Ugh, I really don’t like it when people reblog stuff about Loki’s death scene in Infinity War as if it’s touching or redemptive. It was just stupid. He would have done Thor a lot more good if he’d actually tried to be a mole in Thanos’s campaign and pull another long con. As far as he knew, Thanos was just going to kill Thor as soon as he’d killed Loki; he did, in fact, leave Thor to die, and Thor was just lucky the Guardians happened to be close by. If Loki had actually tried to make a go of the double-cross, Thanos might have kept Thor alive to use as leverage over Loki. Which would not have been fun for either of them, but at least Loki would have known that he was safe-ish, and it would have bought both of them time to figure out a way to get the better of Thanos.
I’m never going to write that better version of Infinity War, because I don’t really know how to write comic book movies and also I don’t have time. But in my head there’s a vague version of what it would have been like if Joss Whedon had been writing it, including Loki pretending to be on Thanos’s side for most of the movie(s) and setting up some truly ingenious way to betray him at the end. And maybe he would then die heroically or maybe he would actually survive to start over with Thor, I don’t know. But his arc would have been worthy of the character as Hiddleston, Miller & Stentz, Branagh, and Whedon had established him.
Oh, and we would have found out WHAT FUCKING HAPPENED with Loki and Thanos in between “Thor 1” and “The Avengers.”
I think that some people are choosing to interpret aspects of that scene as touching or redemptive because it makes them feel better. Because the alternative is embracing that it was utterly pointless and that Loki’s death was just torture porn, a plot device to hype Thanos as a villain and to fuel Thor’s manpain. And that is a bitter pill to swallow.
What I mostly can’t handle are posts that say shit like:
Aww…isn’t it sweet how Odin forgave Loki in Ragnarok. No. Because that’s not what actually happened at all. And Loki’s list of grievances against Odin are far greater than anything Odin might hold against him. One might be able to argue that Odin voluntarily stayed in exile because he realized what a piece of shit he was and felt guilty about it. Perhaps Odin learned what happened to Loki when he fell from the Bifrost and felt bad for imprisoning him. But since nothing was explicitly stated, we can’t know that for sure.
Aww…isn’t is touching how Thor forgave Loki at the end of Ragnarok. No. Because that’s not what happened. Loki realized that in order to make things work with Thor, he would have to set aside his long list of valid grievances and accept that Thor was simply never going to understand his suffering. Thor was never going to understand him. And Loki finally embraced that his quest to be regarded Thor’s equal was a futile one. This isn’t to say Thor is a bad person either. Just that he doesn’t have the capacity to accept or understand what Loki has experienced or to give him what he needs. As I have stated in previous meta, Thor is a product of a flawed society and flawed parenting, just as Loki is.
Aww…isn’t it sweet how Heimdall accepted Loki at the end of Ragnarok. Well no. Because that’s not what really happened either. Heimdall is no saint in all of this, although I suspect he’s a good deal more responsible than most of the people who surround him. He is aware of a lot more than anyone else too. Meaning he has no plausible deniability. He should have been aware of at least SOME degree of Loki’s interaction with Thanos, even if he didn’t see any of the possible torture or abuse. He was also probably aware that Odin chose to stay on Earth, instead of reclaiming the throne, and of all the positive things that Loki did while posing as Odin (such as separating infinity stones and sending them far away) which is why he does not attempt to arrest Loki for his deception.
Aww…isn’t it cute how Loki accepted who he was in IW? No, it’s not cute. Yes, I do believe that Loki said Odinson and looked at Thor as a way of saying “we are brothers, regardless of all the other bullshit”. It may have been his way of saying goodbye. But a lot of his dialogue during this scene comes from a place of deep dysfunction. Thor’s last words to Loki are words of disapproval. Which is appropriate, since the bulk of their exchanged dialogue is basically Thor either judging or disapproving of Loki in some capacity. Loki accepting that he is Jotun is good, in a way. But it still does not address the racism that prevented him from doing so sooner. Loki stating that he is the god of mischief is actually rather confusing. Because the word mischief implies a lack of purpose. It implies just doing random shit for laughs. And that is actually the opposite of the Loki we saw prior to Ragnarok.
People interpret things in a way that comforts them. A lack of continuity is frustrating. So they will knit things together in a way that makes them feel consistent, even if they are most certainly not.
I mean, Thor was also a victim of unbelievably shitty writing – or should I say “writing”? since so much was improvised or just dictated on the spot by TW – in Ragnarok.
Loki is the Philosopher King 