I’m going to point it out again: Another genius moment in acting/directing. Look at his expression. He feels nothing. Nothing at all.
There’s no one to put on a show for here. There’s no need for posturing when he doesn’t have an audience. And what do we get when he’s basically alone? Nothing. He feels nothing.
Like I said in a previous post (when he dropped Thor from the helocarrier), this is not a lack of sympathy or regret necessarily. This is not a lack of the normal spectrum of emotions. This is a lack of resolution. He went into this mad plan with expectations. Expectations of feeling powerful. Of finally being equal to Thor—maybe even more. Of revenge. None of those expectations are fulfilled (long before he gets Hulk-smashed).
I’m going to put forth an unusual speculation here. His actions, particularly in these moments, speak less of being a sociopath or psychopath, and more of severe depression. I’m not talking about the blues when you’re having a bad day or a bad week. Severe depression is not being sad all the time.
It’s being numb. All. The. Time. It’s feeling nothing when you know you should feel something. It’s not caring. About anything.
Severe depression messes with your moral center (and I don’t mean religious morals). It’s very difficult to differentiate between right or wrong because you feel no guilt, no shame, no elation. The quest becomes less about finding happiness (while in the throes of such an acute depression, happiness is not only impossible, the notion is utterly unbelievable—a fiction without any truth). The quest is merely to feel better. To feel at all.
Think about it. Despite his act of insincerity, Loki was probably prone to brooding even before his world fell apart. He probably experienced bouts of mild to moderate depression throughout his life. (The mischief might have helped to alleviate that.) Then he finds out what he is—not the son of Odin (whose approval he desperately wanted)—but one of very enemy he was raised to hate. Fast forward through his botched attempt at genocide, fratricide and successful patricide—then a fall through the vortex of the dying Bifrost (who knows what happened there?), and finally he was held captive by Thanos.
How is he not depressed? (If not suffering from a complete psychosis.) And I doubt he is not cognizant enough to realize the severity of his mental illness.
And so he pursues these things, thinking that he’ll feel better (that he’ll feel something) and in the end, he still feels nothing.
You’ll never convince me that Loki’s look of blankness as he lets go of Gungnir, that that was a suicide attempt, is not part of some severe depression issues and that everything just gets magnified to about a thousand times worse and twisted up when he goes through the Void.
Loki is the Philosopher King 