A Tale of Two Lokis

With the premiere of Marvel's "Loki" series less than a week away, I think it's time for me to finally dust off my book of speculations on the God of Mischief. I'm not familiar enough with the comics to weigh in on anything involving the Time Variance Authority, Mobius M. Mobius, or anything else from the source material that will appear in the series, but I have seen Avengers: Infinity War more times than I can count, and I still have a lot of unanswered questions about Loki's role in that film. As a writer myself, I see the "Loki" series as a prime opportunity for Marvel to finally answer those questions.

To recap, Infinity War begins with the villain Thanos slaughtering half of Thor and Loki's people in an attempt to steal the Space Stone for his Infinity Gauntlet. He almost gets Loki to hand over the Tesseract containing the stone when the Hulk intervenes, and Loki tackles his brother Thor out of the way to make room for the ensuing fight. We don't see Loki onscreen again until well after Thanos wins that fight, then the God of Mischief attempts to "join" Thanos and kill him while his foe's guard is supposedly down. This sadly fails, resulting in what appears to be Loki's death.

I've discussed this scene numerous times on my blog, and I've only grown more suspicious of it over the years. The lack of cutaway shots to Loki throughout the Hulk's fight with Thanos, the way Loki seems to emerge out of nowhere with a totally different demeanor after the fight, his extremely telegraphed and underwhelming attempt to kill Thanos -- it all adds up to a scene that simply doesn't add up at face value. I used to think that Loki faked his death, and that he'd spent his few minutes offscreen during the fight putting together some elaborate scheme that the filmmakers deliberately weren't showing us. Now that I've seen Avengers: Endgame and the trailers for the "Loki" series, I have a new theory: 

The Loki who tackles Thor out of the Hulk's way and the Loki who tries to kill Thanos are not the same Loki. The Loki who tries to kill Thanos is actually the alternate timeline Loki who will star in the "Loki" series.

Another quick recap: The Loki we see in Endgame is technically not the original Loki. He's an alternate version of Loki that the Avengers encounter while traveling back in time to the events of the first movie. Thanks to a snafu, that Loki manages to steal the Tesseract from our time-hopping heroes and teleport away, effectively creating a new parallel timeline to the one we saw in the movies. 

This new timeline will be the focus of the "Loki" series. What's more, the previews for the series suggest that this "New Loki" is going to do a lot of his own time-hopping on behalf of a possibly shady organization called the Time Variance Authority, or TVA. I say "possibly shady" because the purpose of Loki's time travel mission seems to be to alter key historical events that will drastically change the present. Knowing Loki though, it could instead turn out that the TVA means well and the God of Mischief just decides to deviate from his mission and change history for his own personal gain. That is why we love him, after all.

Bottom line, my theory is that New Loki will eventually realize that his meddling has caused some catastrophic ripple effect across multiple worlds, maybe even across the whole universe, and his conscience will finally get the better of him. His efforts to undo the damage he's caused could even be what the entire second half of the series focuses on. After several attempts to make things right again, New Loki will realize that the ripple effect has grown beyond his ability to repair it, and he'll then realize a solution: to convince the original Loki, who perhaps has more knowledge and wisdom due to his different life experiences, to take over the mission while New Loki ends his own alternate timeline.

In my opinion, Loki's scene in Infinity War will make so much more sense with this context. We don't see Loki during the Hulk's fight with Thanos because New Loki appeared and pulled him aside to brief him on another cosmic crisis, and the reason the Loki we see afterwards fails to kill Thanos is because he intends to fail. Because that Loki is New Loki who knows he needs to die in order to restore balance to the space-time continuum and cover the tracks of the original Loki who's leaving to resume the mission. This way, the fans who thought Loki died in Infinity War and the fans who didn't will both be right.

The series could even do something really heartfelt with this twist, having Loki reflect on his whole character arc by having a heart-to-heart with another version of himself. New Loki (who hasn't seen Thor since their fight in the first Avengers film) could see from the original Loki that he always had the capacity to make peace with his brother and his enemies on Earth, and the original Loki could see from New Loki that he's right to keep moving away from his old selfish ambitions and that he has the power to make a difference in the universe. There could even be a clever little payoff where New Loki tells the original Loki about some sort of MacGuffin from earlier in the series that will benefit the original Loki in some way. There's apparently going to be a scene in the series where we learn that the famous missing criminal D.B. Cooper was actually New Loki in disguise; perhaps telling his original self the location of a certain bag full of money would be a nice way to thank him for taking over the mission?

This is all just speculation of course. For all we know, the "Loki" series could kill this theory in the first five minutes and then conclude with Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson ad-libbing in a diner like the end of Pineapple Express. As always though, theories like this are a good way to practice plot and character development when you're involved in the creative field. My guess of where the "Loki" series will go could be way off, but when the time comes to start writing my next novel or fanfiction, I might be just a little better at managing the mischief I've created in my own new universe.

Avengers 4: They're Not Quite Dead

It's been exactly three months since The Avengers: Infinity War hit theaters and turned the whole Marvel fan community upside-down. Practically everyone who's ever seen a film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is itching for next summer's release of Avengers 4, and directors Joe and Anthony Russo are doing everything in their power to keep the details about it under wraps until then. They don't even want to announce the film's title yet because they say it might spoil the plot. If the Infinity Gauntlet was powered by Avengers 4 details instead of the six Infinity Stones, the universe would still be safe from Thanos.

Because of this, countless fan theories have been popping up all over the internet in the past three months. Most of them center around characters who died in Infinity War and ways that they could come back to life, and while a lot of those deaths occurred when Thanos snapped his fingers with the Infinity Gauntlet to wipe out half the universe, some deaths occurred before that. These are the trickier ones to theorize about since they don't seem as easily reversible as the ones caused by the Snap. However, more and more fans are starting to look at some of these deaths from a new angle: that those characters aren't actually dead.

I could spend days researching and constructing my own theories about every "dead" character, but for the sake of brevity, I'll just talk about three of the more likely ones to turn up alive in Avengers 4.

1. The Collector

There isn't too much to say about this character, mainly because there isn't too much to say about his role in Infinity War. All we see is a brief scene of Thanos threatening him for the location of the Reality Stone, then a reveal that it was all just an illusion cast by the Mad Titan to draw the heroes out of their hiding places. The obvious assumption is that Thanos killed the Collector offscreen shortly before this scene occurred, but there are reasons to think that he didn't.

For starters, the MCU doesn't make a habit of killing notable characters offscreen. The only one that comes to mind is Sif from the Thor film series, who's been absent since The Dark World and was said in interviews to have died from the Snap. This lack of closure was mainly due to Jaime Alexander not being available to reprise her role though, and that clearly wasn't the issue with Beniccio Del Toro. The MCU is one of the biggest film franchises in history; if the screenwriters don't have enough time in one film to properly kill off a character and the actor is still under contract, they can probably afford to save that death for another film rather than just having it happen offscreen.

Second, let's consider the illusion that Thanos cast of himself threatening the Collector. He didn't kill the Collector at the end of the illusion, and their conversation throughout it was very detailed and true to the Collector's character. It's possible that Thanos was reenacting what actually happened when he confronted the Collector earlier, rather than fabricating a conversation off the top of his head. It stands to reason then that just like in his illusion, he didn't kill the Collector in real life. Thanos is a surprisingly merciful supervillain, so if the Collector gave him the Reality Stone without too much resistance, Thanos probably spared him.

The strongest piece of evidence though comes from this piece of artwork, which shows the Collector playing a board game with his brother the Grandmaster:

This is an official piece of artwork created by Marvel Studios for a Guardians of the Galaxy attraction in Disneyland, and it's prompted Studio President Kevin Feige to express interest in featuring the two characters together in a future film. Granted, such a scene could end up being a flashback that takes place prior to Infinity War, but it still leaves the door wide open for the Collector to be alive. Bottom line, his character still has a chance of turning up alive since we never actually saw him die.

2. Gamora

Okay, physically she is quite dead, but I think she's getting better.

Unlike the other pre-Snap deaths in Infinity War, Gamora's had a very spiritual element to it. Thanos killed her as part of a ritual to obtain the Soul Stone, an Infinity Stone with the power to control life and death. Her demise is directly tied to the Soul Stone, and the Soul Stone was the stone responsible for killing half the universe when Thanos snapped his fingers.

That was why he had a vision of Gamora in an orange-tinted realm right after he caused the Snap. Her appearance wasn't presented as a hallucination brought on by his guilt over killing her. It was presented as the real Gamora communicating with him in spirit. She didn't know what had happened until Thanos admitted it to her, and the scenery being orange (the same color same the Soul Stone) implied that her spirit was trapped inside of the stone. Thanos using the Soul Stone to such a huge capacity was probably what triggered Gamora's sudden appearance in the first place.

The Soul Stone is the only Infinity Stone shown in the movies to have any kind of rule set attached to it. You can't just snatch it up and use it like you can with the other five; certain actions have to be taken to prove that you're worthy to use it. You have to follow the rules in order for it to function properly. Because of this, it's entirely possible that an improper use or even a forfeiture of the Soul Stone could cause it to reverse the sacrifice that was made to obtain it and then render the stone unusable once more. This could mean a resurrection for Gamora in the near future.

As for behind-the-scenes evidence, the waters are a little muddier now than they were three months ago. Zoe Saldana is still active on the MCU publicity scene even though Infinity War's theatrical run is over, and Guardians of the Galaxy Director James Gunn has said that Gamora will have a "significant role" in the next film of that series. However, Gunn's recent firing from the project could undo a lot of his story ideas. This might not affect the Guardians characters too much though. Marvel Studios plans their films pretty far in advance, and the timeline of the MCU is so intricate and interwoven now that it would be very difficult to scrap story ideas. If the studio did that, it could cause a butterfly effect that would drastically alter their plans for a lot of future films.

Overall, I still think it's safe to assume that Gamora will come back to life. It's just what she'll do afterwards that's foggy.

3. Loki

I know, I wrote that huge two-part eulogy for him when Infinity War first came out and now I don't even think he's really dead. I still stand by most of what I said in my "Looking Back On Loki" essay, and to be perfectly frank, a part of me still likes to think that the God of Mischief really did meet his poetically poignant end in the first scene of Infinity War. That doesn't change the fact though that the events leading up to his death look EXTREMELY suspicious now.

Here's a rundown of what happens: Thor and Loki are cornered by Thanos, Loki stalls for time — promising Thor that "The sun will shine on us again" — and then he tackles Thor out of the way as the Hulk comes crashing into Thanos. The Hulk and Thanos have a brutal fistfight for several minutes, but not once does the scene ever cut away to Thor and Loki to show us what they're doing. This is odd enough, but what's even more odd is that Thor eventually shows up in the middle of the Hulk and Thanos's fistfight by himself. What happened to Loki?

There's still no sign of the God of Mischief even when Thanos apprehends Thor and kills Heimdall. It's not until Thanos is just about to make his exit that Loki shows up again, and when he does, he almost appears to step right out of nowhere. He tries to kill Thanos, seeming to use the bare minimum of his powers, and then his trick backfires and Thanos appears to kill him. This scene raises so many questions that it gets harder and harder to take at face value every time I watch it.

First of all, Loki's faked his death before in the MCU, and we haven't always gotten a clear explanation of how he did it. We still don't know exactly how he survived his fight with Kurse in The Dark World, so he could very well have survived against Thanos. For all we know, the person that Thanos appeared to kill could have just been a random dead Asgardian that Loki possessed and then projected his appearance onto from a safe distance away. We've seen him do both of those things to some extent before, even without the use of his scepter.

Second of all, photos have leaked of Tom Hiddleston as Loki on the set of Avengers 4. The scene being filmed seems to involve time travel since he has his clothing and hairstyle from the first Avengers film, but it still appears that Loki is supposed to be in the next film. What's more, Tony Stark appears in that same scene wearing what looks to be a disguise, suggesting that the Avengers might go back in time to alter the past or tamper with the timeline in other ways. Maybe the Loki who appeared to step out of nowhere at the beginning of Infinity War was a different Loki than the one we saw tackle Thor out of the Hulk's way a few minutes earlier.

Some might say that these theories are all moot, since Tom Hiddleston has done multiple interviews saying that his time playing Loki is over and that Loki isn't coming back to life in Avengers 4. However, Marvel Studios has a history of releasing bogus interviews to subvert fan expectations. Just look at Ben Kingsley's interviews about playing the Mandarin in Iron Man 3. Those were absolutely meant to be misleading, at least at the time when they first came out. Heck, the Russo Brothers themselves have insisted that Spider-Man and Black Panther's deaths in Infinity War are permanent, and yet both of those characters already have sequels to their own standalone films in the works.

Also, the interviews of Tom Hiddleston saying that his time playing Loki is over are only half deceptive; Avengers 4 is the last film on his contract, not Infinity War, but it just so happens that he was done shooting his scenes for Avengers 4 by the time that Infinity War opened in theaters. Technically there's nothing inaccurate about anything he said in those interviews, but having them come out right after we saw Loki die in a new movie does seem like we're being set up to have the wrong idea.

This is all a prime example of where things stand with the MCU these days. The franchise is so huge, the stakes are so high, and the studio has grown so clever with both its writing and its marketing that we have almost no way of predicting what's going to happen in their films anymore. Some fans may find all of this secrecy and uncertainty maddening, some may find it exhilarating, and some probably take it as even more of a challenge to try and figure out what will happen next. Whatever the case, we'll all probably be more and more eager to see these movies with each passing phase. Not many franchises can stay this engaging after ten years and twenty movies.

And if Marvel Studios has been throwing us more of these curve balls than they've needed to, then mischief managed, I suppose.

Looking Back on Loki - Part 2

SPOILER ALERT!!

THIS ESSAY WILL ALSO GIVE AWAY THE BEGINNING OF THE AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE YET AND YOU DON'T WANT ANYTHING IN IT TO BE RUINED, SEE IT BEFORE READING THIS.

IF NOT FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, THEN DO IT FOR LOKI'S.

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Thor: The Dark World (2013)

It's worth mentioning that during this film's post-production, actor Tom Hiddleston appeared in character as Loki at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con. He "interrupted" a sneak preview of Thor: The Dark World, scolded the crowd for not accepting him as their king the summer before, then vowed to show them the preview if they pledged their loyalty to him. Needless to say, the crowd got their preview and the God of Mischief gained a wildly supportive army that day.

I bring this up because it showed how aware Marvel was of Loki's popularity at the time, as well as how keen they were to play to it. I think that contributed a lot to his role in The Dark World.

The filmmakers knew we wanted to see him turn good and team up with Thor. They knew we debated if and how he would die in future films, and they knew how much we wanted to see him succeed for once. Because of this, there was a real sense that they toyed with our expectations for Loki in the second Thor film, and the end result was perfect for his character.

Loki hit rock bottom in The Dark World. Not only was he disgraced before all of Asgard, but Odin seemed to disown him and left him virtually powerless by imprisoning him. Then, when Loki thought things couldn't get worse, he caused the death of his adoptive mother Frigga. The dark elf Malekith invaded Asgard, and when a henchman named Kurse found Loki in the dungeon, Loki told him the way to the throne room. He did this for revenge on Odin, but it was Frigga that Kurse killed instead.
 

This made Loki snap again. Now there really was no salvaging his life, and with Thanos no doubt hunting him down after his failure on Earth, he knew his days were numbered. This and his rage over Frigga's death made him decide to cooperate when Thor asked him to help stop Malekith. This would only mean temporary freedom for Loki, but that was all he needed to carry out his new plan.

His chance came during a fight between him, Thor, and Kurse on the dark elves' home world. Loki killed Kurse, saving Thor and avenging Frigga, but he was wounded in the process. Thus we got the scene we were expecting where he died dramatically in Thor's arms after redeeming himself. The twist was that it wasn't real.

To my knowledge, it's never been confirmed if Kurse really stabbed Loki, since Loki's powers allowed him to cast illusions of such things. Either way, he wasn't fatally wounded, but he took advantage of Thor's emotional state and faked his own death. Thor was forced to leave him behind and pursue Malekith, one of Odin's guards found Loki, Loki killed the guard and assumed his appearance (possibly even disguising the guard's body as his own), and returned to Odin. After that, he used his powers to trap Odin on Earth, assumed his adoptive father's appearance, and took on a new life as the King of Asgard. At long last, the God of Mischief had succeeded.

What's interesting is that he never sought further revenge on Thor after his brother defeated Malekith and came home. Thor had broken Loki out of prison and committed treason by leaving Asgard, so no one would have questioned a steep punishment for the God of Thunder, but Loki allowed Thor to go free and live happily on Earth with his human friends. Maybe he had made some kind of peace with Thor during their time together, maybe he couldn't properly restrain Thor since he didn't have any of Odin's powers, or maybe he thought that letting Thor leave Asgard on good terms would minimize suspicion towards himself. Whatever the reason, fully pardoning his brother after everything they had put each other through showed growth on Loki's part.



Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

It would take four years for Loki to show up again in the MCU. He was supposed to make a cameo in 2015's The Avengers: Age of Ultron when Thor had a vision of Asgard's destruction, but like a lot of things in that film, he was cut for time. Between that and all the questions that The Dark World had left us with, there was still a good amount of excitement for Loki's comeback in Thor: Ragnarok.

To put it simply, this Thor movie turned out to be very different from the first two. It's said that director Taika Waititi, best known for comedies, was given free reign with Ragnarok, so there ended up being way more emphasis on humor than drama this time around. For Loki, this meant giving us a more cowardly, inept, and silly God of Mischief than we were used to seeing.

In terms of the narrative, this character inconsistency can actually be justified. Loki spent his whole life seeking admiration and eventually power, and once he gained both at the end of The Dark World, he had no goals left to work towards. This caused him to lose a lot of his drive and his edge over the four years he spent disguised as Odin, and not having to worry about Thanos finding him anymore allowed him to become oblivious to the world around him. It made sense that after Thor caught on and exposed him as an imposter at the start of Ragnarok, Loki had to spin his wheels a bit before finding a new direction in life.

He hit rock bottom again after Thor made him take them to the real Odin on Earth. The brothers found their father moments before he died, and although Odin forgave Loki, his death was one betrayal too many for Thor to do the same. The final nail in the coffin came when Thor's half-sister Hela sensed Odin's passing and seized control of Asgard.

The best Loki could think to do was give up on his home again and simply look out for himself. When he and Thor became stranded on the planet Sakaar, he quickly schmoozed his way into favor with its ruler, the Grandmaster. He made one half-hearted attempt to help Thor, mostly so he could brag about his new social status, but when Thor still wanted nothing to do with him, Loki tried to betray his brother for financial gain. Thor outwitted him though, saying that Loki's refusal to be more than the God of Mischief had made him predictable, and escaped back to Asgard without him.

This marked the ultimate turning point for Loki. All his schemes of the past seven years had been for nothing, and having Thor completely give up on him this time made him finally realize what he had ruined between them. What was more, he had no guarantee that he would be safely hidden from Thanos on Sakaar. There was a chance he might die soon anyway, so why not die doing something genuinely admirable?

After making his own escape from Sakaar, Loki took his brother's words to heart and returned to Asgard to help Thor defeat Hela. This involved destroying their home like Thor had foreseen, and it was Loki who set that destruction in motion. Curiously enough, he had to do it in Odin's vault—the same room where he had first learned of his Frost Giant lineage. The ship that he had arrived on allowed Asgard's people to evacuate in time, and Loki further proved his loyalty by joining them on their voyage to Earth. It was during this voyage that he made his peace with Thor and watched his brother assume the role of Asgard's new king.

It seemed like Loki was finally a real hero, but in the midst of it all, he had secretly made another huge mistake in another moment of weakness.



The Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

And that brings us to the grand finale. Infinity War is still less than two weeks old, and it's already broken the record as the fastest movie to ever gross $1 billion at the box office. It's well on its way to becoming the highest grossing film of all time, and I think that's largely because of how many upsetting character deaths occur throughout the plot. Fans want to figure out how the next Avengers film will resolve things, if it even can, and a good way to look for clues is by watching Infinity War again. And if that doesn't work, then at least they'll get the most out of what could be their favorite characters' final appearances on the big screen.

The film is shocking and bleak, and Loki's death in the opening scene sets that tone perfectly.

His huge mistake at the end of Ragnarok was stealing the Tesseract from Odin's vault before he escaped from Asgard. Loki did this on impulse as well, not because he wanted a peace offering for Thanos, but because he remembered how powerful the device was and couldn't resist the thought of possessing it again. Now that the Tesseract was away from Asgard though, Thanos could sense the Infinity Stone inside of it and was able to track down the Asgardians' ship in space. The Mad Titan boarded their ship, and in a horrible twist of irony, half the people that Loki had helped to rescue were slaughtered before his eyes.

Even then he wouldn't hand over the Tesseract, since he knew what his enemy meant to do with the stone inside. It wasn't until Thanos started torturing Thor in front of him that Loki revealed the device, though he still didn't give up. He stalled for time so the Hulk could attack Thanos, and when the Hulk lost that fight, Loki attempted to finish the job himself.

Loki often defeated opponents by distracting them with illusions of himself and then striking from behind. However, he didn't do that this time; perhaps he decided he was through with hiding. Instead he faced Thanos himself, pretended to offer his services again, and tried to stab his former ally in the throat. Sadly, the God of Mischief really had become predictable, and after stopping the blow, Thanos lifted him into the air by his neck while Thor watched helplessly. Loki declared that the Mad Titan would never be a god, then Thanos killed him with one squeeze. The last we saw of Thor's little brother was his body lying on the floor while the God of Thunder grieved over him.

~

I've heard complaints that this sendoff for Loki was anticlimactic, but I disagree. The scene pretty much covered all the bases it needed to for his story arc: proving that he valued his brother's life more than his own ambition, having him team up with two of the Avengers to an extent, showing that he'd accepted his past by stating he was Odin's son but not an Asgardian, and letting him get in a few last tricks and interesting lines. I even kind of like that his death was so simple and blunt this time. He already had an epic sci-fi spectacle death in the first Thor film and a dramatic Shakespearean death in the second, so it was fitting that his third death had none of those theatrics. That sold the reality of it so much more.

As for killing him in the first scene, I understand why it was done. We needed a reason to personally hate Thanos, and the film needed to show us how high the stakes had grown. Also, I'm not sure what else the writers could've done with Loki in this film. What made him so interesting was his moral conflict, the question of whether or not he would become one of the heroes. When he did that at the end of Ragnarok, he completed his arc. If he'd survived and been just another good guy throughout Infinity War, I think he would've been a lot less interesting, and if he'd become a villain or a double agent again, I think it would've felt too contrived. Besides, his death became Thor's main motivation to destroy Thanos, and since this was brought up multiple times, it still felt like Loki had a presence throughout the film.

Production photos of the fourth Avengers movie have surfaced since Infinity War's release. Because they appear to take place during the events of the first film and feature the characters wearing mysterious wrist devices, fans have speculated that the story will involve time travel to undo the final moments of Infinity War. It's possible that Loki could "return" that way, with Thor encountering a past version of his brother. There's also hope that he might come back from the dead as a result of the Avengers meddling with the past.

Personally, I think the best way to bring him "back" would be in spirit, with Thor either using the Infinity Stones to connect with him or by dying as well. It'd be a fitting and poignant end for the God of Thunder to sacrifice himself for the universe and then have his brother lead him to Valhalla as a reward. We'll just have to wait and see.

If this is the last time we'll ever see Loki, I'll close with this: When he first saw himself as a Frost Giant, he wondered if he was cursed. He was right in a way. His curse was that for all the cunning and strategic thinking he possessed, his emotions were always what ended up dictating his choices. In this regard, he was more like Thor than he wanted to believe, and since he never had the same opportunity as Thor to learn self-control, his emotions continued to sabotage him at every turn. When he saved the Tesseract from destruction on a whim, the penalties of this curse became cataclysmic.

Still, there was a way Loki could have kept the Tesseract out of Thanos's hands. All he had to do was keep it cloaked in invisibility, refuse to say its location, and let Thanos kill Thor. That would have been the more sensible choice in the grand scheme of things, since Thanos wanted the Infinity Stones to "save" the universe by committing genocide. However, Loki's emotions pushed him to reveal the device in exchange for his brother's life.

Several other characters, mostly the heroes, had to choose between someone's life and an Infinity Stone throughout the film. Most of them gave up the stone to spare the person's life. The only willing exception was Thanos, who tortured one of his own children and killed another to claim a stone. Loki may never have quite been a hero, but in the end, he had more in common with the heroes than he did with the villain. The son of Odin who had once tried to kill his brother and save Asgard by also committing genocide had replaced his rage with compassion, and his emotions made the better choice as a result.

In the end, Loki understood the value of life, and that's no curse.

Looking Back on Loki - Part 1

Well, it's been a little over a week since the premiere of The Avengers: Infinity War, and like many fans, I'm still reeling from the film and pondering what to expect in its sequel. I feel like enough time has passed that most people who wanted to see the movie already have, so a spoiler warning might not be needed, but to be safe, here's mine:

SPOILER ALERT!!

THE ESSAY YOU'RE ABOUT TO READ WILL GIVE AWAY THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY WAR.

YES. THIS MOVIE IS SUCH A COLOSSALLY EPIC ENDGAME THAT EVEN THE BEGINNING CAN BE RUINED.

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With that said, I want to talk again about my favorite character, Loki. He's one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's oldest, most pivotal, and most popular figures, as well as one of its most compelling villains. That's why it came as a huge shock to a lot of viewers, including myself, when the Mad Titan Thanos abruptly killed him in the opening scene of Infinity War. It's probably one of the top three saddest deaths in the whole film, which is no small feat, so I'm writing this two-part essay as an in-memorium of sorts. It's a film-by-film look back on Loki's story arc throughout the series that hopefully does justice in showing what a terrific character he was.

We have five movies to discuss, so in the words of the late God of Mischief, "Send the rest."



Thor (2011)

According to screenwriter Zack Stentz, Marvel Studios gave the writers of the first Thor film a very specific instruction: "Give us a villain as good as Magneto." Magneto was the villain of the original X-Men film trilogy, and his goal was to wipe out humanity so that his people, the mutants, could inherit the Earth. This didn't stem just from a feeling of superiority over humans, but also from the horrors he endured as a child in a Nazi concentration camp. Magneto's goal was to protect his new people from those who distrusted them, which he couldn't do during the Holocaust, and the hate that drove him to pursue this goal turned him into the same monster that he was trying to defeat. He was a villain who thought he was the hero, and no one could tell him otherwise.

With this in mind, the writers of Thor gave us Loki. As Thor's jealous, overlooked younger brother, his goal was to lie, scheme, and manipulate in order to keep the God of Thunder from becoming King of Asgard. This type of villain may have seemed like a tired trope at first, but the writers knew how to make him more engaging as the story unfolded.

Hence, we got a scene where Loki discovered that he wasn't Thor's brother at all; he was the abandoned son of the Frost Giant Laufey, Asgard's enemy, and Thor's father Odin took him in as a baby and turned him into an Asgardian to raise him. What's more, when Loki confronted Odin about this, we learned that his adoption wasn't strictly an act of kindness. Odin also wanted to raise Laufey's son on Asgard as a way to eventually bring peace between their races. It just happened to involve lying to Loki about who and what he was for most of his life while always showing him less favor than Thor for reasons he couldn't understand.

If I had to pinpoint the exact moment when the whole Loki fan train started, it would probably be that scene. His tragic backstory was the kind that the protagonist usually had in a superhero film, not the antagonist, and Odin's flimsy explanation for keeping it a secret really made viewers side with Loki in that moment. And that's the core of what won us over. We could side with Loki. Unlike with Magneto, who was always pitted against people with a clear moral high ground, we were made to see Loki's view of everything very early on and could genuinely believe he was in the right.

Thor would make a terrible king. He was a complete loose canon who almost got Asgard into a full-scale war with the Frost Giants, and Loki getting him banished to Earth was probably the safest way to keep things from escalating. Loki didn't even really want to be king in Thor's place. He just didn't want the only home he'd ever known to be placed in the hands of an idiot.

It wasn't until much later in the film, after he'd learned the truth about himself, that we learned Loki's new goal. Along with wanting to protect Asgard, he now wanted to have Thor killed on Earth and impress Odin by wiping out the Frost Giants. He wanted to set up a crisis that would prompt Asgard to end their truce with Laufey, and with Thor gone, he would be the one to defeat their enemy. He would be the hero that everyone in Asgard admired.

If this had been Loki's goal from the start, we might have felt differently about him, but we saw what made him snap and decide to do this. That gave us hope that he could be reasoned with and brought back to his senses before going through with his plan. In the end though, he couldn't be reasoned with, and after Thor saved the day and Loki saw Odin's disappointment in him, he abandoned his home and sent himself hurtling into a black hole in space to his supposed death. Everything he had ever known was a lie and he saw no way to salvage it, so in a moment of weakness, he gave up.



The Avengers (2012)

Released one year after Thor, The Avengers was one of the biggest movies of the 2010's. Not only had it been hyped up for four years with a string of prelude films, but it ended up being every bit the action-packed, crowd-pleasing popcorn blockbuster that it had promised to be. It's made Marvel Studios pretty much the king of the box office to this day, and since Loki came back as the villain in The Avengers, he was bound to leave way more of an impact on viewers this time around.

And of course, he did. I would daresay he even gained a bigger overall fanbase than any of the heroes after this movie. It's easy to see why too; he was working towards a different goal from all the other characters, so he stood out, and since he had an underdog backstory, you still kind of rooted for him. Also, it was entertaining as hell to watch him try and maintain his dignity throughout his increasingly hilarious defeats. Loki had the same insecurities and emotional conflict as before, but instead of being depressed about his shortcomings, he was trying to stay confident and enthusiastic. You kind of had to admire that.

This wasn't to say though that Loki was totally eager to conquer the Earth in The Avengers. One of the human characters, Agent Coulson, even observed that the God of Mischief didn't have enough conviction in what he was doing for him to succeed. I didn't read many fan theories at the time, but my understanding was that Thanos found Loki floating in space after Thor, recruited him, offered him the chance to prove himself by stealing the Tesseract from Earth, and Loki took that offer in exchange for being allowed to rule Earth afterwards. He made this deal somewhat impulsively; he was still angry at Thor, so taking over the planet that his brother had grown to love sounded like the perfect revenge at the time. Loki soon realized that he was in over his head with Thanos, but it was too late to back out of the deal by then. We even got a scene in The Avengers where Loki was told that Thanos would torture him beyond imagination if he failed to complete his mission.

If Loki wanted to survive, he would have to reinvent himself and fully embrace his conquest of Earth—the "glorious purpose" that he was now burdened with. This seemed to work at first, so much that his mission even delighted him at times, but then Thor came to stop him. That was what stirred up Loki's conflicted feelings again and made him start to lose momentum. Thor wasn't just ordering him to give up his mission, he was offering to bring him home and help him pick up the pieces of his old life. It was extremely tempting, but since Loki still yearned for respect and feared punishment from Thanos, he did whatever he could to remove that temptation. That was why he tried to kill Thor in the middle of the film and then stabbed him during the climax when Thor was starting to get through to him. He didn't have the conviction to win those arguments otherwise.

Not that any of it paid off in the end. The Avengers defeated Loki's invasion army, the Hulk wiped the floor with him, and Thor took both his brother and the Tesseract to Asgard to be locked up forever. This was actually where Loki's story arc in the films was supposed to end, but once Marvel saw how much the fans loved him, they knew they had struck gold with this character. They had a villain who was better than Magneto now, at least from a marketing standpoint. They had a charming, mysterious, and sympathetic villain who added genuine dramatic weight to Thor's storyline even at the silliest of times. If they wanted to keep making successful Thor movies, then they had to keep Loki around.

To be continued in Part 2...