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They need Loki to betray Thor for no reason so they can stomp on Loki’s character harder, and give Thor a chance for grandstanding, what else is there to it? This betrayal literally serves no other purpose than give Thor the chance to deliver his “you can be more” lectures. It’s lazy and sloppy writing.
Waititi and Hemsworth wanted a scene of Thor triumphing over Loki as a “payback” for 3 movies or Loki outsmarting him, and they wrote… that. Whatever the hell it was. And it’s been proven that it was a last minute addition because the official novel doesn’t have this last “twist”. Loki leaves with everyone, willingly.
Could we just re-shoot the movie and have it like the novel? So it isn’t this ridiculous mess? Like did no one edit this film besides TW? Did anyone check for consistency or to be sure that it made sense? How does something make it all the way to the theater with that many mistakes?
This thread is missing the original answer, which was a screenshot of another anonymous ask:
“It’s not really a plothole. Loki has only fallen out of favor with the Grandmaster because he did not return with Thor and his champion as promised. But Thor/Valkyrie are staging a revolt with Korg. So once the Grandmaster is out of power, Thor knows Loki could take over. However, Loki decides that he could regain favor with the Grandmaster by giving him Thor and then probably Bruce. I think though that Loki partially chose this route because he honestly didn’t think that Thor stood a chance against Hela […] I think at least partially, Loki is trying to keep his brother alive.”
There is something to that… but I still think @edge-of-silvermoon and @shine-of-asgard hit the nail on the head. Not only were Loki’s last-minute betrayal and Thor*’s (this is not the same person as the Thor of previous films) ultimatum/electrocution combo not in the novel (which I haven’t read), but we have some indication from the trailers that they shot a version where Loki came in the small ship with the rest of the Revengers: the clips of him standing on the bridge in a row with Thor, Valkyrie, and Hulk, and that shot of Hulk punching him off the bridge like he did to Thor in The Avengers. The betrayal and subsequent smackdown were a later addition – probably by Waititi rather than the screenwriter (Eric Pearson), possibly at Hemsworth’s behest – and I suspect that they wanted three things out of it:
- To show Thor*’s “character growth”: he has learned not to fall for Loki*’s tricks and illusions anymore (I’m using Loki* because the motivation for the betrayal, which I still think is basically “shits and giggles,” is not in keeping with Loki’s established character).
- The famous “trickster tricked” narrative trope. That’s fine in and of itself; we saw it in The Avengers when Black Widow successfully pulls her “wounded gazelle” act on Loki and again when Hawkeye shoots an arrow at Loki, Loki catches it, and then the arrow explodes. We also saw it in TDW when Thor handcuffed Loki and then pushed him out of the Dark Elf ship onto the skiff. This version, however, is undermotivated and unnecessarily cruel, and I really do think the purpose was to assert Thor*’s superiority over Loki. It also gives us the completely unintended irony of Thor*, who has reverted to a cruelty and arrogance worse than that he was humbled for in Thor 1, lecturing to Loki, who has evolved quite a bit over the past 3 films, about the need for “growth and change.”
- As @endiness argued a while back: “i do legitimately believe that loki’s character was regressed in order to make thor responsible for loki’s character growth (rather than loki himself) to kind of prop thor up and have him come off as the better character […] loki’s character had to start out in ragnarok regressed (and far beyond where he was at the end of tdw) and passive, stay that way for most of the movie as most of his actions were dictated by other characters, and then only ‘change’ after and because thor prompted him to through reverse psychology.”
Loki is the Philosopher King 