Thor was a victim of Odin’s abuse and brainwashing too, so maybe try not to blame him for thinking Loki was beyond hope because when a parent you’ve been raised to trust tells you that, you’re inclined to believe them
“Thor was a victim of Odin’s abuse and brainwashing too”
AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Yeah, because being the golden child that everyone loves totally isthe same as being the scapegoat outcast whose father literally said his birthright was to die and then locked him in the dungeons for what was meant to be the rest of his life with no content with the outside world.
*snort*
Sure, Thor was totally abused too xD
Not all abuse follows the same pattern and no one is saying Thor was abused to the same degree as Loki was.
Let’s look at the 3rd child, Hela, because her abuse has most in common with Thor. Odin seemed to treat her well and judging from the friezes she uncovered, they seem to show she was respected by Asgard, ruling at Odin’s side. She was given the same weapon as Thor and raised to be a warmonger than Odin could unleash on his enemies.
But he had moulded her into a mass murderer. Do you doubt that doing that to a child is abusive?
It doesn’t excuse what she did, just as Loki’s abuse doesn’t excuse what he did, but it does help you understand why these things happened.
As for Thor, he basically got the Hela-lite treatment. He was raised to love war and fighting, he was even raised to be a cold-blooded killer (just look what he did on Jotunheim), just not to the same degree that Hela was.
Neither Thor and Hela were raised to have introspection, given the ability to question their actions, thoughts, or beliefs.
And when they did what they had been raised to do (wage war) but without Odin’s permission, both were banished.
None of his children were raised with their best interests at heart. Rather, they were turned into what Odin wanted them to be. He viewed them as extensions of himself that he could do what he wanted with, rather than as people in their own right.
Nothing about this is healthy parenting. Nothing about this raises well-rounded adults. He has damaged all his children via the emotional abuse used to turn them into what he wanted them to be.
Thor was able to overcome his abuse and become a wise, rounded adult (well, ish. He succeeded as long as you ignore the BS that was Ragnarok).
Although it wasn’t shown onscreen, Loki seems to have taken strides too, not to overcome the abuse perse, but to become his own person, who he wants to be rather than who Odin wanted him to be, or a rebellion against who Odin wanted him to be.
Some of Odin’s children received different kinds and different levels of abuse, but they were all abused.
they’ve both been though a lot actually–the difference is in the way they respond to it. loki is definitely the more emotional of the two and tends to wear his heart on his sleeve. when he is faced with something like his true parentage, his response is passionate and violent, bordering on unhinged. it’s so obvious, through his expressions and his actions, that the revelation absolutely crushed him. thor is such a positive personality that when life-shattering events happen he is still able to move forward with a smile on his face, even if he may be hurting inside, perfectly exemplified when thanos kills half his people, his brother, and his best friend and and hour later thor is taking on the full force of a star to forge a weapon that will kill the bastard. in that way, i think people tend to focus more on loki’s pain because he expresses it so freely and–dare i say–dramatically at times. i believe we don’t often get to see the depth of thor’s anguish because he hides it so well, because he know he has to be strong in order to fight and be a hero. say you had two children and both of them got hurt somehow. who would you go to first? the one who is crying and begging for help or the one who stands back and takes care of the injury himself? i mean, i can see where you’re coming from even if i don’t agree. just because the fandom seems to focus more on loki’s pain doesn’t lessen all that thor has been through, and i’m not trying to downplay either of their struggles. i just think it’s human tendency to look towards the person who screams the loudest.
I think the difference is that Thor is not mentally ill and has always had a solid support system. You know he’ll get through it and be alright, because he’s mentally healthy and there’s always been and always will be people on his side willing to listen and help. Loki doesn’t have that. Has never had that, in all likelihood. Even before his fall, the person closest to him, arguably his mother, was concerned primarily with defending Odin’s choices, his brother was too self absorbed to care about anybody overmuch (I’m not just putting down Thor, this was his characterization before his exile), his friends were really Thor’s friends and willing to betray him with zero actual evidence of wrong doing… and when he came back, having last been seen in the midst of a psychotic break that ended in attempted suicide, his brother literally greets him with violence, asks him just once who was controlling him, then drops the subject and as far as we can tell, no one bothers to again. Then he’s put in solitary for a year, his father and brother don’t visit at all, and his mother is again primarily concerned with defending Odin’s bad decisions. His family doesn’t bother to tell him themselves when his mother dies or allow him to attend her funeral. Thor, upon seeing his grief, refuses to even tell Loki how she died. And so it goes.
Yes, Thor has suffered many trials, and deserves sympathy for them, but he’s never been so alone in them as Loki has, under the weight of mental illness and with not one soul close to him willing to simply listen and be there without judgement or demand.
honestly, guys, thor and loki have been told all their lives that they are equals, but there’s no point in saying “you kids are equal” when all of your behaviour exhbits the contrary.
of course thor thinks loki’s “place” is beneath him. of course he assumes the worst of him – that’s what he’s learned to do, all his life, from odin. of course he doesn’t know how to communicate with his brother, or ask questions about his feelings – where would he learn that behaviour? who would teach him? of course he’s arrogant: he grew up knowing he would be king, and being told it was his right.
of course loki feels trapped on asgard. of course he wants to show up the hypocrisy that surrounds him. of course he wants to be seen, at the most basic level, as a person of equal value to his brother, who he’s been told all his life he is equal to, and who has been shown all his life he is not. of course he’s terrified to be revealed as a jotunn, when he is already plagued by a sense of inexplicable rejection. of course he’s scared, and of course he lies. how can you do anything but lie, when everybody around you does nothing but lie to you?
healthy, stable relationships with strong communication do not, in fact, just spring from the ether, ready-formed. if you have been taught your whole life to act a certain way, and have no conception of an alternative, it’s going to be impossible for you to break out of it until somebody else, outside that cycle, points it out to you – whether sb close to you, or whether you read like, an article or hear a radio snippet about building good relationships.
thor and loki exist with a big chasm between them, and they both want a bridge, but neither of them have the tools to build it. these things are not instinctive! they are hard!
//Absolutely not. I don’t think Thor consciously realizes it at all, and I doubt he ever will. It can be difficult for the child of abuse in any form to acknowledge as an adult that the parent figure they (and in this case their whole culture) admired (even in this case revered) was toxic. This often leads to misplaced feelings of shame, vulnerability, and guilt. Especially in Asgard, which has a no-tolerance policy for the “weakness” of mental illness (and no modern concept thereof). You literally battle away your feelings there; the lifespans are so long that certain social customs remain antiquated.
When I used to volunteer as a mentor-tutor for underprivileged children, and when I took developmental psychology courses, one of the most striking things I noticed was that children of abuse of varying forms, physical, sexual, or emotional/psychological, are often tremendously DEFENSIVE of the abusing parent. For instance, the children of parents who use corporal punishment are often, as adults, the people who fly into a genuine fury at child advocates who say that spanking is abusive.
For Thor to acknowledge Odin abused him, he must acknowledge that every value and principle for which he stands, that derived from Odin–even parts of Thor’s personality–were faulty. This would mean the exhausting work of reinventing HIMSELF, too.
This, I think, is exactly why Thor still refuses to fully acknowledge that Loki was also abused, and that Odin’s abuse is partially responsible for Loki’s wildly misguided behavior. Even as of Ragnarok, Thor sees Loki’s mistakes as 100% of Loki’s own volition, and while LOKI ALONE is to blame for Loki’s actions, it makes a great deal of difference when you acknowledge that Odin’s messed up parenting originates a lot of Thor and Loki’s misunderstandings, as well as Loki’s desperate attempt to emulate and please their father.
It’s, cognitively and emotionally speaking, easier to blame Loki, because Loki has always been something of a misfit in the family structure. Loki also has less emotional power over Thor as a sibling than Odin has as a father, both personal and cultural. It’s a horrible irony that Odin’s abuse of Loki is perpetuated by Thor’s unwillingness to see that abuse, IN GOOD PART BECAUSE ODIN HAS ALWAYS KEPT THOR SO CLOSELY IN ODIN’S SHADOW, AND DENIED THOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO THINK FOR HIMSELF. One of the best examples of this is in The Dark World, when Odin treats Jane Foster, Thor’s beloved, like a literal animal, and earlier, tells him he should marry Sif instead.
This only changes SLIGHTLY near the end of Ragnarok, with the “what are you, Thor, God of Hammers?” speech.
It’s all very sad. I wish Thor had been able to say, “You know, I loved our father, but he was fucked up, and SOME stuff wasn’t actually your fault” to Loki before Loki died. I thought for sure he would in The Dark World, when Odin literally ordered him KILLED for treason, but Thor remains way more willing to forgive Odin because Odin has Thor in an almost Stockholm Syndrome deadlock, even post-mortem.
Literally the only time Odin ever let Thor do what Thor wanted was when Odin was actually Loki in disguise.
No, I don’t
agree with it. This is the trope that TR was trying to maintain by retconning
all the previous canon in the franchise. Thor has never been a love martyr(except maybe once)
because:
1. Thor is
not the perfect and blameless angel who loves his completely evil brother. Thor
and Loki are both flawed characters and their relationship has been on the rocks because they both hurt each other and never actually talked about it.
2. Unlike
what Thor thinks, most of Loki’s horrible actions wasn’t about hurting Thor.
3. It didn’t
take a long time until Ragnarok for Thor to give up on Loki. Thor gave up on him
in Avengers.
Let’s discuss
these points in more details:
Thor starts
his journey as an arrogant warmonger prince. He is the golden child of his
realm and Loki is his shadow. No one respects Loki or take him seriously the
way they respect Thor. Not guards, not Heimdall, not Thors’ friends and not
even servants. The way Thor treated Loki certainly had an effect on Loki’s
situation(aside from other cultural aspects). Thor doesn’t respect Loki: “Enough!”,
“Know your place brother!”, “Some do battles, other do tricks”.
He doesn’t even look at Loki, when Loki speaks with him. The way Loki reacts
after these mistreatments doesn’t show his surprise, it shows that he’s used to
them. Despite all of this, Loki still cares about Thor and Loves him: “You are
my brother and my friend. Sometimes I’m envious but never doubt that I love you”.
Sabotaging
Thor’s coronation was not a betrayal to Thor. Loki knew that Thor wasn’t fit to be a king yet, and
he tried to stop it. Just like Thor tried to take the throne from Hela, who was
the rightful heir, because she wasn’t suitable for the job.
I always
think the worst thing that Loki has ever done to Thor is lying to him when Thor
was in SHIELD when he was already down after failing to lift Mjolnir. Thor’s “Can
I come home?” and his tears always break my heart.
Now the
paragraph says that Loki tried to kill Thor at least twice! No, Loki almost
killed him once with the destroyer. But that was it. In their fight on the
Bifrost he only tried to stop Thor and stall him so he can destroy Jotunheim.
After that Loki never tried to kill Thor. He dropped Thor in the Hellicarrier
because he knew if Mjolnir could crack that glass, it could also break it. He
was never surprised that Thor showed up later. And don’t tell me him stabbing
Thor with that tiny dagger was an attempt on Thor’s life.
Loki trying
to commit genocide on Jotunhim wasn’t about hurting Thor, it was about proving
his worthiness to Odin. Loki killed Coulson mostly because he was in his way
and he was threatening Loki with a destroyer gun. But faking his death to usurp Odin? Really?
*sighs* Loki’s illusions are not solid unless it’s on the person. So Loki
getting stabbed by Kursed wasn’t an illusion. He was really stabbed through
the chest to save Thor. He had no way of knowing what would happen when he attacked
Kursed. This wasn’t planned. And he couldn’t know that he would survive it. So
after he survived he didn’t tell Thor because Thor promised he would return
Loki to his cell. Usurping the throne from Odin had nothing to do with Thor.
Again it wasn’t about hurting Thor. It was about getting his revenge on Odin
for sentencing him to solitary confinement for life and all the other awful
things he’d done. Then Loki as Odin offered the throne to Thor. Loki even asked him to confirm
that it was really what Thor wanted and wasn’t Jane’s wish. None of the things
that the paragraph mentioned was an act of betrayal against Thor. So the line
that Thor says in TR: “I trust you, you betray me. Round and round in
circles we go” is not true.
Now let’s
talk about Thor giving up on Loki and the only situation that love martyr trope can be applied to him. When he found Loki on Earth, first he asked
about Tesseract, then he said Loki’s grievances were imagined slights and then threatened
him. He once again tried to reason with Loki on the Stark Tower and was stabbed
for it. That was the last time Thor ever tried to talk to Loki. That was when
he gave up on Loki. It was obvious that Thor had forgiven Loki after everything Loki did to him in the first Thor movie and still wanted Loki to go home. He made mistakes when he was talking to Loki, but imo forgiving Loki after the way he lied to him and almost killed him was a big deal and that makes Thor a love martyr. But then Thor gives up on Loki after he is stabbed. And that’s the end of him being in the love martyr trope. He never visited Loki when Loki was imprisoned. Not even to
tell him that their mother was dead. Even when he went to Loki for help, Thor
treated Loki like a stolen relic(“locked away here until you may have use of
me”): “I did not come here to share our grief” “I grant it to
you, vengeance, and after this cell”.
Thor and
Loki both loved and cared about each other despite the fact that the other one
hurt them. But Thor is not a love martyr. He never tried to talk to Loki and
understand him about his just grievances. He never asked Loki what happened to
him after he let go. He also made mistakes. He is not blameless in all of this.
And I just talked about the Thor we saw in every movie except TR. Because TR
Thor is very ooc and he constantly dismisses Loki and his pain. In other movies Thor simply doesn’t understand Loki. In TR he just doesn’t care to understand despite Loki trying to explain to him and trying to find a common ground with Thor. What Thor does in TR is a disgusting reverse psychology method, not giving up on Loki. Because “you’re late” implies that Thor knew Loki would come. So imo that paragraph in TV tropes page got it all wrong.
There is something about first Thor film that struck me as rather odd, upon my first viewing. Although I admittedly didn’t ponder it too much upon further viewing. And that was the fact that Thor had
Mjölnir
. Thor has been gifted this amazing tool that was forged inside a dying star. The entire narrative revolves around his worthiness of possessing it.
His brother, Loki, has no such tool, and is subject to no such measurement of worthiness. Why? Why would you give one son this amazing thing and then give the other nothing even comparable to at least imply a superficial sort of equality between them? I find it baffling that this could be the case and Loki’s parents would be completely unaware that he might feel slighted in some way. Certainly the public would think of him as less, if he saw him being treated as such by his own family. They might even feel validated in their dislike or distrust of him, if they observed him being treated differently by his own parents.
Yes, Loki had his magic. But that was a craft that he had to work long and hard to perfect. It wasn’t a magic artifact that was just placed in his hands.
“This is my son, Thor! I have gifted him a magical hammer!”
“Who is that other kid?”
“Oh, that’s just Loki. His job is to stand next to Thor.”
“This is my son, Thor! I have gifted him a magical hammer!”
“Who is that other kid?”
“Oh, that’s just Loki. His job is to stand next to Thor.”
The thing that really strikes me about this picture is how it’s similar to this one:
Right before Thor’s coronation.
Odin used his own daughter as no more than a weapon for his bloody wars. He was the mastermind, the brain, and Hela was the brawn. And he brought up his two sons to fit this exact image. Thor was supposed to be the symbol of Asgard’s physical power and Loki the advisor, the strategist. Thor was the brawn and Loki was the brain. It’s interesting how Hela and Thor, who were the muscles, both hold Mjolnir, a hammer. Odin holds Gungnir, a scepter and we know one of Loki’s preferred weapons is a scepter.
The kings wear red, the weapons wear green.
The weapons are on the right side of the kings.
The kings have wings on their helmet, the weapons only have horns.(Another interesting detail is how Odin’s helmet is the combination of Thor and Loki’s. He gave his wings to Thor and his horns to Loki)
It’s also another parallel that when the weapons get out of the kings’ control, they were cast out.
(As a side note I think I should mention that when I say Thor and Hela are the brawn I don’t mean they are stupid. They both are quite intelligent. I mean they are the stronger fire power and physical fights are what they are best at. Odin and Loki are both physically strong too but they are best at mind games and planning. Remember Hela told Loki “You sound like him?”. Because he does. He learned those skills from Odin)
None of the things you mentioned can be considered as torture. Loki dropped Thor with the glass cage right after he saw that Mjolnir could crack the glass. The reason Thor stopped attempting to break the glass wasn’t because the glass was unbreakable, but because the cage would fall if he continued. So Loki knewThor could free himself before the cage hit the ground. Yes, Loki lied to Thor about Odin’s death and he almost killed him with that backhand and IMO these are very horrible and
the worst things he ever did to Thor. Still they are not torture. He broke Thor with his lies but those lies showed Thor that the consequences of his actions can be very grave. Also an argument can be made that if Loki really wanted Thor dead, he would incinerate him with the destroyer not backhand him. The only time Loki really stabbed Thor was in The Avengers. They were fighting, and it was a stab to the gut not the chest and it was with a really small blade that didn’t harm Thor that much. The stab in TDW was an illusion(again that was a stab to the gut), because when he lifted the illusion Thor’s armor was intact while in The Avengers, Thor’s armor remained torn after the stab.
No one said Thor shouldn’t have stopped Loki from betraying him. But Thor could simply make Loki unconscious with the obedience disk(I explained in this post that the device has two settings). That would be acceptable. But Thor chose to leave Loki in constant pain with the device on for an infinite amount of time. Yes, Thor and Loki are called gods and they are more durable. But just because they can tolerate more pain, it doesn’t make it ok to inflict pain on them. It’s still pain and the obedience disc is a torture device. And no Thor had no way of knowing that Loki could get out of it. In fact he knew Loki couldn’t free himself. Thor with all his power, was paralyzed by the obedience disc. Even his lightning couldn’t get him free from it. Only the control device could free Loki. And he was unable to move.
What is torture?
“The action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or to force them to do or say something, or for the pleasure
of the person inflicting the pain.”
Thor didn’t just stopped Loki’s betrayal. He inflicted severe pain on him for an infinite amount of time
as punishment for his betrayal and then had the audacity to gleefully preach Loki about growth and change and laugh at his pain.
What Thor did in TR was torture and that makes him so much ooc that I don’t consider TR Thor, the real Thor.
I think it would be appropriate to reiterate what I said in the last post linked in the above (the one arguing that the obedience disc is a torture device), so here it is again for people who don’t bother to follow links:
< I’ve been seeing a lot of people try to justify Thor* by pointing out that Loki has done worse things to him; most commonly they will cite the incident in The Avengers where Loki drops Thor out of the Helicarrier in the Hulk cage. (This is such a common move that I feel like it’s got to be in some Thor* stan/ Ragnarok defense playbook.) Here is why that comparison doesn’t accomplish what they want it to accomplish:
It was entirely reasonable for Loki to think he was not endangering Thor’s life. He knew Thor could get out of the cage because he had Mjolnir with him. As far as we can tell, in Ragnarok, Thor* had no way of knowing that the first people who would happen along were Korg & co. as opposed to, e.g., Topaz, who probably would have just killed Loki while he was incapacitated. Maybe he did have some way of knowing, but this was not made at all clear in the film. So even if he didn’t think he was endangering Loki’s life, he was being culpably negligent.
In The Avengers, Loki was acting as an adversary, and everyone was completely aware of that. He was trying to hamper his opponents by scattering them, and possibly to demoralize Thor by showing that he wasn’t going to get his brother back. In Ragnarok, Thor* presented what he did as some kind of “tough love” – punishing Loki “for his own good,” with the aim of getting Loki back on his side rather than (as Loki was doing in The Avengers) turning him decisively against him. If you can’t see why that’s kind of fucked up, well…
Loki is clearly aware that what he’s doing in The Avengers is wrong. He hesitates before he hits the button to drop the cage, and hesitates again (with tears in his eyes, FFS!) before he stabs Thor later. He’s conflicted, and it’s not unreasonable to think he regrets hurting Thor when he’s no longer under direct threat from Thanos (his attempts at self-justification in TDW have a defensive air that make me think the lady doth protest too much). In Ragnarok, Thor* just looks smug and self-righteous about the electrocution thing, even though he’s very aware that Loki is in severe pain. >
And I’m sure I’ve said it somewhere else, but again, it doesn’t really make sense to compare the electrocution in Ragnarok to the things Loki did to Thor in Thor 1 and The Avengers because in both of the latter cases, it’s made pretty clear that Loki isn’t in his right mind. In Thor 1, Loki has pretty clearly been profoundly disturbed by the revelation that he actually belongs to a race that he has been taught all his life to hate and fear (and that Thor has twice vowed to “finish”). He is convinced that the reason Odin always favored Thor is because Loki is really Jotun, not Asgardian, so he’s desperate to prove how very Asgardian and not Jotun he really is. I agree that it’s not clear whether Loki meant to kill Thor with the Destroyer; he must have known that killing Odin’s other son wouldn’t be a great way of earning his favor. (Maybe he had it backhand rather than incinerate him so he could pass it off as an accident… or maybe he lacked commitment there too.) At any rate, he is very obviously emotionally and psychologically unwell for… over half of the movie, tbh, but it becomes increasingly obvious in the last third.
In The Avengers, Loki shows up looking like shit; his eyes are wild and hollow and he’s saying some really weird stuff. When they communicate through the scepter, the Other threatens him and he looks terrified. No, Loki wasn’t completely under Thanos’s control and maybe he bears some responsibility for getting himself into that position… but again, he’s clearly been through some shit and is under severe duress. And, as noted above, he’s conflicted about hurting Thor.
Thor* has no such excuse or explanation in Ragnarok. On the contrary; he’s presented as being fully in control, cool-headed, rational, oh-so-cleverly out-thinking his clever brother. He even thought up this scheme in advance, because he predicted that Loki would betray him (for no good reason other than it was needed as set-up for the “trickster tricked” scenario where Loki gets his painful, humiliating comeuppance). Thor*’s action is more blameworthy than anything Loki has done to him because he does it while in full possession of his faculties and shows sadistic glee at making Loki suffer.
And no, Loki has not been stabbing Thor or “trying to kill him” since they were children. Taika Waititi pulled that out of his ass. It should be obvious from Thor 1 that Thor trusts Loki, that they’ve been comrades in arms for centuries, and that Loki’s betrayal and his demand that Thor fight him come as an incredible shock. If you want to accept the stabbing-since-childhood BS as canon, then you’d better stop citing anything Loki does in Thor 1, including telling Thor their father is dead and striking him with the Destroyer, because clearly you’re ignoring what that movie established as the longtime dynamic between them. You want to pretend previous canon doesn’t exist? Then at least do it consistently.
The second most irritating thing a person can say in regards to Loki is that that he faked his sacrifice in TDW. Bonus points if they’re a fan of Ragnarok, which goes out of its way to point out how Loki’s illusions are not solid. THEY ARE NOT SOLID. They become distorted when touched. So how the fuck did Loki fake being stabbed? And when he nearly got sucked into a black hole grenade saving Jane, was that part of his master plan to take the throne of Asgard, too? What about offering said throne to Thor? Ugh!
The most irritating thing a person can say in regards to Loki is that he faked his death/suicide in Thor. I have no words for these people. They render me speechless.
Logic? Consistency? Attention to the content of previous canon? What are those?
Moral complexity? A person who loves the hero but doesn’t always do exactly what he wants? What is that?
I’ve been told that there were people who claimed even before Ragnarok came out that Loki threw himself into the black hole at the end of Thor to escape being held accountable for his actions. If there are such people, I suspect that they started advocating this view as part of the backlash against the “Loki apologists,” so called, of “Loki’s Resistance,” who at the extreme end claim that Loki does not deserve blame for anything he has done, and instead lay all the blame on Odin’s terrible parenting, Thor’s bullying and alleged abuse, and Thanos’s brainwashing and/or full-on mind control. The reaction of Thor’s defenders has been to insist that Loki deserves unmitigated blame for everything and to undercut anything that appears to make Loki deserve our sympathy – including his suicide attempt. You might *think* Loki suffers from severe mental illness and profound self-loathing, but no: he was planning genocide even before he learned that he was Jotun (I have seen people claim this), and what looks like a suicide attempt was just slithering out of punishment.
Ragnarok has exacerbated and given canon legitimization to this tendency by trivializing the issues of Loki’s heritage and his attempted suicide. At a party on Sakaar, Loki tells a story that ends with him hanging over a rift in space, and “at that moment I let go.” Everyone laughs, including him. People have offered all kinds of explanations for why this isn’t as unbelievably insensitive as it seems: we all make light of our trauma to keep it from overwhelming us, of course Loki would do the same; or maybe he’s gone through a course of therapy through theater and has recovered from all his issues and moved on. But the other obvious explanation for why Loki might be laughing about letting himself fall is that it was never a suicide attempt; it was just him being his incorrigible trickster self, cleverly faking his death to get away with mass murder.
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.
Loki is the Philosopher King 