Loretta Willard

* Adult
* Older
* Youth

"*One day, years from now, you'll hear that a little girl is looking for her mother and you'll say these same, half-forgotten words.*"
—Loretta Willard to her younger self
**Loretta Willard** is a character in the Prime Video series *Tales from the Loop*, portrayed by Rebecca Hall and by Abby Ryder Fortson in her youth. She is a gifted physicist. She is married to George Willard and has two children, her eldest son, Jakob and her younger son, Cole. She has always resented her father-in-law, Russ Willard, who founded the Mercer Center for Experimental Physics, or "the Loop", at which she works.

## Personality

Loretta is utterly driven by her work at the Loop. She has an obsession with grand, philosophical questions and is motivated by a profound trauma in her youth that she is trying to get over.

## History

### A young girl

As a young girl, she attended the Mercer Public School in Mercer, Ohio with a number of other children, in a class taught by Sarah. Her surname started with "N." One day, after school, she came home and saw her mother, Alma, arguing with a man, Russ Willard. He told her that there was a right and a wrong way to pursue answers and she couldn't just take a piece of "the Eclipse" without anyone noticing. She also heard him tell her that her daughter needed a mother and instead she was putting her in danger. Alma replied that Loretta could take care of herself. She then watched as Alma ordered Russ out of their home and kicked things in a rage, then fled when she spotted her.

That evening, she made dinner and played chess with her mother over dinner. She asked her mother why the man was mad at her and she replied that he was mad because she took something. She noted that she had told her she should never steal, that it's wrong. Alma replied that she didn't steal it, that she simply "obtained" it. Loretta asked if she would give it back and she replied that she would eventually, but she needed it first for an experiment. Loretta asked if she could help, but she said that it was too dangerous. She then asked if the thing she had obtained was from "underground," asking her what she did "down there." Alma told her that she wouldn't understand, but Loretta replied that she would. Alma told her that perhaps one day she would and that it would really be something, the two of them working together at the Loop. Loretta said that she would like that and Alma noted that she didn't even know what they would be doing. Loretta said that it didn't matter because they'd be together. Alma smiled, agreeing that they would, and they continued their chess game.

### A missing mother

That evening, Loretta peeked through the door of her mother's study and watched her mother sitting before a strange light. The light pulsed and went dark and then the study's window shattered Loretta then ran outside of the home in fright.

The next morning, she took out the garbage before going to school. Her teacher handed back a math test that she and her fellow students had taken the previous day. She told Loretta that her mother would be proud and handed back her test, on which she had gotten an A, 30/30 marks. After school, she waited at the Loop entrance with her test expecting her mother to come out with the other workers, but she did not appear. She went home and dragged the garbage can back, but when she looked, her home was not there. The only thing remaining was a small black object sitting in the snowy field, the piece of the Eclipse taken by Alma.

She took the piece of the Eclipse and shouted out for her mother, then heard a thudding in the distance. She chased after it into the woods, but instead of finding her mother, found a young boy throwing snowballs at a robot. She asked him what he was doing and he replied that it was good luck if you hit it in the eye. She told him to stop, asking him how he would like to be picked on. He replied that it was just a robot and she left, continuing to shout out her mother's name. He chased after her, asking if she ever wondered where robots came from, that his brother said it's part of what they do "underground." She told him to leave her alone, but he asked what she was doing. She said that she was looking for someone. He asked her who, but she told him that she didn't need his help. They reached a house at the end of the woods. He told her that she didn't want to go into it, that it was haunted.

She went in anyway and he followed. Instead, they discovered a highly strange phenomenon - snow that was falling upward through a hole in the house's roof. Cole commented that he told her it was haunted. He asked her again who she was looking for and she told him that she was looking for her mother. She had a flashback of her mother singing and he told her that he could help her find her. They left the field and returned to the place where Loretta's house was, Cole commenting that he had never seen it. He asked if her mother worked underground, telling her that his parents do as well. He suggested they might know where her mother was, so they went to his place. When, however, they tried to speak with his mother, she dismissed them, as she was having an important conversation with Cole's grandfather. Cole told Loretta that he would show her his room instead. He introduced Loretta to his brother, telling him that she was looking for her mother. Jakob asked if he had told their mother, and he replied "sort of." Jakob showed them both a book about black holes.

Loretta ran out of the room and Cole followed, asking where she was going. She told him she had to keep looking. She then showed him the piece of the Eclipse, explaining that Alma took it from underground. He marveled as to what material it was made of and then released it, and it floated in mid-air. She grabbed the piece out of the air and he told her that he was coming with her.

### The beating heart of the Loop

Their search led them them first to the Loop and then to the Mercer Tavern. Cole was shocked that Loretta would go in, but she did so anyway. The bartender, Logan, asked whether she could help her. A woman then entered the tavern and Loretta hugged her, believing her to be her mother. She then ran out when she saw that the woman was not her mother. The woman was, in fact, Cole's mother.

Back at Cole's house, Loretta ended up in the study of Cole's mothers. There, she found among the papers a test paper that was an exact match of a test that she had taken at school and gotten a perfect grade on. She returned to the "haunted" house from before. At the house, Cole's mother came and found her. She revealed to her the truth: that they were one and the same. Somehow, the young Loretta had been transferred through time. Although she would never find her mother, she would grow up and have a family of her own. One day, she would hear that a young girl was looking for her mother and say the half-forgotten words she had heard so many years before. The two traveled to the Loop, where the young Loretta replaced the piece of it that had been taken by Alma so long ago, then vanished back into the past. Back at her home, the adult Loretta told her son Cole that her mother had left her when she was his age, but that she would always be there for him.

### Family life

Over dinner, she spoke with her older son, Jakob, about working at the Loop after leaving high school. Jakob seemed non-committal about what he wanted to do at the Loop, and she told him that he didn't have to specialize right away. Jakob spoke of his interest in drawing, but both she and her husband George considered it a hobby, not realizing that he had interest in pursuing it as a career. Later, she was happy when, during another dinner-table conversation, he stated that he wanted to start at the Loop after graduating and that he didn't like to draw anymore. She told him that he was making the right choice, unaware that she was actually speaking with Danny Jannson, who had swapped bodies with Jakob and that her son's consciousness was now trapped inside a robot.

She learned sad news in a family conversation when her father-in-law, Russ Willard, revealed that he had gotten bad news from his doctor and did not have long to live. Shocked by the news, she asked what she could do, but Russ told her that there was nothing that could be done. Later, at the Loop, they talked about future plans. He told her that he had never taken a sick day in his life and she quipped that he had been saving them all up. She pointed out a photo of him when he was 25, asking if it felt like a long time. "Blink of an eye," he replied. He expressed regret at not attending her and George's wedding and asked if the Loop was really what she always wanted. She replied that it was and he passed the torch to her, telling her that he had spoken with the board and it was hers if she wanted it. He then offered her some advice - that she should take a sick day now and then, as she would wonder where all of the time and potential went, and it would be gone in the blink of an eye.

Not long after this, Russ collapsed at home and was hospitalized, his condition serious. Sometime after this, Loretta discovered her son Cole standing before the Eclipse, thinking that perhaps he could somehow use it to save his grandfather. She told him that while Russ had built the Loop to do many things, but what he wanted wasn't one of them. Not long after this, she talked with her husband at the dinner table at home, where he made the unfortunate comment "I just wish he would die already," which was overheard by Cole. Not long after this, Russ did die, and she attended a memorial service for him along with the rest of the family.

She and George had dinner with Gaddis, a security guard who worked for the Loop. She explained to George that Gaddis was a bird-watcher. When George asked if Gaddis was seeing anyone, she commented that he had always been very picky, though he felt that he simply had "discerning tastes." After dinner, she and Gaddis talked briefly as he headed to his car. He commented that it must be nice for her to come home and have the lights on because someone was there, but she replied that nothing's perfect.

She heard her husband talking in his sleep, but did not know that he was having nightmares about his experience on a mysterious island off the coast of Mercer and an encounter with the android known as the Vagabond. Later, he mentioned to her that he had never told their sons about how he had lost his arm and had it replaced with a mechanical arm. She suggested that he tell them, that it didn't have to be such a mystery that a snake bite went septic, not knowing the truth about what had happened to him on the island.

### "Told you I'd always be here for you."

Her older son, Jakob, began work doing panel repair at the Loop and moved away from the family home. She and her husband both believed it was just a case of him needing his space, but their younger son, Cole, was bothered by it. She told him that it would be the same for him when it was older, but he was dubious of this. He wondered why things couldn't just be the same and George told him it was because of time. She, however, promised him that no matter what happened, they would still be there for him.

Later, she met Cole in his room, saying that it was odd, his brother not being there. She sat with him and asked about the book he was reading, which had been given to him by his teacher. She remembered reading it herself and asked him if he liked it. He shrugged and she pulled a card out of a pocket in the book, showing that it had been signed out to "Loretta N," her, in March 1954. Cole asked her if it felt like a long time ago. "Blink of an eye," she replied, and she told him that it was a special time in his life before bidding him good night.

Cole would not accept his brother's distance. He confronted him and learned the truth of the body-swap and his brother's consciousness being trapped inside a robot. He found the robot in a forest, but it was attacked by another robot and destroyed. He then returned through the forest, crossing a mysterious stream. Meanwhile, Danny Jannson revealed the truth of what had happened to Loretta and George, showing them the broken robot and returning to his real family, permanently stuck in Jakob's body. Loretta was then left to live her life with George and working as the director of the Loop, as the stream that Cole crossed was one which messed with the flow of time. When Loretta next met Cole again, she was a much older woman with gray in her hair, but Cole was still a young boy of about nine years old. As they embraced outside the entrance of the Loop, she said "Told you. I'd always be here for you."

The two sat together on a bench and she explained to him what had happened. Time moved at a crawl for Cole because he had crossed the stream while it was flowing. She wished that his father George and grandmother Klara could be there to see him, but both had passed away while he was gone. Sometime in the days later, she watched from an upstairs window as, outside, Cole spoke with the grown-up Danny Jannson in the body of the son she had lost, and met Danny's daughter, Nora. When Danny gave her a smile, she smiled back.

## External link

* BriefTake - Interview: *Tales From the Loop*'s Rebecca Hall

## References

1. ↑ Indiewire - ‘Tales From the Loop’ Trailer: A Surreal Sci-fi World Unfurls on Amazon Prime Video
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 What's On TV - Tales from the Loop on Amazon Prime...
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Loop"
4. ↑ "Transpose"
5. ↑ "Echo Sphere"
6. ↑ "Parallel"
7. ↑ "Enemies"
8. ↑ "Home"