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.
Okay I want to talk about Loki’s plan in Avengers. I just found this post which theorizes that it was Loki’s plan all along to present a big enough threat to assemble the Avengers so they could take down Thanos (but not SUCH a big threat as to actually do a ton of damage).
I’d like to complicate that theory a bit. Strap in, because this might be long. I do not think it was Loki’s intention to lose the Battle of New York…but I do think he considered getting defeated by a group that could go on to defeat Thanos an acceptable alternative. Basically, to survive, he either needs to impress Thanos by winning or lose in such a way that Thanos can’t get his hands on him. Either way, he’s still going to be in someone else’s power, so there isn’t a truly triumphant outcome possible for him.
The main reason I don’t think assembling the Thanos-defeating team was his conscious, primary plan is this moment:
To me, this proves that his actual plan was to turn Tony and sic him on the other Avengers, and I kinda think this plan would’ve worked (or the victory for Earth would’ve come at a much heavier price, like that nuke taking out the entire city and all the Avengers with it). Thor and the Hulk are both capable of defeating Iron Man, but they wouldn’t only be fighting Iron Man. They’d be fighting him, Loki, and likely the full Chitauri army, all while also trying to minimize collateral damage in one of the largest and most densely populated cities on Earth. Tony on Loki’s side would have tipped the scales and bought the Chitauri enough time to move the whole army through the portal and start spreading out. It would have been chaos, and for all we know, that was only Phase 1 of the invasion plan. The Black Order (including Ronan, Nebula, and Gamora at this point), the Outriders, and Thanos himself could have been waiting in the wings.
But the arc reactor prevented Loki from gaining his trump card in this battle, and he couldn’t win without it.
(Okay I just got sidetracked for like an hour watching Tom Hiddleston interviews from the Thor/Avengers era. Really nice line from him about Loki’s motivations in Avengers: “His motivation is to gain absolute power, and through that, self-respect.” Damn, son! Back on task now.)
So yeah, I’m fairly convinced that taking over Earth with the scepter and the Chitauri army was the real plan. But to what degree was it Loki’s own plan?
There’s a lot to consider. Thanos had the Mind Stone before putting it in the scepter and lending it to Loki for the plan (and so the Other could maintain influence over him). Based on what Wanda can do to people’s minds with powers she got from the stone and reasonable assumptions of what else it’s capable of, it would be very easy to, say, revise Loki’s memory of this:
into this:
I used to think Loki was just revising history to justify himself, but this is a completely nonsensical lie to tell to one of the only other actual witnesses to the event. He would not have referenced this moment if he remembered it correctly. He might’ve chosen “know your place” or said something like “I remember you recklessly starting a war in retaliation for a mere insult, yet you would condemn me for my ambition?” So yeah. A fake memory proves Thanos screwed with his head.
As far as I’m concerned, at this point he’s already off the hook for what he does in Avengers because he is incapable of making real, autonomous choices when his memories have been revised to suit Thanos’s goals. He is a puppet without self-awareness, not a free agent. But that’s nowhere near where this ends. He looks absolutely dreadful in the post-credits stinger of Thor.
And at the beginning of Avengers.
Could be the effects of falling through the void and traveling by Tesseract, but given that Thanos has no qualms about making children fight like dogs and replacing their body parts when they lose, the chances that Loki had a pleasant time are vanishingly small.
But before I forget, I want to address the eye color theory. Tom has blue eyes, guys, and so does MCU Loki.
At no point do Loki’s eyes have this extremely obvious starry blue cataract effect:
Thor got multiple very close looks at Loki’s eyes over the course of the movie, and he’s known him his whole life. He would notice something weird going on with his eyes.
Whatever Thanos did to Loki, I think he did it with the unfiltered Mind Stone, before he stuck it in the scepter, and it was done with much more precision than a brief poke on the chest. I think the blue gem on it when it’s in the scepter is some kind of mod designed to prevent Loki from using the Mind Stone for any purpose other than the ones Thanos allowed, while still letting the Other maintain whatever mental link he’d forged to keep tabs on him. Hence the mind whammy Loki puts on Clint and Erik turning their eyes blue instead of yellow or something.
Thanos’s plan is antithetical to what Loki wants when he’s in his right mind. The Loki of the first Thor film didn’t want power or a throne. He wanted to be loved and respected as Thor was. Loki is the God of Mischief, and we’re supposed to believe he really thinks freedom is a lie and subjugation is peace? Mischief requires freedom to exist! And would a Loki in his right mind try to do essentially the exact same thing Laufey did in 965? Loki who hated Laufey so much that he arranged to murder him and make it look like he did it to save Odin’s life, then desperately tried to destroy his entire planet? I think Loki in his right mind would be appalled by the plan to conquer and enslave Earth. But Thanos’s tampering has cranked up his self-loathing to the degree that he now wants to live up to the worst Asgard might think of him, which is to be Laufey over again. In this state, he wants to deserve having been tossed into that abyss by the brother he loved so that he can make sense of it, and what better way than this?
But he’s still working under extreme pressure. The Other seems to have a pretty strict timeline for him, and he’s not impressed with Loki’s efforts. He also seems to expect treachery. Why would he expect that if the recruitment process had gone smoothly or if Loki hadn’t shown signs of resistance? I think Thanos took a major gamble here. Asgard is currently severely handicapped by the loss of the Bifrost, but that won’t be the case for long, so this is his one shot at the Infinity Stone he knows is on Earth without interference from them (heck, maybe he knows about the Time Stone already too, but he only needs the Space Stone and then he can get the rest himself, so a minion like Loki doesn’t need to know about that one). Thanos spent as much time as he felt he could risk on reprogramming Loki into his Tesseract-retrieving tool, but it still wasn’t perfect. This accounts for how rushed and obvious Loki’s plan is. And also this.
Some part of Loki wasn’t committed enough. A committed Loki might have a backup plan if he failed to enthrall Tony with the scepter. A committed Loki might have come up with an entirely different, far more subtle plan that would have succeeded before anyone knew it was in motion. Instead, he lost. And maybe, deep down, beneath what Thanos did to him, that was what he wanted. Maybe Selvig was able to create a failsafe because Loki wanted there to be a failsafe. Maybe he reacted to defeat with resigned glibness (”If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll take that drink now.”) instead of rage and terror because he has some confidence that the Avengers won’t kill him and will defeat Thanos before he can do so.
So why, if Loki was Thanos’s puppet rather than his willing pawn, didn’t he tell anyone what had happened to him after the tampering wore off*? Pride. Asgard’s culture obviously prizes strength, but Loki, on top of already not being the Asgardian ideal, not to mention actually being a member of a hated other species, now he’s a victim. He’s spent his whole life wanting to prove himself to Odin, so how can he admit that he was weak enough to be tortured, manipulated, and brainwashed?
*I think the tampering would’ve worn off as the result of one or more of these factors: an exploding arrow going off in his face, getting Hulk-smashed, being in Asgard’s dungeon and worlds away from the Mind Stone, and the death of the Other (because he’s the one who canonically has the mental link with Loki, not Thanos himself).
Even as he refuses to deny responsibility for his actions in Avengers, Loki never acts that way again. In the Dark World, former friends are lining up to kill him if he puts a toe out of line, but he never betrays Thor. He goes along with Thor’s plan to *pretend* to betray him (which required a lot more trust on Thor’s part than he admitted to having), nearly dies protecting the woman he hated for having the audacity to change Thor for the better in the space of three days when he’d failed to do so over the course of centuries, and nearly dies again protecting Thor. (I do believe that wasn’t a trick. I think he came near enough to death to revert to his Jotun form, which changed his anatomy enough to make it no longer a mortal wound.)
Then he overpowers Odin and takes the throne, with which he does nothing villainous at all. Far from it. If he’d been on Thanos’s side, this would have been his chance to redeem himself from failing in Avengers. The Mind Stone was on Earth, and maybe could’ve insisted that Thor retrieve it instead of let Tony and Bruce hang onto it for a few extra days, but the Space Stone and Reality Stone were both within his immediate grasp, and he could’ve turned them over in exchange for clemency for himself. Instead, he sends the Aether to Knowhere and sits on the Tesseract in Asgard’s vault for the next four years, while spreading word of his own noble death in the form of stage productions. If it wasn’t for the surprise existence of Hela, this would’ve been a pretty foolproof way of thwarting Thanos’s plan indefinitely and keeping himself safe.
So there you go. I feel like this got pretty disorganized and I have a headache now so I don’t feel like tailoring it more than I already have, but I don’t think I left out any of the stuff I wanted to address. What we have here is a pretty sizable pile of evidence pointing to Loki not acting of his own free will in Avengers. It doesn’t excuse his actions in Thor (regicide and attempted genocide, in particular, as well as the attack with the Destroyer), though, and I’m kinda annoyed all of that got so overshadowed, because I’d really have liked them to deal with it.
Now, it’s possible that all these character inconsistencies between Loki in Avengers and Loki before and after it, all the indications that Loki wasn’t working for Thanos willingly or while in his right mind, and the offscreen lengths Loki is implied to have gone to to prevent/delay Thanos from acquiring/regaining three different Infinity Stones are all the results of lazy writing and failure to make the most of this character. But even if that’s true, it doesn’t negate how well these elements fit together.
As a writer, I know what it’s like to have my stories and characters come alive and do their own thing to the point where I feel like I’m being dragged along behind them, and the end result is, completely by accident, way more interwoven and coherent than I thought I’d be able to pull off. I’ve built arcs I never thought would happen, twists I never saw coming, and meaningful relationships between characters I never even considered including when I started. I’ve been in writing workshops where we tell each other all the cool things we noticed the particular writer doing in their stories, only for the writers themselves (me included) to be like “Yes I absolutely meant to do that you have recognized my true genius. *sweats nervously*”
So it doesn’t actually matter if all of this happened by accident, because either way, it’s there for fans of the character to extrapolate from.
Hopefully this was the plan all along, those elements were all deliberate, and we’ll see them come to fruition in a gloriously satisfying way in A4, but it would be just as good if they were accidental and the Russo Bros. noticed some or most of them and put them to good use for A4.
And if they didn’t notice and don’t have a satisfying plan for Loki? Well, then at least we still have fanfiction.
I love this meta!
This is a very interesting meta and in line with my own theory. I agree with most of it except some parts. It’s true that Tom’s eyes are blue but they did digitally intensify their color in the Avengers(also Thor isn’t really the most observant person). Therefore I believe Thanos messed with Loki’s head with the help of scepter, it just differes from the way Loki used it on Selvig and Clint. Also according to the Avengers movie, the Tessearct(the space stone container) and the mind stone housing are made of the same thing and are connected. I explained about the possible reason of it in my theory. And even Thanos can’t use an infinity stone directly without a medium that can control it.
(My headcanon’s also different about how Loki survived. I believe it was because the blade that loki was impaled on contained the Kursed blood which was responsible for Kursed’s invulnerability. So it had some healing powers and when it was affecting his body, Loki’s skin turned gray.)
Loki was supposed to have an important role in infinity war when Joss Whedon was involved. I think those plans were completely erased by Rossu brothers and I don’t have any hope that these details come to any fruition or a conclusion. So, yes, fanfiction.
I agree with all of @taaroko’s analysis, except for a few items:
2) I don’t think Loki would be all that appalled by the idea of conquering Earth; his murderous hatred for Laufey probably has a lot more to do with Asgardian racism and the fact that Laufey abandoned him to die. However, it is a fair point that Odin used the attempted conquest of Earth as a pretext for the war with Jotunheim, so for propaganda purposes he would have had to frame that as a terrible crime. I do like the idea that “Thanos’s tampering has cranked up his self-loathing to the degree that he now wants to live up to the worst Asgard might think of him, which is to be Laufey over again.”
3) I’m with @lucianalight on the explanation for how Loki survived being impaled in TDW; he was turning gray, not blue, as he appeared to die. HOWEVER, I do not think they were doing anything deliberately to make Loki’s eyes look more blue in The Avengers; I think it’s just a consequence of the dim lighting and the reflection from the blue light of the scepter he’s holding. I completely agree with taaroko that we weren’t supposed to think Loki was mind-controlled in the same way as Clint and Erik.
4) I think all of these elements were carefully planted by Joss Whedon, who still had some influence over how Loki was characterized in TDW: he was called upon to rewrite a couple of scenes that weren’t working, and Marvel needed to make sure that nothing anyone was doing in the individual franchises would mess up his plans for the ensemble Avengers films. That does not mean that Markus & McFeely (the writers of IW and A4) or the Russo brothers (the directors) give a shit about whatever plans Whedon may have had regarding Loki’s connection with Thanos or his involvement in defeating him, and Loki’s idiotic, anti-climactic death in IW strongly suggests that they don’t.
I can’t believe I hadn’t read and reblogged this before… so much of it is so perfect, I kind of want to highlight the whole thing, but I’ll keep myself to a few paragraphs:
“Why do we care so much? Because we see ourselves in Loki. We, who felt different, were different, and were alone because of it. We, who knew how it felt to be ridiculed, rejected, vilified and despite all our efforts, never accepted, never loved for who we are. We, who hide all our hurt and pain under a mask but at some point we just couldn’t take it anymore and exploded. So we identified with Loki. …
“To a number of fans and audience, especially male audience with beliefs from a toxic masculinity culture this seemed threatening that a queer coded and/or feminine coded villain gets more female fans than heavily masculine coded heroes. They hated him. And they started to belittle his fans, by implying that Loki was only popular because of Tom or because he is pretty! That Loki’s fans are a bunch of fools that only lust after him for his looks. It seems they deliberately don’t want to understand. Still, it doesn’t really matter, right? Marvel won’t force the ideas of toxic masculinity on us, right? Wrong!
“Ragnarok happened.
“Ragnarok happened and it stepped on everything that was Loki. His characterization, his arc, his powers, his goals, his fans. Ragnarok ridiculed Loki in every possible way. It insulted us, made fun of us, told us that we were a bunch of fools for caring for Loki because he is just a stupid troublemaker. Ragnarok was a disaster of toxic masculinity.
“We saw it. We saw everything that was wrong with Ragnarok and pointed it out. But what were [I amend to: ARE] we called? Stans, apologists, haters, antis. …
“He didn’t deserve to die as a plot device to give Thor sth to avenge. We didn’t deserve this. We deserved to see the god of mischief in all his trickster glory. ‘No resurrection this time’ was directed to us, not Thor. They were telling us that you can rage and try to fight, but at the end, you are nothing, you will be broken like a ragdoll so the real hero can be heroic. The story is not about you, it was never about you. You are just a tragedy, you don’t deserve happiness, you can only be redeemed by sacrificing yourself. …
“The fate of Gamora and Nebula is also angers me. One gets killed in a disguise of love and the other gets tortured. The two characters that deserved to avenge themselves more than anyone, to get a chance for a proper fight, was used as plot devices. It’s disgusting! Gamora, Nebula and Loki, all feminine coded and/or queer coded characters were crushed by their masculine coded abuser. Toxic masculinity.”
Ragnarok and Infinity War were the triumph of toxic masculinity. For the people who will no doubt reply, “But Ragnarok was so great for queer representation!”… many people, some of whom are queer (I’m bi myself), strongly disagree. At the same time that Loki was more overtly coded as gay, he was made to look ridiculous, shallow, and incompetent. The other gay-coded character, the Grandmaster, was also depicted as ridiculous, and morally repugnant besides. This is not revolutionary; this is perfectly standard villainous queer-coding (thanks again, @fuckyeahrichardiii). The implied relationship between Loki and the Grandmaster cannot be anything other than predatory and opportunistic, which further reinforces negative stereotypes. Valkyrie’s bisexuality was not made explicit, unless you count the flashback scene with her presumed lover dying for her, which, again, is not revolutionary in any way (tragic dead lesbians, yay!).
Contrary to what a lot of Tumblr seems to think, white men do not have a monopoly on toxic masculinity. I’ve been seeing people make a point of adding “white” when talking about men who feel entitled to women’s bodies and attention – probably with the (admirable) aim to counter the *equally false* notion that non-white cultures are uniformly more misogynistic than white culture. Toxic masculinity manifests differently in different cultures, but the basic phenomenon crosses lines of race. We cannot assume that Ragnarok must be exempt from it because Taika Waititi is not white (or wears pineapple rompers); and a careful consideration of its characterization and tone – as well as the decision to replace Jane Foster, a woman whose strength is her intellect, with a woman who is “more Thor’s equal” because she can beat people up (adding Valkyrie would have been a much better decision, but we can’t have more than two central female characters, can we?) – yields the diagnosis that it drips with toxic masculinity.
You think you could make Loki tell us where the Tesseract is?
Shit I hate it when I notice new things about these movies.
We’ve covered how conceited it is of Thor to assume, incorrectly, that this is about him. But what else can we expect from this spoiled brat.
And we’ve covered that this is Fury proposing torture. Asking a man to torture his own brother. Anyone who still thinks Fury is one of the good guys… he’s not.
But Thor says “There’s no pain would prise his need from him.”
Thor knows that pain won’t make Loki knuckle under.
Which means he must have tried it. Before Loki was officially designated a villain. When he was just the younger prince of Asgard, Thor’s loyal brother and comrade in arms.
Thor knows that torture won’t work on Loki from experience.
Shit. Did they think about what they were putting in these fucking movies at all?
The more we analyse the movies, the more we discover that the bad guys are the ones with shining armour and boosted egos.
Really, the painful truth I read above breaks my heart.
I also think it’s interesting that Thor assumes Loki coming to Earth is about him. It had nothing to do with Thor at all, but Thor never finds that out. Here’s hoping Infinity War will bring some shit to light, but I’m not holding my breath.
Also the thought that Thor knows Loki has an incredibly high pain tolerance kind of makes me cringe.
“Which means he must have tried it. Before Loki was officially designated a villain. When he was just the younger prince of Asgard, Thor’s loyal brother and comrade in arms.
Thor knows that torture won’t work on Loki from experience.”
Before TR I would never believe that Thor would ever torture Loki, or put him through any kind of serious pain. So what I understood from Thor’s line in Avengers was that Thor had seen Loki going through torture and didn’t break. Not that he had done it himself. I mean they are princes, any kind of voilence could have happened by their enemys. But damn TR and that scene with obedience disk makes me question everything now.
Alrighty. I know I’m late, but upon coming across this, have things to say. Don’t know if you’re going to like or agree with them, but here we go.
Im not going to get into Thor’s vanity, because that’s a topic for another time, but here we go on Loki and abuse:
I can NEVER belive that Thor would EVER torture Loki. He wouldn’t abuse him, or experiment on him because he loves his brother. I mean, look at the ENTIRE elevator scene in Ragnarok. Thor literally says in a morose, and reminiscent voice: “I thought the world of you. I thought we’re were always going to fight side by side.” (Something along those lines. Sorry if the quote isn’t correct.)Personally, I would never beat anyone if I thought the world of them. I wouldn’t wish to fight by their side if I hated them enough to beat them.
And it goes back to before then even. Look at TDW. The scene where Thor is asking for Loki’s help? He states that he used to belive that there was a glimmer of goodness and redeemability in Loki.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS?!?!!??!? It means that he wanted to save his brother! If youre abusing someone, why would you wish to save them?
Granted, he does say that that is/was gone, but we never see him abuse or beat Loki after that. And then theres all the other things Loki did for Thor in that move.
He agreed to help him in the first
Saved/Protected Jane.
Twice
Didn’t actually betray him at all until he “died”
And, my personal favorite
LEFT THOR WITH THE THOUGHT THAT HIS FATHER WAS ACTUALLY A GOOD FATHER BY TELLING HIM SOMETHING KIND AND DEEP. SOMETHINGBHE NEEDED TO HEAR SO THE HE DIDNT ABSOLUTELY HATE HIS FATHER; HIS IDOL SINCE HE WAS A SMOL LIGHTNING BOLT WHILE DISGUISED AS ODIN
You don’t do things like that for people you hate.
Then there the first Thor movie. Did you see any of the scenes before it was revealed to Loki what his heritage was? The two were close. Look at the deleted scenes. Loki says something similar to: “I admit that there have been times when I was envious, but never doubt that I love you.” Why would Loki say he loves Thor if his brother abused him? I hear y’all saying “Well it could be a show!” “He’s faking!” “Thor threatened him!” But look at the deleted scene mentioned earlier in this paragraph. The two are completely alone. Loki is smiling, and it’s genuine. There are creases by his eyes from his cheeks lifting. (That’s the physical cue that a smile is genuine) Loki’s body language in that scene doesn’t show any sort of discomfort or fear. He’s comfortable around his brother.
And then there were the scenes in Jotunheim in the first Thor. Loki is insistant that they go home (and that they not go at all, calling it suicide)because he doesn’t want to see his brother or ever his brother’s friends hurt or worse.
Oh, and this little gem: “I love Thor more dearly than any of you.”
If you look at the body language of someone whose been beaten while they’re around the person they are beaten by, you’ll see slouched shoulders, a tense body, constant glances to anywhere but their abusers face, clammy hands, hands in pockets (a cue that the person is trying to hide something) and just a general feel of unease and unrest. Fear and terror.
You see NONE of that body language when Loki and Thor are together. Look at Ragnarok. They’re fighting together to end Hella. They don’t hate each other. Loki isn’t afraid of Thor. He’s just so used to being in Thor’s shadow and he’s sick of it. He wants to be recognized.
When the two are alone at the end of Ragnarok, you don’t see Loki tense, or avoiding eye contant. He’s looking strait at Thor withought any glint of fear.
He’s comfortable.
Oh, and the line “I’m Here.”
And “Maybe you’re not so bad.”
Im gonna bring up a thought now.
They. Are. Norse. Gods. And. Brothers.
That means battles, and fighting side by side. Seeing each other take hits and blows, stabs and cuts. Seeing them push themselves to their limits. Thor knows that Loki won’t stop no matter the pain because he’s seen it in his brother in battle. He’s seen that fight in Loki’s eyes. He knows his brother’s ambitious nature.
“So how does Thor know that pain won’t stop Loki?” I hear you ask.
Well my friends. All you have to do is look at the ending of the first Thor film.
Loki is hellbent on destroying Jotumheim. So hellbent that he would fight his own brother to do it. Sure, Loki was angered and confused because of what he had recently learned, and he didn’t belive Thor to be his brother, but it had to hurt to fight his brother. I mean, it would hurt me to fight my brother.
At this point, Loki has discarded pain for his ambition and let it consume him. He didn’t care that he had to fight Thor. He didn’t care that destroying Jotunheim would have awful reprocussions. He just wanted to prove himself to someone, *cough cough* his father *cough*
And at the end you see Loki showing that he care for Thor. When Thor is destroying the Bifrost Loki yells at him: “But if you destroy the Bifrost you’ll never see her again!!!”
I don’t know about you, but to me, that screams that Loki cares about Thor’s wellbeing and interests. He cares about his brother’s happiness despite feeling estranged and ostracized because of what he is.
That’s not typically seen in someone who is abused. The care for their abusers wellbeing.
So no. I don’t think Thor would ever abuse Loki. They’re too close. They’ve been through too much together. Thor does NOT deserve that kind of belittlement. He has fought to save and protect his little brother since the beginning, and that ain’t gonna change.
Let me just preface this by saying that I have studied psychology, child development and trauma/abuse recovery at great length and for many years. I don’t usually bother responding to posts like this, simply because I don’t have the time, but given that your argument is based on some disturbingly false premises, I feel like I owe it to other Loki fans to construct a reply. You seem very young and sweet, so I’m going to do my best to be kind.
“I can NEVER believe that Thor would EVER torture Loki.”
I LIKE Thor and I have zero trouble believing this at all. Thor left Loki being electrocuted by the obedience disk. Thor had no idea how long Loki would lie there, or how much he could withstand. He didn’t know if Loki would be rescued, or if he’d be found by someone who was going to simply execute him…and they were on a planet where people were executed regularly (and painfully) for ridiculous reasons. In fact, Thor witnessed an execution, so he knew this for sure. And Thor didn’t JUST leave Loki there, he did so gleefully. So even if his comment to Nick Fury about knowing how much pain Loki can withstand doesn’t mean anything, the scene in Ragnarok leaves very little to the imagination.
“And it goes back to before then even. Look at TDW. The scene where Thor is asking for Loki’s help? He states that he used to belive that there was a glimmer of goodness and redeemability in Loki.”
The thing is, this is actually an awful thing to say. Like many of Thor’s comments towards Loki, it’s an insult disguised as a compliment. Thor has a lot of balls asking for help at that moment, in the first place. Loki does it because he loves his mother and wants to avenge her. The problem is that you are interpreting this from the POV that Loki is a villain who needs to be redeemed, instead of someone who has feelings and motives for his behavior, just like Thor.
Interestingly enough, I’ve noticed that people who tend to defend Thor’s actions are people who share the view that he and Loki are not actually equals.
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS?!?!!??!? It means that he wanted to save his brother! If youre abusing someone, why would you wish to save them…You don’t do things like that for people you hate.”
First of all, no one has said that Loki hates Thor. For the record, I don’t think that Thor hates Loki either. Abuse victims don’t usually hate their abusers. In fact, many would openly claim to love them. Abuse victims also absolutely do defend their abusers, do things for their abusers and feel loyal and/or indebted to their abusers. It’s actually more common for abuse victims to feel this way, than not. That’s pretty textbook. Extreme versions of this are known as Stockholm Syndrome.
Loki is consistently desperate for Thor’s approval and validation, as well as that of his father’s. He even says as much. “All I ever wanted was to be your equal…” Loki’s motives can be summed up, almost entirely by that quote alone. He tries to kill himself when he realizes that his dad isn’t going to give him that approval. Let’s take a moment to recognize what a devastating act that is. It’s not the sort of thing someone does when they are secure in their position in their family. That’s the act of a desperate person, who just wants to put themselves out of their misery.
Did you see any of the scenes before it was revealed to Loki what his heritage was? The two were close. Look at the deleted scenes. Loki says something similar to: “I admit that there have been times when I was envious, but never doubt that I love you.”
Yes, I have seen all of them, many times. Loki says he loves Thor and Thor says…thank you. That’s got to be the absolute worst response a person can offer to someone who is telling them that they love them. And once again…abuse victims tell their abusers that they love them all the time. It’s very, very common. Abusers also withhold love and affection in order to control their victims. They might -for instance- refuse to say the words I love you, even when those words are said to them.
“Well it could be a show!” “He’s faking!”
No, it’s not a show. Loki believes what he is saying when he tells Thor that he loves him. He is sincere. Loki loves Thor, whatever that means for Loki. He doesn’t need to be faking for it to be evidence of an unhealthy relationship. It is possible for someone to be a victim of emotional abuse and to feel like they love someone or to feel that they are happy in their relationship. They can laugh and smile and hug and even make love to their significant other, because they are not aware of the dysfunction they are living in. Because of that dysfunction, their perception of what it means to love someone is skewed and disordered.
“If you look at the body language of someone whose been beaten while they’re around the person they are beaten by, you’ll see slouched shoulders, a tense body, constant glances to anywhere but their abusers face, clammy hands, hands in pockets (a cue that the person is trying to hide something) and just a general feel of unease and unrest. Fear and terror.”
I mean no disrespect when I say this, but you either have no firsthand knowledge whatsoever of what an abusive relationship is like OR you are in one and are deep in denial about it.
I say this as someone who has worked with many people who recovering from various types of abuse. Loki’s body language towards Thor is fairly consistent with someone who feels inferior and who is desperate for approval. When Loki is not in Thor’s presence, he actually stands taller and speaks more confidently. And I recognize that such a thing doesn’t necessarily imply physical abuse, but it definitely implies emotional abuse. It implies a disparity in their relationship that isn’t healthy.
And “Maybe you’re not so bad.”
Oh my, this is another terrible thing to say. It’s another insult, disguised as a compliment. Who said he was bad in the first place? This, once again, comes from the premise that Loki is someone who needs to be redeemed and Thor is not.
“I don’t know about you, but to me, that screams that Loki cares about Thor’s wellbeing and interests. He cares about his brother’s happiness despite feeling estranged and ostracized because of what he is.That’s not typically seen in someone who is abused. The care for their abusers wellbeing.“
I have no doubt that Loki cares for Thor, because we have seen plenty of evidence of that. I believe that Thor only cares for Loki conditionally. Thor loves Loki as long as Loki is the person Thor thinks he should be, but he doesn’t really seem to KNOW Loki at all. I find it tragic that Loki has become okay with this. I had hoped that Ragnarok would end with Thor apologizing for not trying harder to understand his brother. Instead, Loki has embraced that he will never be understood and that the only way he’s doing to have Thor in his life is to accept that he will never be regarded as an equal.
Thor’s attitude towards his brother is evident with lines like “know your place” and “your imagined slights.” Thor does not see Loki as his equal, so in his mind it is totally reasonable for him to disregard Loki’s feelings. This is not entirely his fault. He was raised to see himself as better, as superior. Loki appears to know, even before his Jotun origins are revealed, that he is somehow less than his brother. This is not a perception that comes out of thin air.
Let me rephrase that -Loki’s slights are not “imagined” simply because the protagonist says they are. This is a common mistake people make when digesting fiction. They accept the hero or good guy’s POV as reality, instead of what it is…that one person’s POV. This is especially evident when you have characters who are larger than life like Captain America or Han Solo or Harry Potter.
What’s amusing is…Loki cares openly about Thor’s feelings. He acknowledge’s Thor’s loss when Frigga dies, and again when Odin dies. He even pats him on the back when he is reminded that Jane broke up with him. These are the actions of someone who has accepted that his feelings do not matter, but the other party’s do. This is actually a very common dynamic in abusive or codependent relationships.
You mention Thor’s line in Ragnarok. “I thought the world of you. I thought we’re were always going to fight side by side.”
Except that…we’ve seen zero evidence that Thor EVER thought the world of Loki. We’ve seen plenty of evidence that Loki thinks the world of Thor. Granted he says some negative things about him too -but he does so bitterly. Thor treats his brother as a pest in the original film. He talks down to him almost consistently, throughout all 4 films they are in together. In Avengers, Thor doesn’t even ask what Loki is doing on Earth or suspect something might be wrong (he’s suddenly trying to invade a planet he previously had no interest in). Thor makes one brief attempt to appeal to Loki, but it’s only so he can put an end to the battle and cart him off to prison. He shows no interest in finding out why Loki did what he did and we learn in TDW that Thor doesn’t even visit Loki in prison.
“Personally, I would never beat anyone if I thought the world of them.”
I believe you! I wouldn’t be able to beat anyone, even if I couldn’t stand them, but since these characters are not based on you or me, that’s not really useful information.
Do I know for sure that Thor has tortured Loki? Outside of the scene in Ragnarok, no. But do I think he’s capable of it? Absolutely. And that’s all this post is really about…whether Thor is capable of such thing. I’m amused that people are threatened by that notion. It’s almost as though they think that Thor’s motives are all good, simply because he has been cast as the hero.
Do I think Thor is a terrible person? No. He’s a character that is flawed, just like all the other Marvel characters. Thor is a product of his childhood and his family, just like Loki. They were both set against one another from the get go. They are both flawed and deeply messed up and that’s what makes them interesting.
Here’s the thing, though. While I believe there is evidence to support the fact that Loki’s relationship with Thor is imbalanced and dysfunctional…I don’t think it was the intention of the MCU writers to portray it as such. I think it’s just poor and inconsistent writing. I think it’s also a result of the fact that comic style writers tend to subscribe to the notion that anything the hero does is okay, simply because they are the hero and anything the villain does is not okay, simply because they are the villain. Which is a shame, but we take what we can get.
@juliabohemian Thank you for the in depth and lovely meta. It certainly puts many things into perspective. Sadly, I agree that such a rich interpretation wasn’t intentional and came about through a combination of cliched writing and Tom Hiddelston’s method acting, which is why we will see no acknowledgement of these issues and no resolution on screen. But it’s still important that the audience interpret what’s onscreen critically, and this includes judging the heroes by their deeds and not by their words.
I also appreciate @juliabohemian‘s meta, because it very neatly punctured the idea that the points the previous reblogger (not tagging because I don’t want to get into it with them) raises are evidence against abuse. It’s actually kind of hilarious how bad an argument it is for the intended conclusion, especially considering that some of the evidence offered (Thor’s claims that Loki “still has some good” in him or “isn’t so bad”) is actually evidence for the exact opposite.
That said… I absolutely did not draw the conclusion @mosellegreen did from that line in The Avengers. I think we were supposed to think, as @lucianalight suggested, that Thor knows Loki can hold up under torture because of experience with their common enemies during one of the many campaigns they’ve fought in together. And even after Ragnarok, I still think that, because I do not consider it legitimate to read Thor’s character as presented in Ragnarok back into the earlier movies. It’s so different, so discontinuous, that it provides absolutely no insight into his character in the other movies. The Thor of TR gleefully inflicts pain on his brother to “teach him a lesson”; the Thor of the earlier movies would not do that.
Yes, Thor probably “beat up on” little brother Loki in the way that siblings do, and Loki probably gave as good as he got, both in physical fights and in obnoxious pranks. (Forget the story about Loki “trying to kill” Thor by stabbing him when they were 8… that makes no damn sense for a lot of reasons. If Loki stabbed Thor with anything, it was probably the equivalent of a pair of scissors.) If their relationship was “abusive” in Thor 1 and before, it was just a matter of Thor being one of the “cool kids” who dismisses and sometimes bullies his tag-along uncool little brother… and of accepting the superiority that Odin has convinced both him and Loki that he (Thor) possesses. But that, I think, is better described as a situation where both Thor and Loki are victims of Odin’s crappy parenting, albeit in different ways (which seems to be the conclusion @juliabohemian reaches as well). I’m definitely bothered by the ways in which Thor shows, pre-TR, that he doesn’t care about Loki’s feelings (dismissing him, not asking him WTF happened in the year he was gone, assuming invading Midgard was All About Him, not visiting him in prison…), but I can accept that because Thor 1 acknowledges that its hero is flawed, and both that movie and The Avengers show him as improving but still a work in progress. He is getting better in TDW, and their brotherly dynamic is kind of adorable; he still says some pretty cringe-y things, but you can also see genuine respect and affection there. TR just ignores and/or reverses all the growth we’ve seen in Thor’s character and presents him as a self-absorbed, manipulative asshole who’s willing to punish and “train” Loki with severe pain while smiling smugly and speechifying at him, and then blithely leave him vulnerable in a hostile world, because he just kind of doesn’t care how anyone else feels or even, apparently, regard Loki as a full person.
Loki is the Philosopher King 