Tom Hiddleston Admits That Loki’s Knife Flip Was Invented By Pure ‘Chance’ While Making ‘Thor: Ragnarok’

After Loki Episode 5 called into question the Trickster God’s use of knives in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Richard E. Grant’s Old Loki isn’t a fan of them), a new interview with Tom Hiddleston explains how daggers became a key ingredient of Loki’s live-action canon. While revealing that the knives were added to Loki’s repertoire in the first Thor movie thanks to director Kevin Branagh wanting to emphasize the God of Mischief’s fighting style as incredibly hard to pin down, “like a sprite or as unpredictable as the wind,” the daggers really cemented themselves following the badass knife flip during the final battle in Thor: Ragnarok.

According to Hiddleston, the now signature move was purely a product of chance and not wanting to stand around “like a lemon” while co-star Idris Elba finished his choreography. Via Entertainment Weekly:

Definitely Idris was there, and it was a two-shot of us fighting these fantastic athletes that are the stunt guys. And I ran out of choreography. Basically, I think I finished my moves before Idris, and he was still rolling, and I didn’t want to just be standing there like a lemon, not doing anything interesting. So I just flipped the knives, and caught them by chance.”

He continued: “And Idris laughed about it. We watched it back. He was [like], ‘Oh, god, he’s gone and done a knife flip at the end of it.'”

After pulling off the move for Ragnarok, Hiddleston revealed that he hasn’t been able to do it since, even after practicing with wooden spoons. “So it was one of those things, but lightning never strikes twice.”