Mobius" Loki Season 2 Final Scene Nearly Caused Major Problem, Reveals Cinematographer: "I Tried To Push Back"

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Summary

Cinematographer Isaac Bauman reveals the challenges of shooting Mobius' final scene in the Loki season 2 finale due to the unpredictability of natural light in daytime exteriors.
Despite concerns, Bauman and the directors stuck with the decision to shoot the scene as a day exterior, and it ultimately turned out well.
The final scene represents the culmination of Mobius' character arc, with him taking agency over his own life and charting his own path, leading to a happy ending for the character.

Though proving an emotional send-off for the character, cinematographer Isaac Bauman reveals Mobius' final scene in the Loki season 2 finale nearly caused a major issue. After Tom Hiddleston's eponymous God of Mischief destroyed the Temporal Loom and took his new place watching over the multiverse branches, Owen Wilson's Time Variance Authority agent elected to retire, leaving Wunmi Mosaku's B-15 to lead the TVA in their new objective to monitor all Kang variants. Initially visiting his old home and having a conversation with Sophia Di Martino's Sylvie, Mobius heads off to an unknown place on the timeline.
During an interview with Screen Rant, Bauman opened up about shooting Mobius' final scene in the Loki season 2 finale. The cinematographer revealed that the sequence actually prove to cause some trouble in dealing with the exterior daytime nature of the shoot, to which he initially pushed back on, though ultimately stayed true to directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's vision for the moment, resulting in him and his team becoming "a f----ng army battalion" to get it just right. See what Bauman explained below:

Yeah, you know, shooting day exteriors is always the most high-pressure scenario for a lot of cinematographers. It's easy in the sense that the light's already there, but it's hard in the sense that your project is supposed to have a very particular look, and you're not in control at all of the sun's doing when you shoot the scene. It could be overcast, could be sunny, you might be running behind, you might be ahead, you might start shooting the sequence hours earlier than you thought or hours later than you planned. You're really out of control in that type of situation. I'm going to be really honest here, knowing that — I think that was scripted in the draft we shot as the last scene. There's some stuff you see after that that was added and taken from other parts, but that's actually the last real scene in the show, that scene between Mobius and Sylvie with dialogue. Knowing that it was a day exterior was very concerning to me, I was like, "Guys, the last scene of the season is a day exterior, you understand that I have no control over what happens, right? We're just really rolling the dice here with this scene."
But it just felt right to everyone. I tried to push back, but it really felt right. And they turned out to be right, by the way, I'm glad we shot it as a day exterior. But, we did what you usually do when you have an important day exterior, which was ask to schedule it at the end of the day, so the light is pretty as possible. Generally, the lower the sun gets, the more it cuts through trees and stuff and creates shadows, and it gets warmer and more golden, and it comes in in a way that hits people's faces and eyes in a more flattering way than when it's higher. So, we asked to schedule it near the end of the day, and then the rest of it was just kind of up to fate. It turned out really well, and we were very smart about which shots we shot in which order, because you can kind of see the sun's gonna be behind them, it's gonna be here at this point then, and this point a little bit later on.
We really worked with it on the day. Although that shot of him looking straight-on at the house with the sky behind him, that was totally lit, the sun wasn't hitting his face, that's an HMI through diffusion, which I almost never do. I take pride on never lighting anything outside, but in this case, we really had to — you needed that sunlight on his face there, right? Aside from that shot, every other shot is natural sunlight, totally natural, raw, no diffusion, nothing bouncing around, aside from that front-on close-up of Mobius with the blue sky, every single shot totally au natural. The thing that was the scariest was just that last shot, the last shot we shot that day, and the last shot in the sequence, I believe, is that shot from behind him looking at the house where the house is out of focus in the background.
It's just super poetic and beautiful, and has the perfect light. So that shot, the crew hustled faster than they did the entire shoot. There's 300 people on the crew, we're shooting a Marvel production, we're not that type of loose, snappy, run-and-gun style outfit at all. We are a f----ng army battalion, and moving is a serious endeavor. The amount of people and equipment that need to move to open up something that was previously occupied. But this crew, they understood what we were trying to do, and people were actually hustling for the first and only time for 90 days to get that shot. [Laughs] And we got it.

Why Mobius' Loki Season 2 Finale Scene Was Perfect Close With much of Loki season 2 seeing the idea of the TVA agents wanting to reclaim their lives on the timeline, Mobius remained an interesting outlier as he sought to instead protect the only home he genuinely knew. In addition to allowing for further multiversal adventures between Hiddleston and Wilson, it allowed for an interesting arc and exploration of the show's central theme of free will and the better good, especially after Mobius is confronted with the nature of his former life, which involved being a single dad.
The final scene itself is the ultimate culmination of this character arc, with Mobius finally taking agency over his own life and charting his own path. While it's unclear whether this means returning to the TVA or replacing his variant should the Loki that initially recruited him to stop the multiverse's crumbling comes along, his being able to make his own choices proves a meaningful development. Executive producer Kevin Wright echoed this to Screen Rant, feeling that Mobius' ending was ultimately a happy one, even in spite of losing one of his closest friends:
I think it is happy in the sense that he is overcoming a personal obstacle, and where he decides to go with that is a new story. I think we wanted to be keen not to feel like we're starting a new story at the end of our show, so that it's like, "Ha ha, now you gotta watch whatever." I think we wanted it to feel like a closed completion, but leave our characters' world with ways to go with other stories. Maybe he stays down there, maybe all he needed to do was take a look at it, and now it's like, as he was saying to B-15, "I just need to know what we've been fighting for all this time."
While it may have proven challenging to film, the actual nature of Mobius' final scene in the Loki season 2 finale is further fitting for the character. With the sun shining brightly on him, it's left to the audiences' own interpretation whether this is the sun setting or the sun rising, both of which apply nicely to the character's future as he closes the chapter on a big portion of his life and gets to ride off knowing things are safe for the time being. Additionally, with Kang's threat still somewhat looming over the multiverse, the next chapter could see him armed and ready to save his friends.
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