Jumping on because I can’t resist over thinking this with you. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you wrote, and wanted to comment on the unspoken layer beneath all of this. Because as much as Loki’s trying to prove himself and make his father proud (as Frigga tells him to do), there’s the the constant undercurrent of Loki trying to grapple with what he is. Yes, he is trying to prove himself as the second son now that he’s out of that shadow, but he’s also trying that he is capable as King despite his Jotun nature.
Because no matter how much you claim to love me,
you could never have a Frost Giant, sitting on the Throne of Asgard!
Loki believes that Odin only saw him as a tool and never intended–never saw him capable–of sitting on the throne. No amount of Frigga’s words of support and love are able to negate this, so Loki needs to prove that Odin is wrong. That he can do this–can destroy Laufey and the Frost Giants and prove his worth as a son of Odin. I think up until the moment he Gungnir in his hand, Loki is floundering–unable to process what he’s learned and unsure of how he will cope–but when he is named king, he suddenly realize that he can do it. He can make Odin proud despite ‘what’ he is.
Father! We’ll finish them together.
Loki knows what Thor will do if he returns. Thor will wage war against Jotunheim. Thor will lead them into battle and get the credit for saving the realm. He will be the golden son that he always is. Why else would Loki have ended Thor’s banishment unless Loki needed Thor to rule because he couldn’t do himself? Why else would the Warriors Four be questioning his reign, if they too didn’t seem him as incapable? But, as you note, if Thor stays on Midgard, then Loki will be the victor–he will be the worthy one. No one will see him as the weak second son (or the monster he now knows he is). He will prove he can rule–that he can save Asgard–despite not being Thor (and despite what he his).
There will be no kingdom to protect if you’re afraid to act! The Jotuns must learn to fear me, just as they
once feared you.
And finally’s there’s this. Loki has heard Thor say such things since they were boys–I’m sure Loki, himself, said such things. As much as Frigga says he’s their son and that they love him, he fears Thor’s reaction. I don’t think this alone is enough to make him strike first, but he is guarding himself against it. Then the Warriors Four doubt and betray him purely because he is Loki. If they can turn on him so easily now, Loki doesn’t even need to question how they–let alone the rest of Asgard (or Thor)–would react if they knew what he was. They would string him up before he could even blink. But if he can just destroy Jotunheim (something that is better than Thor just making the Jotuns fear him), then there is no reason for any of them to doubt him. The only way to disprove what he is, is to be the hero. And the only way to be Asgard’s savior is to keep Thor on Midgard (by any means necessary).
Ugh this is all so, so true and an excellent point/addition. Especially this:
I don’t know that Loki immediately began plotting to make it a more permanent position out of corruption, though. I think that he began plotting to do as much as he could while he had the position to clean up Thor’s mess with Jotunheim and make himself the hero who killed Laufey, slaughtered the Frost Giants (which Thor wanted to do) and saved Asgard. In my opinion, Loki’s intentions were never evil or corrupt; he acted out of a desperate need to prove his worth – to prove himself equal to Thor, or maybe even better than Thor.
It really makes me wonder how things might have turned out had Sif and the W3 not intervened – because, really, all Loki was trying to do was keep Thor away from Asgard until he had time to carry out his plan and come out the other side, victorious. I think eventually, he probably would have let Thor come back. But once the W4 went against Loki’s orders to bring Thor back, that’s when Loki got desperate and things fell apart.
I don’t think Loki ever thought he’d have the kingship permanently. If nothing else, Odin was going to wake up eventually, at which point he’d be king again. Loki just saw an opportunity to prove himself, while taking Thor down a few pegs, and pounced. Idk, it’s all very interesting because there’s just so much complexity going on between the characters in this movie and a million different ways things could have all turned out.
If they can turn on him so easily now, Loki doesn’t even need to question how they–let alone the rest of Asgard (or Thor)–would react if they knew what he was. They would string him up before he could even blink.
God, poor Loki. The saddest part is that this is absolutely true, Loki doesn’t have to do anything untrustworthy to be considered untrustworthy, so if they knew what he really was, that dynamic increases tenfold. Additionally, it’s almost like it gives them validation in their mistrust of him. See? He’s a frost giant. We knew he was up to no good. We were right not to trust him. Incidentally, I kind of headcanon that Heimdall does feel this way toward Loki – that he inherently distrusts him because he’s Jotun and is just waiting for an excuse to be proven right. This is why Heimdall turns on him in the blink of an eye. Like, that escalated pretty quickly for someone supposedly so loyal to the throne. But I digress.
Yeah, I’ve had that thought about Heimdall, too.
I’ve definitely had similar thoughts about Heimdall! After all, Loki doesn’t ever mean for him, Thor and the W4 to get to Jotunheim; he wants them to be stopped, either by the guard he notified or by Heimdall. He had two failsafes in place.
My headcanon is that Loki offers to speak to Heimdall because he already knows from years of prior experience that Heimdall doesn’t trust him— not knowing exactly why, of course— and he doesn’t try very hard to disguise their mission. He assumes Heimdall will just shut him down and not let them pass, because no way will Heimdall go against Odin’s orders and allow Thor to start a war. Odin will show up and Thor will get in trouble and look like an immature boy, which is all Loki really wants at this point.
But Heimdall shuts Loki down (obviously suspecting him of letting the frost giants into the vault, partly because he has to know who Loki really is) and his line to the group, “you’re not dressed warmly enough,” becomes hugely ironic if you assume he knows that Loki is Jotun and won’t be cold.
I imagine in letting them pass that Heimdall is hoping Loki will be outed as the original culprit, or discovered to be Jotun, which would amount to much the same thing. It’s a potential way of getting around Odin’s order not to share Loki’s heritage with anyone (an order which Heimdall does seem oddly inclined to obey) while revealing Loki as a traitor. I suppose to Heimdall, it’s a necessary risk to take.
Loki obviously figures this all out at some point— once he knows his heritage, it’s only a matter of time before he has that moment of clarity. He’s probably furious at the thought that Heimdall would risk an all-out war with Jotunheim—knowing Thor’s lack of diplomatic finesse— and potentially the deaths of their group (despite their skill, they’re vastly outnumbered in harsh enemy territory and are only saved by Odin at the last moment) just in order to confirm his suspicions about Loki, who only intended to demonstrate how unfit Thor currently was to rule, even if his methods were pretty desperate and over the top. (I can understand that Heimdall sees Loki as a liability/threat that needs to be revealed and probably has confidence in his abilities to get the group out of Jotunheim before any serious catastrophe befalls them, but obviously there are injuries sustained and many Jotnar die… there’s a reason Odin was sensible for once and didn’t want Thor to go charging in.)
I think this all adds very some necessary subtext to Loki’s later encounters with Heimdall once he’s king, especially when Loki freezes Heimdall with the Casket.
He could have possibly subdued Heimdall in other ways, but I think part of Loki wants some poetic justice. In Loki’s mind, Heimdall not only betrayed him by being privy to the secret of his origins, but also in allowing Loki to go to Jotunheim, knowing full well that Loki might be exposed— never mind that Loki manipulated Thor into going, he never meant for his bluff to be called because Heimdall had information he didn’t. (And from Laufey’s dialogue, we know that Loki had taken precautions to disguise his identity when he first arranged to show the frost giants into the Asgardian vault.)
As king, Loki wants Heimdall to know that he’s figured it all out, that he can evade his watch, that he won’t be stopped and won’t tolerate Heimdall’s resistance and treason. He wants Heimdall to know that he was defeated by a Frost Giant— one who sits upon the Asgardian throne despite Heimdall’s best efforts to prevent it. Loki doesn’t have any pride in his heritage at this point— I think he only uses the Casket to rub Heimdall’s impotence in his face. He sees Heimdall as one more huge roadblock on his quest to prove his worth. It must have been a strange sense of relief/near satisfaction for a moment before the crushing sense of what he’s doing sets in— Heimdall must be something of a father figure for him and Thor. It must hurt to see this evidence come to light that like Odin, Heimdall never trusted him, never gave him a chance. I don’t think this act of vengeance against Heimdall appeases Loki’s heartbreak or rage in the slightest. Underneath it all, he’s still scared shitless.
But he has a mission and it’s too late to turn back now. If he can show himself to be a hero worthy of his realm and his family’s love, worthy of the crown, while simultaneously showing Heimdall to be a traitor, so much the better. (Of course, we know how it actually goes. Loki often gets in way too deep, ensnared in his own traps because his chess pieces are individuals with their own motivations he doesn’t always foresee and information he isn’t always privy to… sigh.)
It’s no great surprise Loki later banishes Heimdall when acting as Fauxdin. Even if it leaves him vulnerable to say, Thor arriving without warning, or other more hostile visitors…
Anyway, a very long digression, but it ties back into the sentiment of the original posts, which are all absolutely excellent, so I figured I’d keep it in the thread…
Oh, damn. You make a lot of really good points here. Heimdall even says that the reason he’s letting them go to Jotunheim is that he wants to find out how the Frost Giants got in on his watch. Later, Heimdall accuses Loki of having let them in without any evidence beyond his ability to conceal his presence and move between realms using means other than the Bifrost. Is he justified in concluding that Loki is the *only* person with those abilities? Or did Heimdall suspect him beforehand – partly because he has a reputation for being a sneaky mischief-maker (which is probably related to his use of magic, especially as a male), and partly because Heimdall knows he’s a Jotun and Jotnar aren’t to be trusted? Did Heimdall know that Loki didn’t know his own origin? Or did he think that maybe Loki did know, which was why he might have been helping Jotunheim all along? (Boy, am I getting Dreyfus Affair feels right now.)
The more I think about it, the more of an asshole Heimdall starts to look like. And a *racist* asshole, too, which is ironic given the casting choice. I’ve seen people complain about the fact that the anti-Inhuman senator character on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” is a South Asian woman (played by the magnificent Parminder Nagra) rather than a white person, considering that anti-Inhuman prejudice could be construed as an allegory about race. I can see where the complaint is coming from, but I think it’s misguided.
First of all, Inhumans, like mutants (for whom they are basically stand-ins in the Marvel TV Universe, because Marvel Studios/TV didn’t own the rights to the X-Men), could be an allegory about race… or about disability, or about sexual orientation or gender identity. So then the objection goes that making the bigoted character a person of color perpetuates the stereotype that non-White/European cultures are more intolerant about things like disability and sexual orientation. And yeah, I see where that’s coming from too. But there’s this overcorrecting tendency on the (Tumblr) Left to act as if it’s only White people who are “problematic” in other ways, only White men who feel entitled to women’s bodies, as if the experience of being oppressed on the basis of race automatically gives you full empathetic understanding of all other forms of oppression… when the fact is that it doesn’t, any more than being oppressed on the basis of gender or sexual orientation gives an empathetic understanding of racial oppression – something we’re reminded of every day by the news of White women calling the police on Black people (and by the barrage of Tumblr posts about White feminism, White gays, etc.). And then there’s the fact that there isn’t consistent solidarity among groups that are oppressed on the basis of race. I’ve been seeing a lot of attention called recently to the anti-Blackness within other communities of color (Asian, Middle Eastern, Latinx, etc.), which may be a case of following the same script as various European ethnic groups that were eventually, grudgingly, accepted into Whiteness (Irish, Polish, Ashkenazi Jews): distance yourself from Blackness, the permanent Other of the American racial landscape, and you have a better chance of being accepted. Even if they’re near the bottom of the ladder, everyone likes having someone lower than them that they can still look down on. And when there’s a new Other, people who had been divided by racial lines can find themselves allied; the foreignness of Russian and Chinese immigrants suddenly made the Irish look very American indeed. And that’s what the Inhumans are: a new, very strange and threatening Other that might just make the last wave of human immigrants seem to fit right in.
So what about Heimdall? Why have a Black Asgardian show racist suspicion toward a Jotun who, in Aesir form, otherwise looks White? I think that’s actually a pretty good way of demonstrating that skin color differences among the Aesir don’t matter any more than hair or eye color (within a certain range) among White people. And I’m not sure Heimdall’s attitudes are any more racist than those of Thor and his friends; he’s just in a position to display more subtle forms of racism, since (we have to assume) he knows Loki’s true origin. Why the race-blind casting for Heimdall as opposed to, say, Fandral or Sif? I dunno, they could have done both… but when you’ve got Idris Elba, give him a role with gravitas.
Jumping on because I can’t resist over thinking this with you. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you wrote, and wanted to comment on the unspoken layer beneath all of this. Because as much as Loki’s trying to prove himself and make his father proud (as Frigga tells him to do), there’s the the constant undercurrent of Loki trying to grapple with what he is. Yes, he is trying to prove himself as the second son now that he’s out of that shadow, but he’s also trying that he is capable as King despite his Jotun nature.
Because no matter how much you claim to love me,
you could never have a Frost Giant, sitting on the Throne of Asgard!
Loki believes that Odin only saw him as a tool and never intended–never saw him capable–of sitting on the throne. No amount of Frigga’s words of support and love are able to negate this, so Loki needs to prove that Odin is wrong. That he can do this–can destroy Laufey and the Frost Giants and prove his worth as a son of Odin. I think up until the moment he Gungnir in his hand, Loki is floundering–unable to process what he’s learned and unsure of how he will cope–but when he is named king, he suddenly realize that he can do it. He can make Odin proud despite ‘what’ he is.
Father! We’ll finish them together.
Loki knows what Thor will do if he returns. Thor will wage war against Jotunheim. Thor will lead them into battle and get the credit for saving the realm. He will be the golden son that he always is. Why else would Loki have ended Thor’s banishment unless Loki needed Thor to rule because he couldn’t do himself? Why else would the Warriors Four be questioning his reign, if they too didn’t seem him as incapable? But, as you note, if Thor stays on Midgard, then Loki will be the victor–he will be the worthy one. No one will see him as the weak second son (or the monster he now knows he is). He will prove he can rule–that he can save Asgard–despite not being Thor (and despite what he his).
There will be no kingdom to protect if you’re afraid to act! The Jotuns must learn to fear me, just as they
once feared you.
And finally’s there’s this. Loki has heard Thor say such things since they were boys–I’m sure Loki, himself, said such things. As much as Frigga says he’s their son and that they love him, he fears Thor’s reaction. I don’t think this alone is enough to make him strike first, but he is guarding himself against it. Then the Warriors Four doubt and betray him purely because he is Loki. If they can turn on him so easily now, Loki doesn’t even need to question how they–let alone the rest of Asgard (or Thor)–would react if they knew what he was. They would string him up before he could even blink. But if he can just destroy Jotunheim (something that is better than Thor just making the Jotuns fear him), then there is no reason for any of them to doubt him. The only way to disprove what he is, is to be the hero. And the only way to be Asgard’s savior is to keep Thor on Midgard (by any means necessary).
Ugh this is all so, so true and an excellent point/addition. Especially this:
I don’t know that Loki immediately began plotting to make it a more permanent position out of corruption, though. I think that he began plotting to do as much as he could while he had the position to clean up Thor’s mess with Jotunheim and make himself the hero who killed Laufey, slaughtered the Frost Giants (which Thor wanted to do) and saved Asgard. In my opinion, Loki’s intentions were never evil or corrupt; he acted out of a desperate need to prove his worth – to prove himself equal to Thor, or maybe even better than Thor.
It really makes me wonder how things might have turned out had Sif and the W3 not intervened – because, really, all Loki was trying to do was keep Thor away from Asgard until he had time to carry out his plan and come out the other side, victorious. I think eventually, he probably would have let Thor come back. But once the W4 went against Loki’s orders to bring Thor back, that’s when Loki got desperate and things fell apart.
I don’t think Loki ever thought he’d have the kingship permanently. If nothing else, Odin was going to wake up eventually, at which point he’d be king again. Loki just saw an opportunity to prove himself, while taking Thor down a few pegs, and pounced. Idk, it’s all very interesting because there’s just so much complexity going on between the characters in this movie and a million different ways things could have all turned out.
If they can turn on him so easily now, Loki doesn’t even need to question how they–let alone the rest of Asgard (or Thor)–would react if they knew what he was. They would string him up before he could even blink.
God, poor Loki. The saddest part is that this is absolutely true, Loki doesn’t have to do anything untrustworthy to be considered untrustworthy, so if they knew what he really was, that dynamic increases tenfold. Additionally, it’s almost like it gives them validation in their mistrust of him. See? He’s a frost giant. We knew he was up to no good. We were right not to trust him. Incidentally, I kind of headcanon that Heimdall does feel this way toward Loki – that he inherently distrusts him because he’s Jotun and is just waiting for an excuse to be proven right. This is why Heimdall turns on him in the blink of an eye. Like, that escalated pretty quickly for someone supposedly so loyal to the throne. But I digress.
Okay this face makes me want to rant. People joke constantly about how Loki was lying to Thor about everything, even the fact that he loves his brother, because he always thirsted for the throne. Aside the fact that he SAID “I never wanted the throne, I only ever wanted to be your equal" to Thor in the heat of candid emotion, look at this face.
He makes this face WHEN NO ONE IS LOOKING.
WHEN NO ONE IS LOOKING.
WHEN NO ONE IS LOOKING.
It is in EARNEST. When the audience sees Loki making faces in moments like THIS, be they evil faces or sad faces, the writer and director are using a rhetorical device called DRAMATIC IRONY: the audience has insight into character feelings, motives, and actions that no other character has. There are three moments of Dramatic Irony in Thor:
1) When Loki facepalms at Thor wanting to go to Jotunheim and succeeding in convincing the Warriors 3 to join him.
2) THIS moment, in this gif, and also when Thor is cast out and Loki reacts behind Odin’s back in shock and hurt—as well as in nervous vigilance when Mjolnir is cast out as well.
3) Much later, after things have escalated, when Loki lies to Thor that Odin is dead, turns away, and we see him smirking triumphantly that Thor has bought the lie.
ERGO:
—Loki did not plan for it to go this far.
—Loki is contrite that it went this far.
—Loki is also unwilling to stop its trajectory (although he DOES try once, before Odin silences him).
Almost anything else about events leading up to this is arguable, except that Loki a) loves Thor, b) is jealous of Thor, c) is conflicted about his own role in the family dynamic. And he did NOT want Thor banished. And he DID NOT anticipate that Odin would banish Thor. He just wanted Thor DISCREDITED as a leader to Odin so that Loki would have the time to prove HIMSELF a worthy heir (even though, as he himself SAID, it wasn’t even a title he ultimately wanted).
I find that people constantly argue that Loki planned for everything that happened to Thor in the first half of the movie. I deeply believe that this is inaccurate. I believe that Loki was an excellent deceiver but that his Achilles’s Heel has ALWAYS been to get in over his head. He thought the three Jotun guards would mess up Thor’s coronation. He thought Thor and Odin would argue and Odin would berate Thor for being “arrogant and reckless" (Loki’s words). He did not care about Aesir collateral, although he didn’t anticipate that either (because he thought Odin would get there faster, and didn’t realize Odin was tired and headed for an Odinsleep). And that’s it. He DIDN’T expect Thor to ever REACH Jotunheim (again, he overestimated Odin’s capacity to come stop them when he tipped off the guard), and I even argue he didn’t want Thor to even TRY (because he already got what he wanted, Odin is already furious at Thor, and also, because Loki facepalms, again, when NO ONE IS LOOKING, in EXASPERATION, he doesn’t triumphantly smirk the way he does after he’s lied to Thor that Odin is dead). And when they got there, and battled, and Fandral was wounded, and Odin took them all home, he DIDN’T expect Odin to banish Thor OR to cast Mjolnir out with him. THEN it happened. THEN the confession of Loki’s Jotun heritage happened. THEN Loki decided he’d go after Mjolnir and keep Thor exiled indefinitely. THEN Sif and the W3 disobeyed his mandate. THEN Loki panicked and sent the Destroyer to kill Thor. You see how things were not entirely planned out to the last detail, or rather they were, but anytime something on the chessboard shifted, so did Loki? Things snowballed.
People need to remember two facts:
a) Loki gets in over his head, because he’s playful and likes the thrill of danger.
b) Loki changes his plans 180 degrees with every new contingency. He is resourceful and capricious.
The way they did Loki as Odin in Ragnarok dissatisfied me (big shocker, I’m sure). It’s not that I don’t believe Loki would write a play about himself, or invest in the arts, or sit around in a bathrobe eating grapes. I just don’t think he’d do it because he’s a hedonistic narcissist. Trump’s a narcissist. He’s got a high opinion about himself, loves when his ego is stroked, and throws a fit when it isn’t. Loki thinks that he’s a monster, expects everyone to agree, and grows bitter and spiteful because of it. That’s not the same thing. Think of Blood Brothers. Loki says that Thor was the only one who ever loved him, and he’s killing him because he stopped. He doesn’t attack those that never loved him. Now, Loki is a bit of a hedonist. He’s absolutely easily bored (intelligent people are often bored by mundane routine). I’ve no doubt he’d hate almost everything about ruling. I just don’t think that would make him a shit ruler. So, I’ve written a few headcanons about Loki’s time ruling Asgard. I think they’re a nice balance of intelligence, laziness, self-care, and planning for the future. Feel free to disagree or add your own.
Loki dismisses his father’s council (made up of wealthy lords and ladies with little practical knowledge), and forms a new council with younger members, some of them nobility, but many of them common. Their unifying trait is that they are all super competent in the area they’re overseeing. He delegates his kingly duties (the daily grind) to many of them. Loki finds the day to day requirements of being a king tedious, but he’s got a vested interest in everything running smoothly, and he’s not an idiot. To explain why he delegates more duties, he claims his years are catching up with him, and that Frigga’s death drained him. People respect that.
Loki spends time researching the Infinity Stones. He does so covertly, so as not to attract the attention of Thanos or any of his people. He specifically studies the Tesseract in secret.
Loki doesn’t bother to send armies to the other Realms. One, their in chaos because puppet governments are falling apart. Loki’s not one for order, particularly not Odin’s order, so he lets the revolutions run their course. Two, he wants to bolster their army for Thanos’ inevitable appearance.
To that end, he allows rapid advancement among the ranks based on skill (he does away with any nepotism that occurs). It’s not out of a sense of justice. It’s about practicality. Everyone’s got a shot based on their merit. Considering the natural strength of the Asgardian forces compared to other alien races, nepotism likely ran wild. Odin meant to appease the nobles. I imagine Hogun, a Vanir, only got as far as he did because he had Thor’s support. (He does deserves it. I’m not saying he doesn’t. I’m saying the opposite. Like Sif, he had to fight tooth and nail to get respect in Asgard.)
Loki increases the demand for practitioners of seiðr. He diverts resources to training interested Asgardians.
If Loki had anything to do with the other Realms, he traded with them (both the puppet governments and the rebels). In effect, he prolonged the instability in other Realms in order to increase Asgard’s treasury.
The theater, complete with statue in front, isn’t dedicated to himself, but Frigga. The statue is of her.
He does write plays. However, Loki’s elequent, artistic, and he’s read countless books and plays. He isn’t a bad writer. The play is well written. It is also well acted, since Loki would not be satisfied with such shitty acting. Essentially, watching Loki’s play is every bit as emotional and dramatic as watching the scene in TDW, if not more so. That’s one of the best, most emotional scenes in that movie (and Hemsworth’s best performance in the MCU), and mocking it pisses me off.
He takes a lot of baths with bubbles and scented oils. It’s very relaxing.
The paperwork he can’t avoid he does in Frigga’s gardens. He hires the best people to tend to the gardens. Not only does sitting in the gardens make him long for Frigga, it also makes him miss Thor. Being all about the fertile earth, Frigga encouraged him to walk through the gardens and reinvigorate her plants. The gardeners just can’t achieve that loveliness. (This one’s very inspired by one of @raven-brings-light‘s headcanons about Thor.)
And now, for my wildest headcanons. My Frost Giant stan headcanons:
Odin never told Jotunheim who attacked them using the Bifrost, either because he didn’t see a reason to or because Loki did it. If they discovered one of Odin’s sons did, they’d demand the crown pay.
Loki uses that fact to his advantage. He’s aware the Frost Giants are a match for the strength of Asgard (they’re a legitimate threat in a fair fight). He goes to their king, one of his brothers, and reveals who he is. In small ways, he helps them rebuild, and earns their trust. He never exposes that he’s currently ruling Asgard, and therefore could give them the Casket at any point. He does all this to facilitate his escape plan should Thor return. He doesn’t want to live in a ruined Realm (hence why he’s fixing it up a bit), but Jotunheim’s a good place to hide from the people who want to see him dead/tortured/imprisoned. If he escapes there, Thor won’t follow. He’d risk war. Loki would grab the Casket on the way out to make extra sure Thor wouldn’t risk it. Thanos’ minions won’t get far facing an army of Frost Giants with ice powers. It’s the safest place for him to hide after Asgard.
I also love this headcanon because imagine how pissed Thor would be to discover that Loki told his Frost Giant brothers he was alive, but didn’t tell Thor. The amount of trouble Loki would be in for that….
If he’d had to enact this plan, Loki would have grown depressed, and he would often sneak back into Asgard disguised as another Asgardian or an animal.
Thank you for tagging @foundlingmother ! Great headcanons! I love all of it! Certainly better and makes more sense than what they did in the movie. I totally agree with your headcanons except the one about Frost Giants. As much as I love it and I like to read it in a fic, I think it’s a bit of a strech. I don’t think he’s ready for sth like that or even entertain the idea of contacting Frost Giants. Because I remember his face when he said he is from Jutonheim in TDW. Imo he still doesn’t believe that he belongs anywhere. Not Jutonheim, Not even Asgard. That stupid play kind of hinted it. Blue baby, not Juton baby. Asgard’s savior, not Asgardian. I believe when Thor said “Asgard is not a place, it’s a people” was the moment Loki realized that he belonged in Asgard. I think he just needed to hear it from Thor.
Yes, I agree. They’re very much a stretch. That’s why I set them apart. The other headcanons feel 100% possible, while that one’s more a product of my wishing the Frost Giants could get some love.
I also have a headcanon for how he and Thor approach them post-IW (because everyone lives go away Marvel you’re not welcome anymore). Jotunheim possesses vast untapped resources that could help the Asgardians (and Midgardians) rebuild. Nidavellir does, too, but they’re dealing with a civil war, and the Asgardians have nothing to trade with them. They do, however, have something to trade with/give the Frost Giants. (Not that I think this would be easy–they’d be bargaining with a stolen object, and that would exacerbate the legit animosity that the Frost Giants feel towards the Asgardians.)
This headcanon requires that I also headcanon Loki grabbed the Casket, which I do. I headcanon he grabbed any of the artifacts he could. Seems a waste not to. They’re right there and could be useful.
Tom Hiddleston in ‘The Avengers’, (2012). Dir. Joss Whedon.
Something I really love about this shot is the way Loki looks at the scepter for a second right before attacking with it. I can kind of see his thought process throughout the gifs – he arrives, just having come from whatever horrors he’s experienced with Thanos, disoriented, probably very scared on the inside. He examines this extremely powerful weapon he probably has no experience using. He gathers what little strength he has, collects his thoughts, can I really do this, and then he looks up, menacing,
there’s no turning back now, attacks in sudden full-villain mode, and proceeds to continue this way for the duration of the story – mad and murderous and unshakably determined, with terror and agony just barely contained under the surface. It’s one of those little things that shows how lost he is in this film underneath the “big bad villain” exterior.
Like goddamn I really made myself upset thinking about how the entire trajectory of Loki’s arc could have been altered if Odin and Frigga had been slightly more comfortable expressing verbal and physical affection? As in, expressing it at all?
NOT GOOD ENOUGH PLS TRY AGAIN
God look at his face, this is the face of someone who is confident that he is loved by his family. A+ parenting, no hugs required.
*kicks down door of my own post*
AND ANOTHER THING.
God just. Look at how blank his face is. How he’s hiding all the fear and turmoil and anger he unleashed on Odin. He doesn’t trust her anymore, after such a huge betrayal. How can he? But he’s also probably afraid of pushing her away by being angry at her, so he just shoves it all down. What the fuck kind of damage does it do to be betrayed by someone so close to you, but they’re still basically the entirety of your emotional support system? Ugh still crying about Thor 2k18.
I neither can nor want to read this tbh. Anyone else can give general heads-up as to how atrocious this is re: general vilifying, powers / intelligence erasure, backstory and so on?
@shine-of-asgard Its honestly fine if you want to read— that first page is just brief interview questions. Mostly Tom just talking about wearing his costume, getting into character, his acting relationship with Hemsworth (this part is quite sweet), his love of Branagh’s approach to Thor and his excitement/observation that people have latched onto the characters and seem to enjoy having real emotions in their blockbuster superhero movies. The “bad boy” bit in the title isn’t followed-up except for where Tom (probably jokingly) says the horns give Loki a bit of the devil about him.
What did catch my eye was the blurb about the Mind Stone on the next page— and the claim that Thanos didn’t know what it was when he gave it to Loki in the scepter. I’m sorry, what?!?! This is news to me.
WTF, Marvel? How do you keep making your big bad scary new villain sound like such a dipshit? At this point I believe my own account of what happened with Thanos more than I believe anything coming from these ass-clowns.
Also I just caught that it says “[Thanos] granted use of the stone to Loki to help him in hisproposedconquest of Earth”
So like, not to take this too seriously because honestly, who knows how closely this kind of collateral print stuff is proofread by the higher ups…
But that sounds like it was Loki’s idea to target Earth— which is something that’s often been debated. Loki has a few lines in Avengers that sound like he’s doubtful of Thanos’ ability to deliver an army. The Other says something like “you’ll have your war, Asgardian” — doesn’t he? (I can’t pull up a video at the moment to see.)
I always thought that was a bit funny because Loki was clearly being threatened/coerced/tortured on some level and clearly under Thanos’ control. So why did it sound so much like he was trying to bargain, as if he were an equal partner in the venture? I always figured those comments were merely Loki trying to reassert his regal bearing and pull his pride together, trying to hide his fear before going off to “conquer.”
But… if Loki was the one who first suggested going to Earth (perhaps offering his services in order to save his own skin) his comments would make even more sense, because then of course he’d want to act as though he actually gave a shit about conquering Midgard as a general of Thanos. He’d have to make Thanos and The Other believe he was dedicated to not just Thanos’ cause, but his own selfish goals of ruling Earth— which of course, wouldn’t possibly compete with Thano’s goal of attaining the Stones.
Btw— if Thanos didn’t even know he already had the fucking Mind Stone in his thot little hands, how the hell did he know the Tesseract was on Earth? (Remind me— Do they say in any of the movies/deleted scenes specifically why Thanos knows about the Tesseract being found/reawakened on Earth? I forget if it’s explicitly mentioned that the energy signature calls to him or to the Mind Stone, etc. If that’s ever mentioned on screen, then something really doesn’t add up and this book is talking nonsense. But if it’s only a vague reference, perhaps we can deduce that Loki knew what the Mind Stone was, and/or told him about the Tesseract in order to entice Thanos into working with his plan.)
Either way… Loki probably knew if he played his cards right, there was a decent chance of Thor and Co. or even Odin himself preventing him from taking the Tesseract. So it makes me wonder if Loki purposefully leapt at the chance to also snag the Mind Stone from Thanos (getting caught and allowing the Avengers to analyze it, then later tossing it aside for Natasha to find— he practically giftwraps it for them) as well as botching the invasion and making sure the Tesseract would land in Thor/Asgard’s hands. Maybe he didn’t know which Stone would end up where, but he knew that anywhere was better than with Thanos, and not having either Stone would significantly hinder Thano’s ability to reach the Nine Realms.
Whew. So yes…
I always thought Loki purposefully pulled quite the fast one on Thanos by losing on purpose— but this would be potential proof that he pulled a double fast-one, knowing what the Mind Stone was before Thanos did.
Now I just want to know if Thanos was like, hmm you’ll need a weapon, how about this long piece of junk— and Loki saw the Mind Stone and was like YES I mean sure, I guess that’ll do, you’re the boss *shrug*
Yeah, I do think the way we were supposed to interpret those lines in The Avengers was that it was Loki’s idea to invade and conquer Earth. I also kind of suspect (as I acknowledged in the notes to the chapter of “Abyss” where I dealt with it) that the tag scene at the end of Thor, where we see Loki looking all beat-up and still in the formal armor he was wearing when he fell, was supposed to have taken place shortly after Loki fell, and maybe we were supposed to infer that he had fallen to Earth and somehow found the Tesseract himself.
But neither of those ideas made a whole lot of sense to me. I mean, I guess it’s possible that Loki has the ability to detect powerful magical objects. But I knew they were building toward something with Thanos and the Infinity Stones – I didn’t get into the MCU until after AOU had come out, so I didn’t start writing MCU fanfiction until I’d watched all the way through that – so I kind of thought of Infinity Stones as being Thanos’s thing, and it made more sense to me that Thanos was the one who had found the Tesseract using the Mind Stone, which we knew he gave to Loki. No, they don’t say explicitly that the Mind Stone detected the tampering with the Tesseract; there’s just that bit of ominous narration by The Other at the beginning of The Avengers, saying “The Tesseract has awakened. It is on a little world,” etc. They do show him handing the scepter to Loki in the same little intro bit, but I don’t think we’re supposed to draw any inferences from that.
There was also that exchange in The Avengers where Loki says “I have seen the true power of the Tesseract” and Thor immediately asks, “Who showed you this power? Who controls the would-be king?” That strongly suggested to me that Loki wouldn’t have known all that much about the Infinity Stones before his encounter with Thanos, which is why Thor immediately infers that someone else must have taught him. And that made me seriously question whether invading Earth had actually been Loki’s idea, because Thanos is the one who wants the Tesseract and knows how and where to find it. So… what gives? And that’s why I decided for fic purposes that Thanos convinced Loki that invading Earth was his idea, Inception-style. Using the Mind Stone, of course, because he had it. And he definitely fucking knew what it was, I don’t know what that writer was smoking. He temporarily relinquished one Infinity Stone in order to secure a second. It didn’t work out, but sometimes you gotta take a gamble to win big.
Yeah, Thor 100% has the capacity to understand Loki’s grievances, he just didn’t get a chance to because he wasn’t even in Ragnarok, Thor* was. Heimdall might not be a saint, but I think it’s wrong to assume he saw Loki with Thanos. It seems unlikely he would have mentioned none of that. As for Loki pulling a double-cross… while I get the appeal of this, it seems like such an unrealistic culmination of Loki’s arc even ignoring Ragnarok.
I’m not sure I think it would have been Whedon’s angle.
I mean, I know that Thanos behaves kind of stupid in GotG, but I feel like having him accept Loki as his ally with all that happens… would have undermined him as a villain.
Right… I wasn’t completely on board with all of @juliabohemian‘s analysis on my other post. She and I seem to fundamentally disagree about Thor’s moral character and disposition toward Loki as shown in previous films: I think the character called “Thor” in Ragnarok is a radical departure from Thor as we’ve seen him in previous movies, which is why I refer to him as Thor*; she, and many other non-Thorki-shipping Loki fans, think that Ragnarok amplifies Thor’s previous tendencies toward self-absorption and insensitivity, but is not completely discontinuous with the character. I don’t see us coming to full agreement on that issue anytime soon, and that’s fine.
As to the issue of the double-cross being “an unrealistic culmination of Loki’s arc”… I actually disagree with you there. If you just mean it would have been unrealistic for Thanos to accept Loki as his ally, I do see where you’re coming from there, but there are ways around it. The idea of having Thanos take Thor as a hostage is one way. That way Thanos wouldn’t have to trust Loki; he would just have to trust Loki’s unwillingness to allow harm to come to Thor, which given what Thanos knows about him he absolutely would and should. I think that would appeal to Thanos for a couple of reasons:
(1) Good old-fashioned sadism. Whedon’s Thanos clearly wasn’t into any of that pseudo-benevolent Malthusian bullshit; the reference to “courting death” in the Avengers tag scene indicated that Whedon was picturing a Thanos obsessed with Lady Death like he is in the comics. No attempt would have been made to make that Thanos sympathetic. That Thanos is a creepy fucker who would have gotten a kick out of torturing Thor physically (just a little) and torturing Loki psychologically with the knowledge that a step out of line would mean pain and/or permanent damage to Thor. Ooh, maybe he would have cut off a finger or a toe when Loki made a decision to undermine Thanos that he was just barely able to pass off as an incompetent fuck-up. And Loki would have known that… and wouldn’t have hesitated to trade his own pain, but when it’s Thor’s it’s so much worse. (Should I be worried about myself, coming up with this shit?)
(2) It would mean that Loki wasn’t a completely wasted investment. If Thanos were a good economist (which clearly he isn’t…), he wouldn’t buy into the sunk costs fallacy, and he’d be perfectly happy cutting his losses and cutting Loki loose… but I think he’s into narrative neatness (OK, this is just “Abyss” Thanos now, never mind what Whedon would have done) and he would like the idea of making Loki useful after all. Plus, there must have been a reason he thought it was a good idea to trust Loki with the Tesseract retrieval mission – and the Mind Stone! – in the first place; he must think he’s good at some stuff.
If by “unrealistic culmination of Loki’s arc,” you mean it wouldn’t be a realistic place for Loki’s character progression to go, then I definitely disagree. Part of what was so objectionable about Thor*’s treatment of Loki in Ragnarok was that he was effectively demanding that Loki become a different person as a condition of maintaining a relationship with Thor* (classic sign of an abusive relationship, btw). Of course, that demand was also based on the faulty premise, assumed by Ragnarok but by none of the previous films, that Loki’s basic nature or “essence” was the “god of mischief” who betrays people out of hedonistic self-interest or just because he thinks it’s fun. I mean, it’s not unreasonable for Thor to demand that Loki stop betraying him, but when you’re working on the assumption that that’s what Loki has been doing their whole lives, instead of just for the past 6 really shitty years out of 1000+, and that it’s just in his nature to do that, then you’ve really gotta wonder why Thor put up with it for as long as he did… and also you don’t give an abusive “change fundamentally or I’m leaving” ultimatum; you just fucking leave.
One of the best parts of TDW, which totally got me the first time I watched it, was when Loki makes a show of betraying Thor to trick Malekith into drawing the Aether from Jane. That was absolutely brilliant because it was Thor and Loki, together, taking advantage of some of Loki’s most distinctive features – illusion magic, acting ability, and a reputation for treachery – to achieve a good aim they shared. Having Loki pull a long con on Thanos would be that gambit writ large. And ideally, this time – in order for it to represent a progression from the incident in TDW rather than just a replay – Thor would not be on on the plan… but he would indicate, perhaps while conversing in a dungeon with one of Thanos’s other unfortunate prisoners, that he believes Loki is still on his side and is planning to double-cross Thanos in the end. He doesn’t know; he harbors some doubts; but he believes. That would represent character growth for both Thor and Loki: Thor is forced to trust Loki for a long period of uncertainty; and Loki is, on some level, trusting Thor to trust him. That, too, would be a source of anguish for Loki – wondering whether Thor thinks that Loki has betrayed him again, more grievously than ever – but he hopes, and maybe even believes (William James will-to-believe style, because it helps), that Thor believes Loki is doing the right thing, in his indirect, strategic way.
@fuckyeahrichardiii, @illwynd, @incredifishface, @seidrade, I’m bringing y’all in on my harebrained IW do-over ideas because I’m curious to know what you think. (I’m never writing this as a fic, because I’m not that good at plot details, but just the outline.)
i appreciate it, but I think I’ll pass. I can’t engage this level of mind power into fixing a movie I wouldn’t even have made. I simply don’t want to give Thanos a second of my mental time. He’s a stupid character with stupid motivations and he bores me. I would have preferred ye olde “rule the universe hur hur hur” kind of villain 145977577647 times, and failing that, the Thanos in love with Hela / Death was a good route to go to.
So all the artistic and narrative decisions started from a point which for me was already irreparably stupid and boring. they killed Loki in the first 5 minutes, and that’s when they lost me and never got me back.
If I was to conjecture ways to improve this film, it would be with an entirely different villain, with different motivations, and so my contribution as to what part Thor and Loki played in that imaginary story that never was is moot.
i’m bitter and miserable and you’ll find me in the universe next door raving about the Transformers. Now THAT is a plot.
I completely agree with you about the version of Thanos we saw in Infinity War, as written by those dimwitted hacks-turned-freshman boys in philosophy seminar Markus & McFeely and made “sympathetic” by the equally sophomoric Russos. I’m only interested in reimagining the movie with the Thanos who was in love with Death/Hela, largely because in the fic I’ve been writing about what happened to Loki between Thor and The Avengers, that was the motivation I was assuming (and actually wrote in, long before we got the ridiculous movie version of Thanos). And also because I’m fantasizing about the version of IW that Joss Whedon would have written if he hadn’t gotten fed up with Marvel’s meddling in AOU. I really don’t think he would have killed Loki in the first 5 minutes, because he was the one who established the connection with Thanos in the first place and would have wanted to give it a satisfying payoff, and aside from that all the evidence suggests that he was genuinely impressed with the work Hiddleston and Branagh put into building Loki’s character and was invested in continuing to give him depth and interest.
I’m also vaguely assuming in this imagining that we got the version of Ragnarok that we deserved, though I’m also not completely clear on what that would have looked like. Thor and Loki would have had a real fucking conversation, for one thing. I think it was written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. Hela actually had half of her face missing (Guillermo loves that shit), and she and Loki bonded over being seen by the world and themselves as monsters. Maybe she was Loki’s mother, not Thor’s sister. And she definitely didn’t die at the end, because she needs to show up as Thanos’s would-be love interest in IW.
Yeah, Thor 100% has the capacity to understand Loki’s grievances, he just didn’t get a chance to because he wasn’t even in Ragnarok, Thor* was. Heimdall might not be a saint, but I think it’s wrong to assume he saw Loki with Thanos. It seems unlikely he would have mentioned none of that. As for Loki pulling a double-cross… while I get the appeal of this, it seems like such an unrealistic culmination of Loki’s arc even ignoring Ragnarok.
I’m not sure I think it would have been Whedon’s angle.
I mean, I know that Thanos behaves kind of stupid in GotG, but I feel like having him accept Loki as his ally with all that happens… would have undermined him as a villain.
Right… I wasn’t completely on board with all of @juliabohemian‘s analysis on my other post. She and I seem to fundamentally disagree about Thor’s moral character and disposition toward Loki as shown in previous films: I think the character called “Thor” in Ragnarok is a radical departure from Thor as we’ve seen him in previous movies, which is why I refer to him as Thor*; she, and many other non-Thorki-shipping Loki fans, think that Ragnarok amplifies Thor’s previous tendencies toward self-absorption and insensitivity, but is not completely discontinuous with the character. I don’t see us coming to full agreement on that issue anytime soon, and that’s fine.
As to the issue of the double-cross being “an unrealistic culmination of Loki’s arc”… I actually disagree with you there. If you just mean it would have been unrealistic for Thanos to accept Loki as his ally, I do see where you’re coming from there, but there are ways around it. The idea of having Thanos take Thor as a hostage is one way. That way Thanos wouldn’t have to trust Loki; he would just have to trust Loki’s unwillingness to allow harm to come to Thor, which given what Thanos knows about him he absolutely would and should. I think that would appeal to Thanos for a couple of reasons:
(1) Good old-fashioned sadism. Whedon’s Thanos clearly wasn’t into any of that pseudo-benevolent Malthusian bullshit; the reference to “courting death” in the Avengers tag scene indicated that Whedon was picturing a Thanos obsessed with Lady Death like he is in the comics. No attempt would have been made to make that Thanos sympathetic. That Thanos is a creepy fucker who would have gotten a kick out of torturing Thor physically (just a little) and torturing Loki psychologically with the knowledge that a step out of line would mean pain and/or permanent damage to Thor. Ooh, maybe he would have cut off a finger or a toe when Loki made a decision to undermine Thanos that he was just barely able to pass off as an incompetent fuck-up. And Loki would have known that… and wouldn’t have hesitated to trade his own pain, but when it’s Thor’s it’s so much worse. (Should I be worried about myself, coming up with this shit?)
(2) It would mean that Loki wasn’t a completely wasted investment. If Thanos were a good economist (which clearly he isn’t…), he wouldn’t buy into the sunk costs fallacy, and he’d be perfectly happy cutting his losses and cutting Loki loose… but I think he’s into narrative neatness (OK, this is just “Abyss” Thanos now, never mind what Whedon would have done) and he would like the idea of making Loki useful after all. Plus, there must have been a reason he thought it was a good idea to trust Loki with the Tesseract retrieval mission – and the Mind Stone! – in the first place; he must think he’s good at some stuff.
If by “unrealistic culmination of Loki’s arc,” you mean it wouldn’t be a realistic place for Loki’s character progression to go, then I definitely disagree. Part of what was so objectionable about Thor*’s treatment of Loki in Ragnarok was that he was effectively demanding that Loki become a different person as a condition of maintaining a relationship with Thor* (classic sign of an abusive relationship, btw). Of course, that demand was also based on the faulty premise, assumed by Ragnarok but by none of the previous films, that Loki’s basic nature or “essence” was the “god of mischief” who betrays people out of hedonistic self-interest or just because he thinks it’s fun. I mean, it’s not unreasonable for Thor to demand that Loki stop betraying him, but when you’re working on the assumption that that’s what Loki has been doing their whole lives, instead of just for the past 6 really shitty years out of 1000+, and that it’s just in his nature to do that, then you’ve really gotta wonder why Thor put up with it for as long as he did… and also you don’t give an abusive “change fundamentally or I’m leaving” ultimatum; you just fucking leave.
One of the best parts of TDW, which totally got me the first time I watched it, was when Loki makes a show of betraying Thor to trick Malekith into drawing the Aether from Jane. That was absolutely brilliant because it was Thor and Loki, together, taking advantage of some of Loki’s most distinctive features – illusion magic, acting ability, and a reputation for treachery – to achieve a good aim they shared. Having Loki pull a long con on Thanos would be that gambit writ large. And ideally, this time – in order for it to represent a progression from the incident in TDW rather than just a replay – Thor would not be on on the plan… but he would indicate, perhaps while conversing in a dungeon with one of Thanos’s other unfortunate prisoners, that he believes Loki is still on his side and is planning to double-cross Thanos in the end. He doesn’t know; he harbors some doubts; but he believes. That would represent character growth for both Thor and Loki: Thor is forced to trust Loki for a long period of uncertainty; and Loki is, on some level, trusting Thor to trust him. That, too, would be a source of anguish for Loki – wondering whether Thor thinks that Loki has betrayed him again, more grievously than ever – but he hopes, and maybe even believes (William James will-to-believe style, because it helps), that Thor believes Loki is doing the right thing, in his indirect, strategic way.
@fuckyeahrichardiii, @illwynd, @incredifishface, @seidrade, I’m bringing y’all in on my harebrained IW do-over ideas because I’m curious to know what you think. (I’m never writing this as a fic, because I’m not that good at plot details, but just the outline.)
Friendly reminder that Loki never showed any general ill-will toward Asgard or intent to destroy Asgard and that usurping Odin at the end of TDW didn’t necessarily have to bode ill for Asgard’s fate, as we had no reason to believe he would rule poorly. That Ragnarok revealed his “evil plan” being community theatre shouldn’t be much of a surprise – by which, I mean I didn’t expect the community theatre part, but I didn’t expect to see Asgard in tyrannical ruins under Loki’s rule, either. Loki has always proven himself sensible, analytical, and highly intelligent. He would have absolutely nothing to gain by using Odin’s form to run Asgard into the ground. Despite what Thor says about the Nine Realms being in chaos, I’m pretty sure things were fine and were always going to be fine under Loki.
And the other thing is… that line about the Nine Realms being in chaos – which has encouraged everyone to trash Loki as a terrible king and paint his usurping Odin as another horrific crime for which he deserved any maltreatment Thor subsequently decided to inflict on him – is an example of just how half-assed Ragnarok’s “critique of imperialism” really is (as @foundlingmother and I have discussed at length). So conquest is bad, but non-interventionism is equally bad? Sudden withdrawal from protectorates that have been left in no condition to protect or govern themselves is certainly not great, but it’s a complicated issue exactly what kind of aid or training withdrawing conquerors should provide. (Is it “weaning” away from dependency, or just extending the period of dependency? Doesn’t “teaching” self-governance involve a kind of cultural imperialism, as the conqueror generally ends up teaching the ex-protectorate how to imitate its own system of government?) It’s understandable that a comic book action movie isn’t going to explore those kinds of issues in depth (and boy, did Civil War massively fail on that score – though Black Panther did a pretty good job wrestling with it), but… if you’re going to bring it up in the form of a ham-handed allegory, you can’t also have this glaring (at least apparent) inconsistency and not address it.
This appears to be another example of the film dropping the ball on its otherwise worthy anti-imperialism message when it comes to Loki – probably deliberately, considering the lack of sympathy and respect the film and its creator show for Loki in just about every other context. As I’ve also discussed at length, Ragnarok missed, or simply passed on, an obvious opportunity to address Loki’s place in Asgard’s imperialist history, as the child of a conquered people raised in ignorance of his heritage and with such contempt and hatred toward his own kind that when he discovered he was one of them he tried to wipe them out. I’m going to excerpt the most relevant part of that old post:
Loki’s story could have been used to flesh out the narrative about colonialism. Recall Hela’s dismissive remark about bogus “peace treaties” commemorated on the redecorated walls of the throne room: that might have been an allusion to the one-sided “treaties” that Britain and the U.S. signed with American Indian nations and then trampled all over. Loki could have been one of those stolen indigenous children raised among the colonists and taught to scorn the people to whom he was born. But for some reason Waititi and the writers didn’t make the connection, or didn’t want to tie Loki in to that aspect of the story. … maybe it was just because Loki has been a villain and they didn’t want to draw a connection between a (part-time) villain – or anyway, a character they just don’t like – and the oppressed of colonialism (though making him queer is OK, I guess). For whatever reason, they wanted to keep Loki firmly coded as White (which makes him easier to ridicule!) and gloss over the part where he’s only white-passing (literally; he’s actually blue).
And I’m not the only one; @endiness put it nicely:
the movie features asgard’s ‘past’ history of imperialism and colonization as a major plot point… but then it excludes loki from the narrative when he easily has a place in it. like, how could he not when he’s the adopted (kidnapped) son of the leader of an enemy nation left in ruin after losing to asgard? and when odin literally admitted that he took loki for political purposes? but, again, nothing about any of this at all. (actually, even worse than loki and his heritage and the circumstances being entirely excluded from the story, it isn’t; it’s brought up but only in the context of humor explicitly at loki’s expense to make a mockery of the emotional complexity and depth of his character in the previous movies.)
So the upshot seems to be: hammer in your anti-imperialist message except when Loki might appear to be on the oppressed rather than oppressor’s end of the equation, when the issue threatens to give him more depth and complexity and make him remotely sympathetic. Condemn Hela and Odin (but only sometimes; Thor can still appeal to him for strength at the end) for being imperialists, but condemn Loki for failing to be imperialist enough.
Loki is the Philosopher King 