Let’s Talk About Tom Hiddleston’s Loki Wigs in the MCU- Good, Bad, Worse

19 films into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it seems like the one thing Marvel Studios can’t get right (and has actually gotten worse) is Tom Hiddleston‘s Loki wigs.  Seriously. When the first Thor film hit in 2011, the shorter-hair on the God of Lies and Mischief looked pretty good- downright natural and easy.

“I remember when I was cast as Loki for the very first time almost 10 years ago,” Hiddleston said. “Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, called me into his office to say congratulations, and one of the first things he said was, ‘Let me talk to you about Avengers.’ And I thought I had just been cast in Thor [not something that far down the line]. And he’s told me the dream he had to build this fleet of films, this Marvel Cinematic Universe that was culminating in Avengers.”

Kenneth Branagh and Hiddleston were performing in a West End stage production of “Ivanov” when it was announced that Branagh would be directing Thor. Hiddleston, while speaking at the At the 2010 Empire Movie Con, recalled one night when as a joke, he burst into Branagh’s dressing room wielding an empty plastic container from a water cooler like Mjölnir, shouting “Come on, Ken, what do you think!?”

Brannagh’s “You never know, darling, stranger things have happened,” reported response seems to have at least held water, as two months later Hiddleston was auditioning for Thor.  Yes, he auditioned for Thor first, before eventually becoming Loki.

Hiddleston described his role of Loki as “a comic book, but nastier version, of King Lear’s Edmund,”   which totally works, considering Brannagh himself said he wanted the first Thor film to be a comic-book take on Shakespeare’s “Henry V” (which we know he loves).

Anyhow, on to the wigs.

We’ll start with the first Loki film appearance and work our way up in time.

The first time we meet Loki is in Thor, which has it’s share of terrible hair and makeup.  Namely, WHY ARE EVERYONE’S EYEBROWS SO BAD?! It’s obvious they didn’t know what they were doing with Chris Hemsworth‘s look yet, the overly frosted blonde not the best look.

But Loki looks pretty good with the shorter hairstyle, which gets hidden halfway through by his war helm.

Then we get to the first Avengers film, with an angry Loki making trouble for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, while under the control of Thanos.

In jumping to his next MCU appearance in Thor: The Dark World,  the wig at least attempts to follow Tom’s natural hairline. It’s also the first use of Loki sideburns, which aren’t as dark and thick as the more recent versions.

We also get some pretty great emotional scenes from Hiddleston, his sorrow over the loss of Frigga, and another example of a more natural styling for his hair.

In Thor: Ragnarok, things start to get real bad.  It’s partially the makeup- making a naturally pale actor even-moreso in the technicolor backgrounds and sequences.  It’s worse if you’re watching it in high def and/or 4K.

And then we get to the most recent film, Avengers: Infinity War. Without spoilers, we know that Loki has a scene in Infinity War, as seen in the trailers.

Here, he holds (our favorite MCU drinking word) the Tesseract, and you can just barely see his wig.  I’ll tell you right now, there is a closeup on him after this moment where it’s dreadfully obvious how poorly done the wig is.  Namely, the sideburns.  They look like a TOTALLY different color than the base wig, a shockingly bad oversight on the normally on top of it hair and makeup team.

Nitpicking, sure, but you’d think that things would get BETTER, not worse.  Nothing against the teams who do such amazing work on the insane number of featured cast in the films, the advent of higher res home-theater systems no doubt are playing into this noticeable thing.

What do you think, which look for Hiddles is better or worse, and why?