“Loki’s death makes sense. His story was at an end. What would they have even done with him moving forward?”
I see this a lot, and it’s funny. It’s funny in the same way that people still believing that Loki is a villain is painfully comical. There’s such a lack of understanding for this character and so many people’s brains just seem to shut down completely when his future in the MCU is brought up.
So, what might we have gotten if the Russos hadn’t chosen to off him for cheap shock value?
An exploration of his heritage.
Now imagine if Captain America or Brace Banner had some incredibly powerful hidden ability that the MCU had not yet utilized or ever touched upon since it’s original discovery. You’d expect for Marvel to eventually explore this at some point, right? Then why is this somehow not the case with Loki’s undeveloped frost giant abilities?
Working with the Avengers.
As soon as I walked out of the theater in 2012, my mind was wondering what it would be like if Loki had been fighting alongside the Avengers rather than against them. Ragnarok had set up the potential for just that: Loki being forced to ally himself with his former enemies – Cue the snarky banter with Tony Stark, a magical team up with Scarlet Witch and Doctor Strange, surprising even himself when he instinctively shoves Clint out of the way of an oncoming attack… THIS would have brought his original arc full circle. If they really wanted to kill him off, then he should have died while protecting the planet he’d once attempted to rule. Though really, why does a villain need to die to be redeemed? You shouldn’t follow the norm just because it’s the norm. That’s just lazy writing.
Betraying Thanos.
It’s kind of Loki’s “thing”. He betrays people who have put their trust in him. Usually it’s the good guys who pay the price for his deceptions, but wouldn’t it have been interesting to see Loki’s talents turned upon the big bad? Giving Loki the role that Mephisto had in the comics (serving as an advisor to Thanos before betraying him) would have been ideal in this scenario. In no way is attacking Thanos head-on with a tiny knife intelligent. Loki should’ve been better than this.
Reconciliation with Thor.
There is no Thor without Loki. There is no Loki without Thor. Ragnarok gave us two brothers who were finally at peace with each other in the end and prepared to move forward together. An exploration of their relationship as siblings really trying to get along despite their differences would have been a breath of fresh air, to be honest. Thor is king, but every king needs an advisor. What better advisor to have than your own brother?
Mastering his own mind.
Hiddleston has claimed that something he would have liked to explore with Loki and see the character do if he’d survived Infinity War was to conquer his own mind, because Loki doesn’t know his own mind. He’s mentally unstable and plagued by feelings of self-disgust. Hiddleston has outright claimed that Loki deep down doesn’t really like himself. The character finally coming to terms with himself and discovering his place in the universe could have been a nice arc for the character to complete moving forward, perhaps fully settling into the role of anti-hero and accepting that his chaotic side can still be used for good rather than evil.
The Marvel cinematic universe’s first openly LGBTQ character.
The Russos claim that Marvel wants to work with stories that speak to where society is at today, and yet they still chose to kill one of their only two queer-coded characters. That’s not what today’s society wants. Why not make MCU history and give Loki a boyfriend? Hell, why not make cinematic history and let Loki be openly genderfluid? They could have done for LGBTQ people with Loki what was done for people of color with Black Panther. They could have given a marginalized group of people much needed representation. Instead, Loki, a bisexual and genderfluid character was killed to move along one of Marvel’s many cishet characters’ revenge arcs.
You make too much sense, which is how I know all your proposals are way beyond Marvel.
Tag: fuck the russos
Hahaha so The Bros have just “confirmed” that Sif died in Infinity War.
Just. You know. Off screen.
What the fuck? How? She wasn’t even on the Ark, as far as I knew. Or did she get dusted at the end?
A few of the things I have wished upon the Russo brothers within the first 24 hours of seeing Infinity War
– I hope your refrigerator goes out in the middle of the night when no one is around to notice.
– I hope you get into a minor car accident and you’re at fault.
– I hope you spill your coffee on your pants.
– I hope your pet runs away and gets adopted by a loving family because you don’t deserve the love of a pet.
– I hope your favorite cafe messes up your order.
– I hope you lock yourself out of your car.
– I hope your phone battery dies in the middle of an important phone call.
– I hope you get a hole in your favorite pair of socks.
– I hope you spend the day craving that last brownie, only to find out that someone else ate it already.
– I hope your car runs out of gas.
– I hope all the clocks in your house are off by 30 minutes so you’re late to everything for a week.
– I hope you lose your left shoe.
– I hope you step on a lego.
– I hope you lose a button in the middle of your favorite button-up shirt.
– I hope you get a crack in your glasses.
– I hope your hot water goes out.
– I hope the handle breaks off your car’s driver’s side door and you have to crawl in from the passenger’s side every time you need to go somewhere.
– I hope the next time you fly somewhere, you miss your flight because you were held up in customs.
– I hope your tap water smells like sulfur for a month.
– I hope your favorite TV show is canceled.
– I hope you get dropped by your internet provider.
– I hope you have a bad hair day. Every day.
– I hope your phone autocorrects a very important text message.
– I hope you wet your pants.
A++++
If “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” was the Russos’ favorite TV show, this might have backfired…
I’ll add a couple from recent experience:
– I hope you drop your car keys (or better, your phone) down a storm drain.
– I hope you drive over a huge pothole and get a flat tire on a dark road at night and have expensive damage to the undercarriage of your car.
Source https://www.themarysue.com/thor-supporting-cast-got-burned/
“While Infinity War played him right in not betraying his brother in the end, the rest of Loki’s death makes little sense for his character. Over the years we’ve learned that Loki is a genius sorcerer with a deep self-preservation streak and an endless bag of tricks.
“Then, in Infinity War, we’re supposed to believe that he would choose to attack Thanos with a tiny knife. This is like bringing idiocy to a gunfight. Loki is the only person on the Asgardian vessel who knows exactly who Thanos is and what he’s capable of, and yet the audience is meant to accept that his final move would be a stupid one with zero chance of success.
“It doesn’t fit, and it’s not worthy of the character or Hiddleston. Loki’s death is also the most egregiously violent in Infinity War, like the Russos just really needed to twist those screws on Thor’s very bad day. [My editorial insertion: or rather, on Loki’s silly fangirls.]
“[…] And while many of the dusted Infinity War folks will somehow be resurrected in Avengers 4, Thor’s characters died real deaths and are almost certainly not coming back. This seems like a huge waste, especially if all of this murder is merely there to make Thor sad and angry and committed to bringing down Thanos. Let’s be real—he would’ve done that anyway. The MCU didn’t need to remove absolutely everyone associated with him so callously.”
i don’t believe in the old “ooh directors are in charge of every aspect of a movie” chestnut but damn the russo brothers on this press tour rn are exhibiting roughly the behavior of two frat bros laughing about what “total bitches” their girlfriends are directly outside and in hearing distance of the dorm room of the aforementioned girlfriends. like what kind of weird postgame victory lap is this I’ve never seen anything like it….i would ask why they keep shitting where they eat so intensely but marvel made its coin regardless so saying whatever to the fans doesn’t matter now i guess
marvel made its coin regardless so saying whatever to the fans doesn’t matter now i guess
Marvel has never given a shit about their fans. The number of people who stay obsessed with the movies/characters, who write fic, make vids, roleplay, cosplay, and buy merch is a pretty small percentage of the people who actually go see the movies. Why the fuck do they need to care what we want or think?
To all the people saying “the Russo brothers and Markus & McFeely are smart, they wouldn’t kill Loki in such a stupid way and leave all these hints that he might still be alive”:
- They’re not that smart. Civil War was terrible; The Winter Soldier wasn’t as great as everyone says it was; and hello, have you seen what they did with Infinity War? Even aside from Loki’s stupid death, I mean. Thanos’s “sympathetic” Malthusian worldview? Fridging Gamora for Quill’s AND Thanos’s Manpain™? Our heroes deciding that a whole bunch of Wakandans can die so that Vision doesn’t have to because “we don’t trade lives” (right…)?
- Markus & McFeely wrote Thor: The Dark World, which had a really weak main plot and not that much involvement from Loki until Joss Whedon was brought in as a script doctor and added more for reshoots.
- Markus & McFeely originally intended to kill Loki permanently in TDW but Feige made an executive decision to bring him back because of his popularity with fans at the time. His mainstream popularity has (I think) waned since then (partly due to the deliberate diminution and demeaning of his character in Ragnarok).
- I wouldn’t be surprised if M&M wanted to finish the job they started in TDW. They fridged Frigga to bring Thor and Loki together through Manpain; they had every intention of fridging Loki permanently for the sake of Thor’s Manpain.
Until further notice, I have decided that in the fictional world of the MCU, “Infinity War” did not happen. Neither did “Thor: Ragnarok.” I don’t know exactly what did happen because I don’t know how to write comic book movie plots, but it’s vaguely like all my most hopeful imaginings of what the movies would be like. It’s like an author died before finishing a series and left very scant notes on what was coming next.
In the real world, the movies do exist, and I will continue to express my anger at Taika Waititi, Chris Hemsworth, Markus & McFeely, the Russo brothers, and Kevin Feige when I feel it would be helpful to vent. But their work is like that unauthorized second part of Don Quixote: an absurd forgery that has marred the reputations of the characters and of the real artist(s) who created them.
While I’m at it, I might as well add “Captain America: Civil War” to the list. I don’t know exactly what Tony and Steve fought about, but it was a lot more substantive than the personal vendetta crap those hacks gave us. Though maybe we should be glad they didn’t try to touch on serious issues about right to privacy vs. right to know and voluntary vs. involuntary enhancement, since they think (their version of) Steve’s self-certainty is moral courage while Tony’s doubt is sin, and when they try to go “philosophical,” they give us Thanos’s Malthusian bullshit and try to convince us it’s compelling and sympathetic.
Until further notice, I have decided that in the fictional world of the MCU, “Infinity War” did not happen. Neither did “Thor: Ragnarok.” I don’t know exactly what did happen because I don’t know how to write comic book movie plots, but it’s vaguely like all my most hopeful imaginings of what the movies would be like. It’s like an author died before finishing a series and left very scant notes on what was coming next.
In the real world, the movies do exist, and I will continue to express my anger at Taika Waititi, Chris Hemsworth, Markus & McFeely, the Russo brothers, and Kevin Feige when I feel it would be helpful to vent. But their work is like that unauthorized second part of Don Quixote: an absurd forgery that has marred the reputations of the characters and of the real artist(s) who created them.
So even if Loki comes back at the end of Avengers 4 can we all agree on what a horrible waste of writing sidelining/killing him in the first 15 minutes of this movie was? Where are my continued petty exchanges with Strange? Taking Wanda under his wing? Teaming up with Gamora and Nebula to take down their abuser? Being Stabby BFFs with Nebula? Fighting side by side by Thor and the other Avengers he tried to take down however many movies ago? Like just imagine Steve’s face when Loki blocks an attack meant for him. Amazing.
We could have taken this atonement/reconciliation deal and taken it full circle, defending a planet Purple Testicle made him invade in the first place. Like…how is killing him in the first 15 minutes anywhere close to the most interesting choice we could have done with this character?
Loki is the Philosopher King 