According to Tom Hiddleston, what Loki experienced was “like the worst place imaginable. I think, he went to sort of all of the darkest recesses of the Universe, you know. I’m sure he had a brush with … several brushes with death. I think he run in to the shadiest characters you can find in the Nine Realms. I think he had to rely on his wits to protect himself. And it was really really really unpleasant, I think. Umm… and all I have to, you know, I don’t have any frame of reference for that, really, except for a imagining what it might be like to be…, I don’t know, to be kidnapped by sort of a terrorist cell or something. And have to survive very very frightening and precarious existence. But whatever it was, it was important when Loki came back for the Avengers. Whatever compassion he had left, was absolutely kind a shriveled to a minimum. Because of the experience he had. Harrowing, I think, and scarring for life. In a way that Odin and Thor, and Frigga find very very difficult to understand.”
And he’s also compared it to a runaway child getting picked up by the wrong people, and that brings to my mind images of the absolute worst of the worst things imaginable. Look at what Thanos did to a person he considered to be “his daughter”.
There’s a link to this really great To interview where he talks about it.
The tesseract dropped them on Asgard, a short walk from the city.
Thor doesn’t want to look at his brother. It hurts too much. He’s alive, as Thor had wished so many times, but even madder than before. mad and dangerous.
He takes his arm and pulls him toward the palace. Loki’s too good at slipping him mid-flight to risk anything faster.
Loki risists his pull, but not as if he wants to escape. As if-
It doesn’t matter what he wants. It stopped mattering.
But Loki keeps shrinking back, dragging his feet. Thor finally looks at him, scowling, and Loki can barely meet his eyes. He just pulls them back.
Thor clenches his jaw, and marches forward. He’ll drag Loki, if he has to.
Loki’s hands shoot out, touch Thor’s side, and Thor can almost feel his words. ‘Wait wait wait!’
Thor looks back at him again. Loki gestures for the muzzle to come off.
Thor turns away.
Loki jerks back hard, and even tries to trip Thor.
Thor snarls at him, and Loki gestures for him to take the muzzle off. A princely, imperial demand.
Well. No reason not to, here. Thor sighs, and complies.
“What?”
Loki takes his time, stretching his jaw, and breathing deep, trying to be irritating. But Thor can see that embarrassment that hides around his eyes when he has to ask for something.
“Can we just… walk slowly?”
Thor frowns. “Are you hurt?”
“No. I…. Can we?” He looks up, and closes his eyes, and for just a moment looks peaceful. “There was no sun there. There won’t be any sun wherever your father sends me. Please.”
Loki, God of Mischief, at the San Diego Comic Con in 2013.
Featurette about that one time, at the SDCC, when Tom Hiddleston dressed up as Loki for a short appearance on stage and messed up with our lives forever.
Loki is the Philosopher King 