“Twilight of the Gods” interview: Zack Snyder on Sigrid, Loki and the grumpy Thor

“I fear no gods,” says Sigrid, the protagonist in Götterdämmerung. But it’s clear that we should be a little afraid after watching the series.

When the gods do wrong, Twilight of the Gods isn’t afraid to call them out. That’s a conscious move when you’ve spent years studying Norse mythology, and 2D animation was the right medium to tell this story on an adult level. The TV-MA-rated animated series, which premieres on Netflix on September 19, features blood, sex, and emotional outbursts.

Created by Zack Snyder, Jay Oliva and Eric Carrasco, the series introduces Leif, a human king who falls in love with the warrior Sigrid after she saves his life. An unexpected visit from Thor turns their wedding into a deadly event and leaves the half-giant bride bent on revenge. The two assemble a team with different skills and set out to take on the gods.

Sigrid is voiced by Sylvia Hoeks, with Stuart Martin as Leif. The cast also includes Paterson Joseph as Loki, Pilou Asbæk as Thor, Peter Stormare as Ulfr, Jamie Clayton as Seid-Kona, Rahul Kohli as Egill, Hjort Sørensen as Hervor, Kristofer Hivju as Andvari and John Noble as Odin.

Thor is a brutal menace whose handling of Mjolnir is anything but kind (an unusual rendition of MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” emphasizes this in the show). Loki is the ever-present trickster, but with emotional facets, and Odin is… Odin.

CNET spoke with Snyder and executive producer Wesley Coller ahead of the series premiere about how the series came together, its characters and how deep the ancient mythology runs. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation – warning, it contains potential spoilers.

Q: Xilam Animation worked on this project. According to the trailers, some fans compare the 2D art style of this show to Samurai Jack or Wolfwalkers. Can you talk about the inspiration behind the animation aesthetic?
Snyder: I think the main inspiration was to get as much of a 2D look as possible and have Xilam – Xilam is a fantastic animation studio – do the design themselves. So all the character design and everything else was done here in Pasadena. Then once we settled on the look and sent it to Xilam to animate, we went for a complete 2D freak show. And they really answered our call incredibly well. The animators are so good and the intricacies of the performance are so beautiful that I’m really glad we were able to get them on the show because it’s incredible.

I read that you started working on it during the pandemic. Were there any challenges in implementing it?
Snyder: Yeah, there were big challenges. The pandemic did slow us down a little bit, but I feel like we kept evolving. We fought through it and it worked out well in the end. I think we did some recordings during the pandemic and some after the fact. Some people had to record at home and some they were able to come in and see them in the studio in a second session, which was nice. These actors are all over the world, so it was kind of great in that respect.

Coller: I think at the beginning it was about learning how to navigate this remote world that we were all still exploring at the time. But I think the process probably translates best to a remote version in a lot of ways. So we just had to embrace it. And I think in the end it was great to get people back in the studio at that point and do things in person. It was definitely a journey.

This series really delves deep into Norse mythology – and even delves into the politics between the Aesir and Vanir. How much time did the entire creative team spend researching some of these Old Norse myths?
Snyder: It took me literally years to develop the plot and the flow of the story. One of our writers, Peter Aperlo, wrote a book on Norse mythology, so he had a deep knowledge of Norse mythology. I had what I thought was a pretty good knowledge of Norse mythology – but when you get around these scholars, you think, “Oh, man.” Because I’m always learning, it was fun, and it was fun to learn with everyone.

But I think we had our human story, and that allowed us to infuse Sigrid’s story with a pretty strong mythology. From a basic storytelling perspective, we could say, “Something terrible happens to our main character. She wants revenge, so she puts together a team of warriors to get that revenge.” From a basic plot mechanism perspective, it’s pretty simple. But the Norse aspects are so weird and complicated and bizarre that they make the show really fun and crazy. And I love all that stuff.

We really haven’t seen this version of a certain god of thunder, Thor, all that often. The mythical Thor has a hot temper but loves people. The Thor of this series is a little different. How did you come up with this version of him?
Snyder: Norse mythology is very adult-oriented, and Thor is a famous giant killer. He loves killing giants; in mythology, he’s always killing giants. We knew he struggled with daddy issues, and he’s particularly powerful. The combination of those things could lead to something. Because Thor is about the ego. Of course, it would be a problem if you were a god, a thunder god, and especially a warrior god – you could really end up getting a little too self-absorbed. That’s kind of what our Thor is like.

Let’s talk about Sigrid. She’s the main character and despite her relationship with the love of her life here, she’s pretty much only had one focus for most of this series. She’s one of the warriors we meet. Can you tell us how you built her from the ground up?
Snyder: I love the relationship between Sigrid and Leif, and how devoted he is to her and how much he just loves her madly and how much she loves him. But family is so important and family defines us. And I think in her case, she’s kind of overcompensated for this quest for revenge that she’s on. She’s kind of lost a part of herself, and sometimes things that you take for granted that are right in front of you are the “why” of everything. That’s what happens to our Sigrid a little bit in this quest. I think she discovers that she’s sacrificing what she loves for this mad quest for revenge that she’s on. In the end, she kind of learns – spoiler alert – probably a little too late, but we’ll see.

Coller: Like any character you want to connect with – I think for me it’s the fact that we’ve all been through these things, that we’ve encountered something that becomes a driving force in that moment that wants a reaction from us. Or it makes us react, as opposed to more of a considered action; something that’s less reactive. When you can identify with a character like that – we’ve all been through that – and then also see the price that she pays on the road to revenge, I think that makes her a very relatable character that we can all see a little bit of ourselves in. But as an audience, you’re also curious to see if she backs out at some point or if she sees it through to the end.

This portrayal of Loki was truly unique. What was the idea behind it?
Snyder: Loki is obviously the trickster pulling the strings behind the scenes. We also wanted to uncover the subtleties and nuances that lead him to make his decisions, like what happens to his children and how he blames Thor. You get a kind of sense of why they fight and why there’s a rivalry. Of course, it’s not black and white. Neither of them is without blame.

Twilight of the Gods is another term for Ragnarök. Without giving too much away, what can you tell us about the general meaning of this term for everyone involved in this series?
Snyder: We wanted to do a show that was building toward Ragnarok; we would get there eventually. But we didn’t want to jump right into Ragnarok because we thought it would be fun to be in the day-to-day life of normal Norse mythology without the endgame of Ragnarok looming over us. We knew we had our eye on that, and that’s why there was that reference to Ragnarok in the concept of Twilight of the Gods.