel like I should reread Uprooted because that's the only one of her books I've not liked (though some of the duller Temeraire books get a bit of a leg-up from being in a series with other books I really like lol); since I only remember vague impressions of it now, which might not be accurate, I would like to see if my feelings have changed, or if not, figure out more specifically what I didn't like about it.

5) A book on my TBR:

Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright also happens to be one of the books I borrowed!! It was mentioned on a podcast along with Question 7 and Search History (currently reading, q12) so that is how I found out about these 3 books and was compelled to reserve them. However, currently I am daunted by how fat it is (700+ pages) so it's just sitting on my bedside table and I am... reading the shorter books first lmao.

I will also leave the blurb copypasted from @quarkscooljacket's answer:

Praiseworthy is an epic set in the north of Australia, told with the richness of language and scale of imagery for which Alexis Wright has become renowned. In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in following the dance of butterflies and scouring the internet to find out how she can seek repatriation for her Aboriginal/Chinese family to China. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful. This is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.

6) A book I’ve put down:

The most recent book I decided I did not want to finish is The Female Man by Joanna Russ. It sounded conceptually cool but I was just finding it way too hard to follow or care about. Too many sections where I couldn't figure out which character/s' perspective it was or whatever. I'm sure there's other books I didn't finish before they became overdue and I had to return them but can't remember, I usually want to finish them eventually. Whether I will get around to it is another matter.

7) A book on my wish list:

I don't normally buy books these days, but nevertheless tempted by A Vast, Pointless Gyration of Radioactive Rocks and Gas in Which You Happen to Occur, edited by the Daniels. It looks extremely interesting and also extremely pretty...

8) A favorite book from childhood:

Hmmmm. I guess I did choose my name from The Wind on Fire trilogy by William Nicholson. Definitely up there among my favourite childhood books.

9) A book you would give to a friend:

Another very open ended one...... this depends so much????? what friend... what occasion... idk... there are books I do kind of want to give people but either I haven't decided or it's supposed to be a surprise and they may see this. although recently I have been incepting Lauren with my impeccable borrowing tastes, reading my library books after me is surely the same thing right??

10) A book of poetry or lyrics that you own

Ismene's Survivable Resistance by Claire Gaskin... she is one of my favourite poets, and I rly like the concept of this book, and I saw her do a reading of some of the poems! However I think my favourite poems by her are ones that are not in this book.

11) A nonfiction book you own:

Hmm... Evolution's Rainbow by Joan Roughgarden is an interesting book published in 2004 about the diversity of sexual and gender variation in the world. The first section is about other animals, and especially about the ways human biologists have imposed ideological frameworks in classifying them; the middle section is about human intersex variation and biology; and the third section is about human cultural sex and gender roles throughout history.

12) What are you currently reading:

Search History by Amy Taylor. About the dating life of a classic mildly messy millennial woman. In this case she goes through the facebook profile of the most recent guy she starts dating and then finds out that his ex girlfriend died, and then goes through the accounts and photos of the ex girlfriend and gets a bit obsessed with her, but has to not let on to the new guy that she has done this deep dive. It's okay! Enjoyable, pretty fast to read, some funny bits and observations and whatnot, but not particularly a stand out read. She is not as much of a freak as I expected she would be when I started reading it, which is both a relief and also a disappointment. So far everyone seems to just be normal mildly flawed people doing overall reasonable things imperfectly, and the conflict is just navigating life's complexity (there's a lot about everyday sexism though). Mostly I just keep thinking how glad I am to not be a heterosexual woman or ever had to attempt online dating/app dating, which are both quite boring and excessively smug things to feel, however, I am simply a bit boring and smug. Anyway I'm only halfway through, I'm expecting/hoping there'll be some twists or something. Maybe about the boyfriend...?

update: was talking to some friends about it this arvo and they said not only that it does get crazier, but ALSO that supposedly it's a modern telling of Rebecca, which I have not read but have now reserved lmao

13) What are you planning on reading next?

I have borrowed all of Delicious in Dungeon and am very excited to start them! Also the next books I have to read for my book clubs are Marlo by Jay Carmichael, which I'd better get onto as it is in less than 2 weeks, and Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H, which was one of the ones I put on the list myself and am very excited to read (I previously started it and got too busy to finish it but was rly enjoying it so keen to get further), but I actually still have over a month for that one since I can't make this month's meeting for that book club.

As for a shelfie... well here is a photo of all the plant reference books in my desk drawer for quick reference while working (though there's really only 4 I use very often, plus the australian standards on the side there):

Tagging (with ZERO pressure or obligation): @thesleepybabesclub @depthchargeforcutie @petricorrosion @andilovethisnovemberlife @dogelectedmayor @aesterea @commander-diomika @auntytim @zinjanthropusboisei @red-thorn

[ramsesja]

Newly released video shows retired D.C. police lieutenant Jesse Porter, who was conducting the training session, pulled his gun and shot 25-year-old mother and officer-in-training, Maurica Manyan in what his lawyer says was a horrible accident. The story is reminiscent of another accidental shooting of Daunte Wright by Kim Potter. Both of these officers were responsible for training other officers. Both of them had deadly accidents. Furthermore, evidence shows that better training doesn't lead to better officers. It is a persistent myth and narrative that prevents real, necessary reform when it comes to policing and public safety.

[callese]

[peemanne]

So I picked up Third Strike recently and I've been absolutely loving it. The fact that this pretty old fighting game from 1999 still has a passionate and active enough fanbase for me to still reliably find players around the novice skill level I'm at is really cool, and the game itself is just so perfect in so many ways. I've been playing Rivals of Aether (a plat fighter) competitively for awhile now and while it's cool and all, I've always been interested in picking up and really getting into at least one traditional fighting game. I have Tekken 7 on the PS4 and while I did like that for a bit, it was just a little bit too daunting for me for me to really pursue competitively. I also have UMVC3 but I do literally nothing there but get my ass kicked by the CPU in arcade mode with Phoenix Wright.

But Third Strike is just really fun to me, it feels more welcoming to a newer player like me (which is a miracle for a game from 1999) and the skill floor feels a lot lower while at the same time presenting me with a really high skill ceiling that I wanna strive for. Went from Yang to Dudley to Chun in quick succession and now I think I've settled on Chun. She's really fun I think and she's probably gonna make the game learning process easier. I'm not a tier snob I swear I just think she's cool

Anyways, what I really want to talk about this post is how I got into it in the first place.

It's this. It's literally just this video. I started Third Strike because of the [SPONGE GOKU SATSU]

I just randomly started listening to Akuma's theme over and over and every time is reappearing in my youtube feed I'd click on it again. Every time I played it I would instinctively lean forward in my chair like I was doing a Raging Demon, too. I was familiar with Akuma because of Tekken 7 and honestly Raging Demon edits are probably some of my favorite content from the FGC. The "loop" of me listening to it only began earlier this month but this isn't even the first time I've been losing it to this video. I think I saw it the first time like 2 years ago lmao.

Eventually I reached a point where I was like "hey wait. fightcade's free and easy to set up. why not".

So thanks, Spongebob Raging Demon video, for introducing me to a bomb ass fighting game.

[thoughtportal]

undefined

Once You See the Truth About Cars, You Can’t Unsee It https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/opinion/car-ownership-inequality.html

By Andrew Ross and Julie Livingston

Mr. Ross and Ms. Livingston are professors at New York University, members of its Prison Education Program Research Lab and authors of the book “Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt, and Carcerality.”

In American consumer lore, the automobile has always been a “freedom machine” and liberty lies on the open road. “Americans are a race of independent people” whose “ancestors came to this country for the sake of freedom and adventure,” the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce’s soon-to-be-president, Roy Chapin, declared in 1924. “The automobile satisfies these instincts.” During the Cold War, vehicles with baroque tail fins and oodles of surplus chrome rolled off the assembly line, with Native American names like Pontiac, Apache, Dakota, Cherokee, Thunderbird and Winnebago — the ultimate expressions of capitalist triumph and Manifest Destiny.

But for many low-income and minority Americans, automobiles have been turbo-boosted engines of inequality, immobilizing their owners with debt, increasing their exposure to hostile law enforcement, and in general accelerating the forces that drive apart haves and have-nots.

Though progressive in intent, the Biden administration’s signature legislative achievements on infrastructure and climate change will further entrench the nation’s staunch commitment to car production, ownership and use. The recent Inflation Reduction Act offers subsidies for many kinds of vehicles using alternative fuel, and should result in real reductions in emissions, but it includes essentially no direct incentives for public transit — by far the most effective means of decarbonizing transport. And without comprehensive policy efforts to eliminate discriminatory policing and predatory lending, merely shifting to electric from combustion will do nothing to reduce car owners’ ever-growing risk of falling into legal and financial jeopardy, especially those who are poor or Black.

By the 1940s, African American car owners had more reason than anyone to see their vehicles as freedom machines, as a means to escape, however temporarily, redlined urban ghettos in the North or segregated towns in the South. But their progress on roads outside of the metro core was regularly obstructed by the police, threatened by vigilante assaults, and stymied by owners of whites-only restaurants, lodgings and gas stations. Courts granted the police vast discretionary authority to stop and search for any one of hundreds of code violations — powers that they did not apply evenly. Today, officers make more than 50,000 traffic stops a day. Driving while Black has become a major route to incarceration — or much worse. When Daunte Wright was killed by a police officer in April 2021, he had been pulled over for an expired registration tag on his car’s license plate. He joined the long list of Black drivers whose violent and premature deaths at the hands of police were set in motion by a minor traffic infraction — Sandra Bland (failure to use a turn signal), Maurice Gordon (alleged speeding), Samuel DuBose (missing front license plate) and Philando Castile and Walter Scott (broken taillights) among them. Despite widespread criticism of the flimsy pretexts used to justify traffic stops, and the increasing availability of cellphone or police body cam videos, the most recent data shows that the number of deaths from police-driver interactions is almost as high as it has been over the past five years.

In the consumer arena, cars have become tightly sprung debt traps. The average monthly auto loan payment crossed $700 for the first time this year, which does not include insurance or maintenance costs. Subprime lending and longer loan terms of up to 84 months have resulted in a doubling of auto loan debt over the last decade and a notable surge in the number of drivers who are “upside down”— owing more money than their cars are worth. But, again, the pain is not evenly distributed. Auto financing companies often charge nonwhite consumers higher interest rates than white consumers, as do insurers.

Formerly incarcerated buyers whose credit scores are depressed from inactivity are especially red meat to dealers and predatory lenders. In our research, we spoke to many such buyers who found it easier, upon release from prison, to acquire expensive cars than to secure an affordable apartment. Some, like LeMarcus, a Black Brooklynite (whose name has been changed to protect his privacy under ethical research guidelines), discovered that loans were readily available for a luxury vehicle but not for the more practical car he wanted. Even with friends and family willing to help him with a down payment, after he spent roughly five years in prison, his credit score made it impossible to get a Honda or “a regular car.” Instead, relying on a friend to co-sign a loan, he was offered a high-interest loan on a pre-owned Mercedes E350. LeMarcus knew it was a bad deal, but the dealer told him the bank that would have financed a Honda “wanted a more solid foundation, good credit, income was showing more,” but that to finance the Mercedes, it “was actually willing to work with the people with lower credit and lower down payments.” We interviewed many other formerly incarcerated people who followed a similar path, only to see their cars repossessed.

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LeMarcus was “car rich, cash poor,” a common and precarious condition that can have serious legal consequences for low-income drivers, as can something as simple as a speeding ticket. A $200 ticket is a meaningless deterrent to a hedge fund manager from Greenwich, Conn., who is pulled over on the way to the golf club, but it could be a devastating blow to those who mow the fairways at the same club. If they cannot pay promptly, they will face cascading penalties. If they cannot take a day off work to appear in court, they risk a bench warrant or loss of their license for debt delinquency. Judges in local courts routinely skirt the law of the land (in Supreme Court decisions like Bearden v. Georgia and Timbs v. Indiana) by disregarding the offender’s ability to pay traffic debt. At the request of collection agencies, they also issue arrest or contempt warrants for failure to appear in court on unpaid auto loan debts. With few other options to travel to work, millions of Americans make the choice to continue driving even without a license, which means their next traffic stop may land them in jail.

The pathway that leads from a simple traffic fine to financial insolvency or detention is increasingly crowded because of the spread of revenue policing intended to generate income from traffic tickets, court fees and asset forfeiture. Fiscally squeezed by austerity policies, officials extract the funds from those least able to pay. This is not only an awful way to fund governments; it is also a form of backdoor, regressive taxation that circumvents voters’ input.

Deadly traffic stops, racially biased predatory lending and revenue policing have all come under public scrutiny of late, but typically they are viewed as distinct realms of injustice, rather than as the interlocking systems that they are. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it: A traffic stop can result in fines or arrest; time behind bars can result in repossession or a low credit score; a low score results in more debt and less ability to pay fines, fees and surcharges. Championed as a kind of liberation, car ownership — all but mandatory in most parts of the country — has for many become a vehicle of capture and control.

Industry boosters promise us that technological advances like on-demand transport, self-driving electric vehicles and artificial intelligence-powered traffic cameras will smooth out the human errors that lead to discrimination, and that car-sharing will reduce the runaway costs of ownership. But no combination of apps and cloud-based solutions can ensure that the dealerships, local municipalities, courts and prison industries will be willing to give up the steady income they derive from shaking down motorists.

Aside from the profound need for accessible public transportation, what could help? Withdraw armed police officers from traffic duties, just as they have been from parking and tollbooth enforcement in many jurisdictions. Introduce income-graduated traffic fines. Regulate auto lending with strict interest caps and steep penalties for concealing fees and add-ons and for other well-known dealership scams. Crack down hard on the widespread use of revenue policing. And close the back door to debtors’ prisons by ending the use of arrest warrants in debt collection cases. Without determined public action along these lines, technological advances often end up reproducing deeply rooted prejudices. As Malcolm X wisely said, “Racism is like a Cadillac; they bring out a new model every year.”

Andrew Ross and Julie Livingston are professors at New York University, members of its Prison Education Program Research Lab and authors of the book “Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt, and Carcerality.”

[greatwesternway]

I love that the engines visit each other, it's so cute! What does everyone at the MSI think about Pilot and 2903 coming to their museum? 🤭

999 and Pioneer like it, obviously.

In fact, it's 999 and 2903's existing relationship that was the real reason these visits started. Prior to 2903's move to the IRM, both museums would have been wary of sending their prize exhibits offsite. However, around this time, Pilot was invited to attend a few offsite events so the feasibility and safety of having an engine leave the property was tested. Once proven, the idea of entrusting the other museum with their engine for the day so that they could foster and maintain their relationships seemed less daunting.

A lot of the secondary cast also hoped those Zephyrs would get together if they were seeing each other in person more often. There was a lot of meddling going on about it. The museum itself was also an interference. Pilot is the rare engine who actually does have a curiosity about things outside his experience and so bringing him to the MSI meant he was spending a lot of time actually looking at things and learning about stuff. Go figure.

U-505 finds 2903's returns to the museum stressful, but he's no slouch at making himself scarce. Pilot however finds U-505 fascinating and makes a point of seeking him out. He doesn't want to offend Pioneer's letter friend (and he likes Pilot besides) so he can't make himself too difficult to find. Luckily, it's a big museum and U-505 knows where he can generally expect 2903 to be so as to not be there himself.

The little planes love when 2903 and Pilot visit. Once 2903 has topped up on facetime with 999, he's happy to take the planes up on an invitation to play. Pilot will sometimes play too, but he's a little too careful about getting any more dents in his fluting to really throw in.

The Rocket and Wright Flyer replicas like seeing 2903 nowadays just because he's really come into his own at the IRM. They've known him since the 60's, but he was always out of his element here. He seems a lot more content with his lot in life now and they're happy to get the follow up on that story. They also think Pilot's a nice young engine (even though he's only ten years younger than them at the most).

[twh-news]

Is There A World For ‘Loki’ Beyond Season 2? EP Kevin Wright Sheds Light

Warning: the following interview contains spoilers about tonight’s first episode of season 2 of Loki

After Loki’s amiga Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) opted to kill He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) spurring multiple nefarious versions of the newbie villain across several timelines, Loki was sent back to where it all started: the bureaucratic, office grind of the TVA — but a very different one; one where his new best friend Mobius (Owen Wilson) doesn’t recognize him. Out of touch with his soulmate, Loki is trying to find his way back to her. However, like Chicken Little, he’s trying to tell everybody that the sky is falling; that Kang the Conqueror is coming their way. We talk with Marvel executive and Loki season 2 EP Kevin Wright, who is with the series from start to finish, script to post, about the daunting task of living up to what was a spectacular season one.

EP and director Kate Herron left some big shoes to fill on Loki season one and I was shocked when she told Deadline she would not be returning for season 2. What went on there?

Kevin Wright: Throughout season one, I was constantly teasing her with, ‘Hey, when we come back for season two,’ and she said she made it very clear through shooting, she’s like, ‘This one’s it’ and I think it was purely from the…She really put everything into it, and look, COVID was right in the middle of shooting.

So, it was an even longer commitment than she had initially even signed up for, and while that was happening and while we were shut down, she was editing, and we were working together through that. I think she felt like she really put her heart and soul into it, and she wanted to be able to hand the storytelling reins over to other filmmakers, and her fingerprints are certainly on it, and she was somebody that, when we first met her, knew she was fully aligned with what we wanted to make.

So she departs, who do you go to from there? The new directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead? Were they driving the ship on season 2?

KW: There was a little bit of downtime. Before they even came on, (EP & star) Tom (Hiddleston) and I kind of recalibrated. Figured out what we wanted this new season to be. We spent a lot of time developing that. Eric Martin had come on roughly around additional photography on season one as our season two kind of lead writer, and so, the three of us just starting building out story.

And there was a long stretch of just writers’ room, developing these scripts, figuring out what it was going to be, while we figured out where we would go in the directing front. Pretty early on, we knew we were going to bump up (production designer) Kasra Farahani to direct, as well. He was with us in the writers’ room, so he had already taken on a big creative role there and had so much to do with the world-building in season one. (VFX Supervisor) Dan DeLeeuw even kind of came on fairly early just because he was with us in that post-production process of season one. And he’s such a storied brain, we brought him in, but yeah, we needed that captain. I had met with Justin and Aaron. I brought them into the studio before season one. We had met generally. I really liked them for Loki. We had already brought on Kate, and so we passed them off to another project, which ended up not working out, either, and then they ended up becoming Moon Knight.

So, they were guys who were in our system, that we liked and had been in the periphery of Loki, and while they were doing additional photography for Moon Knight, I recruited Kevin Feige, the big guns, to go in there and visit them on set and say, ‘Hey, we want you to take the reins of Loki and come in on that.’ So, it was like a meandering process, but it had felt like they were eventually going to come on and work on this.

Loki season one is perfect television in the Mr. Robot sense of the word. Coming off season one, what were the challenges? You’ve established this great world, great villain in Jonathan Majors’ He Who Remains – was it a high bar to jump?

KW: Yes. Incredibly high bar. Partially, though, one of the biggest challenges was, early on, Tom and I just talking about not only was season one good, and then people liked it, which is not a given. We had a really great time making it, and it was a crazy time in the world, but it was, like, a really exciting, happy process for everybody involved, and coming back for a season two did feel a little bit like, well, how do we capture that lightning in a bottle again?

And so, we had a lot of conversations about we can’t just come back and try to play the hits and do what we did in season one, because even if we recapture it and do that again, it won’t be fulfilling, and I think there was a sense of we built something really cool, and the audience went along with it. It was big sci-fi weird stuff, and if they have bought it, it felt like we had a lot of, then, freedom to go further and deeper with these characters and not fast-forward. Like, it had this great cliffhanger.

Let’s pick up in that: what is the drama and the stakes of what is happening with Loki in the TVA with Sylvie? And I think anything that could be scary about picking up in a new season like this goes away when everybody just starts going, what is right for these characters? We’re not trying to build some bigger Marvel arc. We’re not trying to do this. If we’re true to these characters, we will deliver on what people liked about season one, and we can build the world out and dive deeper into these characters and their drama.

So, tonight we see that there’s cacophony. Loki returns to the TVA, Mobius forgets him. Sylvie’s lost. However, the TVA was destroyed in season one, and we come back to place where it’s still in existence. Was this just the best place to start with the mishegoss of timelines?

KW: I think, for us, the exciting thing then was, in that chaos of multiverse, to be able to play with those first few minutes of season two, being loose footing for Loki, trying to make sense of what is happening. Is this a different TVA, which shouldn’t make sense, because it’s outside of time? So, it’s not like it’s a different reality. Is this ours? Why don’t they remember him then?

And I think it just gave us a groundwork. We wanted to come in and not do the same thing in season two. We had a high bar that we wanted to hit, and a cyclical story structure is hard to do. Eric, our writer, even said, I think we can pull this off, but it’s going to be messy for a while, while we figure it out. That opening allowed us the tools and the groundwork to start telling this time-looping narrative, and it was sort of the mechanism to kind of get this whole thing rolling. That just gave us a lot of character drama.

Now Sylvie – we see her for a minute toward the end of episode one. That’s Loki looking into the future…

KW: Yeah. So, in the context of that, he’s been slipping in the past and to the present, and in that moment, he has slipped into the future, and so, he is seeing something in Sylvie that has yet to happen for him on his personal timeline, that will loop back around again.

Does Loki season 2 like other Marvel series bridge to another big movie in the near future? Clearly, the next Avengers: Kang Dynasty, but are there others?

KW: Nothing that I could say in the near future. The implications will ripple into other projects, though, certainly, and the TVA is an organization that will continue to have stories to tell, which is one of the exciting things about it to us.

Is there an arc here? Do you guys have, like, a five-season plan, a three-season plan, or do you take it season by season?

KW: We take it season by season, and there are certainly things that Tom and I and other casts have talked about of where we see this going, and I know there’s some excitement for that internally, but just from a storytelling standpoint, I think we always conceived of seasons 1 and 2 as a whole. That these are two chapters of the same book, and that season two is finishing that book, and there are other stories to be told there, but I think they would be new books, if that’s not too coy.

Are we going to be just as shocked as we were at the end of season one? I mean, season one was jaw-dropping.

I hope so, but what I will say is it’s not a cliffhanger. We want to be able to deliver real fulfillment in what we’re doing, but I do think it’ll be exciting and unexpected and everything people like about this show.

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