Tom Hiddleston & Elizabeth Olsen Are Getting Their Own Loki & Scarlet Witch TV Shows

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is expanding to television like never before. For the first time, Marvel will be making TV shows that directly spin off from its Avengers movies, and apparently, the studio already has the first two heroes it wants to transport to television in mind. Loki and Scarlet Witch are getting their own TV shows soon, according to Variety, and unlike other Marvel television shows, movie actors Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen are expected to continue playing the characters on the small screen.

Although the only two shows we know about now center on Loki and Scarlet Witch, Marvel is reportedly working on several additional shows that will also star heroes from the Avengers film franchise. These shows will all premiere on Disney's upcoming streaming service, which is slated to go online at some point in late 2019. And it is not only the stars that will differ these new shows from Marvel's other TV shows on Netflix, ABC, and Freeform — the Loki, Scarlet Witch, and other planned streaming series will reportedly get a much bigger budget to work with, closer to the finances of the Avengers movies. The shows are expected to run about six to eight episodes, with MCU mastermind Kevin Feige taking a hands-on role in development.

Best bet is that these Loki and Scarlet Witch series will be origin stories for the two heroes, especially since Loki was recently killed in the first few moments of this summer's Avengers: Infinity War and Scarlet Witch's present-day story will continue on in Avengers 4 and probably future films after that.

For Loki, there is a rich backstory to delve into that has not been fully explored by the Avengers or Thor movies. Loki was born as the son of the king and queen of the Frost Giants, but due to his unusually small size, he was a disappointment to his father and ostracized by all of the other Frost Giants as a child. Looking for a way out, Loki managed to trick the Asgardian king Odin into adopting him after Odin killed his father, but he became ostracized once again on Asgard, which valued his new brother Thor's obvious physical strength over Loki's more subtle gifts of deception. As Loki became more and more adept at sorcery, he dubbed himself the God of Mischief and began to get back at those who slighted him through magical trickery.

Scarlet Witch's backstory has been touched on already in the MCU, but could still be further explored in a TV series. She and her twin brother Pietro Maximoff (later known as Quicksilver) had a particularly brutal childhood, orphaned and experimented on until they gained mutant superpowers. The two used their powers to live off the land in central Europe for years before eventually joining Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to fight against the X-Men, and later change their ways to fight alongside the Avengers.

And it will also be exciting to see which other Marvel heroes might get TV shows on the Disney streaming service. These series won't be here until at least late 2019, though, so we have a lot of waiting to do.