taranoire:

lesbiansassemble:

1. Tom Hiddleston signed a six film deal, so we can expect him to be in Avengers 4.

2. Loki is known as a ‘Silvertongue’, so his choice of words is always extremely important. So, when he says “undying fidelity”. I think this is an allusion to the fact that he is not dead.

3. Further on from the ‘Silvertongue’ point, Loki says “I promise you, brother, the sun will shine on us again”. This seems too far out of place to be a coincidence. I think Loki is trying to subtly tell Thor that he has a trick up his sleeve that may end up saving them.

4. Loki has already feigned death so many times, is it really so far fetched to think he has done it again?

5. He disappeared from the scene for several minutes and we have no idea what he was doing during that time. He then reappears super cocky and arrogant which is a direct contrast to how terrified he’d been a few minutes prior. This seems to suggest that perhaps he is using an illusion of some sort.

6. He emphasizes the fact that he is a “God of Mischief”, thus perhaps hinting to Thor that he is about to perform a trick, or to allude to the audience that all is not as it seems.

7. Loki did not change into his Jotun form after he died. This seems odd because his Aesir form is an illusion, so it should have disappeared when he died. Furthermore, there are a couple of mentions of Loki being “the rightful King of Jotunheim” and “not Asgardian”, which may be an attempt to draw the audience’s attention to this fact.

8. It was very uncharacteristic of Loki to act so impulsive by stabbing Thanos with a small dagger. It seems to me that the attack was more of a distraction than a real attack. The Loki we know would have attempted to use some sort of illusion or trick in order to attack Thanos and mean it.

9. Tom Hiddleston mentions in a recent interview that “Chaos isn’t something that’s threatening to Loki” and that “Everything is fine”. This seems to suggest that Loki is alright, and hasn’t actually died.

10. Loki’s choice of last words, “You will never be a god”, introduces the idea that maybe Loki has survived due to the fact that he’s a God, and cannot be killed so easily.

11. If the Russo brothers wanted to make Loki’s death truly believable, they would have had Loki using his illusions, and Thanos seeing straight through them and then killing him. The fact that none of Loki’s powers were used at all, makes it seem that he has perhaps feigned death.

12. Finally, I refuse to believe that Thor’s last words to Loki are “You really are the worst brother”, it just seems so wrong to me after all they’ve been through.

I think he’s really literally dead this time, but knows he’ll be brought back some way or another.
Like Strange, he knows the only way they can win is if they make sacrifices now. But he promises Thor they will be together again, somehow, and that’s too strong a statement to be arbitrary.

I’d definitely like to believe in all of these reasons, but my pessimistic side suspects that we, as Loki’s fans, are grasping at straws. Many of these points, especially in combination, seem compelling, but I’ve got some reasons not to get too optimistic…

1. The number of films named in an actor’s contract is binding on the actor, but not the studio. He can’t say no if they want him in 6 films, but they don’t have to use all 6.

2, 3, 8, and 11 all rest on the presupposition that the writers, directors, producers, etc. care about making Loki’s characterization consistent and plausible. We saw what happened with Thor: Ragnarok, which seems to indicate that the higher-ups at Marvel do not care about that, or about making Loki appear competent. It’s fairly clear to me that the screenwriters, Markus & McFeely, and the Russos, who all got their start at Marvel working on the Captain America movies, care far more about Cap and his friends than about anyone else, and beyond that care more about the Avengers than about formerly villainous side characters like Loki. Markus & McFeely wrote the screenplay for Thor: The Dark World; it was faring poorly with test audiences, so Marvel brought in Joss Whedon as a script doctor. Whedon’s diagnosis was, in effect, “This movie has a fever, and the only prescription is more Loki.” He wrote at least the shapeshifting scene and the bro-boat scene; Loki’s trial at the beginning was also a late addition based on a tie-in comic. The point I’m trying to make is that Markus & McFeely did not consider Loki all that important and gave him a much smaller role in the movie than he eventually ended up playing, so I don’t expect them to place that much importance on Loki’s character coherence or narrative arc now, either.

4. This point can cut both ways. A lot of people have been pointing to the “no resurrections” line and noting that Loki dying but not really is getting to be an old trick.

7. There’s a fair amount of disagreement among fans about whether Loki’s Aesir form is an illusion/glamour or whether he’s actually a shapeshifter who can physically inhabit either form. For a variety of reasons (which I won’t list here), I favor the latter theory. I also don’t think that the darkening of his face during his “death” scene in TDW had anything to do with his Jotun nature; I think it probably had something to do with Kurse’s blood being on the blade he was stabbed with.

9. Tom was probably bullshitting because he was asked to “reassure” his fans. I wouldn’t take it all that seriously. And, you know, Loki lies, even if Tom usually doesn’t.

12. I don’t think Markus & McFeely and the Russos care about Thor and Loki’s relationship any more than they do about Loki as a character… and since Thor was saying crap like that all throughout Ragnarok, there’s something kind of fitting about it.

All that said, I really, really want to believe that you’re right.