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Loki Meta - Blog Posts
Loki to the rescue!
Also… damn, Fandral… that’s gotta hurt!
I long for more Asgard content, I want to see the streets, the markets, the architecture of the simple houses, the protocols of the royal court, Loki's chambers, Loki's closet, I want to know what were Loki's duties as a prince, did people have to call him your highness? Where did he eat? Is there a feasting hall?
Do the princes have to attend to all morning and night feasts or are they allowed to eat in their chambers? Are there servants designated to help Loki specifically? To prepare his baths, fetch his wine and food and help him get dressed? Does every member of the royal family have their own personal tailors/seamsters? Who chooses the fabrics for their clothes?
If Loki decides to buy let's say a new dagger does he have to go to a shop or can he order to have the daggers brought to him so he can choose while comfortably drinking wine on his bed? And how is the payment done? Does he have his own personal finances or is everything taken from the royal vaults?
Does Odin have an office from where he can talk to his sons/generals and assign them missions while dealing with paperwork (like Tywin's office in got) or is everything done in the throne room? Does Loki has his own suite of quarters or he only has his chambers? If so does that mean that he has his own personal staff to take care of his section of the palace? Are they loyal to him?
How do the common people view the princes? Do they see Loki as a villain or is he so detached from their ordinary lives that they don't think much about him? Is Loki considered a good catch bc he's royalty or is his image so tainted by his title of god of mischief that people avoid getting involved with him? Do the cortiers have to bow in his presence?
Are Sif and the warriors three nobles? Are they above the regular courtier? What is their station? Does their position as the heir's close friends puts them above everyone else except the members of the royal family? Are they allowed to jab at Loki because Thor allows them to or even if he didn't they would face no consequence for treating him as an equal/beneath them at times?
So many questions, so many things to think about, I NEED answers (and sadly I won't get any bc marvel literally destroyed one of the most ineteresting places they had for the sake of comedy I guess)
I read somewhere that the actors for Loki and Frigga decided they should share a tic…to pick at their hands when they were upset or nervous. I decided to look for it, and lo and behold, it’s true! I guess that’s something of a ‘tell’ if Loki is in disguise, heh heh. Fauxdin indeed.
Gentle reminder that TVA Loki and Sacred Timeline Loki only diverged after most of the events in The Avengers had already happened. The Loki we see in Thor 1 and Avengers is actually BOTH Lokis.
Also, consider that Loki and Thor are 1500 years old (according to Thor). To keep the math simple, let's say that the events in Doomsday happen in 2027. That means the split would have happened 15 years earlier, in 2012. 15 years is only 1% of their lifetimes. TVA Loki and Thor were on the same timeline for 99% of their lives (at least from Thor's perspective — we don't know how or if Loki is experiencing time in the tree). It's only the events of the last 15 years that TVA Loki missed out on, and even then he knows exactly what happened during that time. Add in the fact that TVA Loki's timeline was destroyed right after it was created, which to my mind means that Sacred Timeline Thor is TVA Loki's next-of-kin. Thor and TVA Loki are most definitely NOT strangers. They're just brothers with some catching up to do.
so i saw some people discussing how loki in ragnarok shouldn’t have been at all phased or subverted by dr. strange – which i agree with, but also, hey, it’s comedic and you can argue that he was taken off-guard, but upon re-watch, something stuck out to me –
there’s this moment when they appear at the bottom of the stairs and thor rolls down the last couple and stands up and he says
we could’ve just walked.
and it made me think of how magic works in terry pratchett’s novels, how (to paraphrase) the hard part wasn’t turning someone into a frog, it was not turning someone into a frog when you knew how easy it was.
like, the whole scene with dr. strange is just. all magic. all pointless magic. unnecessary magic, when, well. they could have just walked.
whereas loki doesn’t really rely on magic overmuch in the movie – he uses it as a tool, when he needs it, but if the job can be done with plain old non-magical trickery or a knife, he just uses those. he resorts to magic when he’s cornered by valkyrie, he uses it when his goals are most directly accomplished by using magic rather than by other means.
whereas dr. strange is using magic all over his scene, just to use it. just because he can. magic was unnecessary for ninety percent of what he did in that scene, the only time he needed magic was to whisk them away to norway. but he teleported all over the place even when he only needed to move a few feet, gave thor an ever-refilling beer that just spilled everywhere, floated around to make a show of how ~magical~ he was, when…
he could have just walked.
i mean, i’m very sure that the filmmakers intended it for comedic effect, but there’s also a layer there of dr. strange being much less comfortable with magic than loki is – loki doesn’t need to bust out the magic at every opportunity, it’s simply a skill, a tool that is completely under his control and at his disposal. whereas dr. strange (at least in his scene in ragnarok) is showing off, which reeks of insecurity.
i guess i’m thinking… if you take the magic away, loki is still a deadly, formidable opponent with many tricks up his sleeve, but dr. strange is just a guy in a cape.
‘In Thor, I built the character as somebody who is very misunderstood and heartbroken. He’s a younger brother who’s been brought up in the shadow of his older brother. And his spiritual heartbreak has become this kind of scar that’s both internal and external. He’s given free rein to his vengefulness and his hate. I mean, he is comparable to so many of the great villains of human history: who have tried to subjugate people; who’ve tried to rule; who’ve tried to get everyone beneath them.’
The bastard old man is caked! What is it with pre-2010s comics both making him ugly and grotesque, but still caking him up? Why is his butt crack visible through the tunic? lmao xD
This also shows he's smaller than Jotuns and Asgardians.
At the beginning of The Avengers, he’s already the God of Mischief. He knows who he is, he knows what he wants. He doesn’t need his family anymore, he doesn’t need Odin anymore, or Thor. And he is more like the God of Menace. So rather than being a lost Asgardian prince, he’s more like an Asgardian pirate. [x]
Loki and the Deeply Valid Fear of Being a Government-Issued Android Without Knowing It
Imagine living for over a thousand years, committing intergalactic crimes, then one random underpaid TVA clerk with a monotone voice suddenly introduces the possibility that, oh, by the way, what if you were secretly a robot this whole time? And Loki, who has always carried himself with the absolute certainty of a god, pauses. Like. “Wait. What if I am?”
He hears that question and immediately does a full mental diagnostic. Have I ever glitched? Ever felt oddly mechanical? Experienced an unusual fondness for oil? Maybe he’s too good at lying. Too good at surviving. What if that’s just the programming?
The TVA worker just moves on. He doesn’t elaborate. no reassurances. theres no safety net. Just the terrifying possibility that he might get instantly vaporized for something completely outside his control.
Id like to note, his hesitation isn’t even just some random existential crisis, it’s trauma-informed. This man already lived through the experience of waking up one day and realizing he wasn’t who he thought he was.
He grew up thinking he was a prince, a god, Odin’s rightful son, only to find out he was actually a stolen relic of war. A Jotun. A creature he’d been taught to hate.
He thought he knew himself before, and he was wrong. What if he’s wrong again? What if theres something else about himself thats been hidden? If he didn’t realize he was a Frost Giant, whats stopping him from not realizing he’s actually some highly advanced synthetic being?
It’s not just a funny existential gag, it’s a callback to one of the most devastating truths of Loki’s existence:
He has never really known who he is.
It’s the muscle memory of having his entire identity ripped out from under him. It’s the learned fear of asking, What am I, actually?
Because the last time he asked that question, the answer ruined him.
i understand that ragnarock is the funniest thor movie just because,,,,,, it has the most jokes and all of them are hilarious but some of you are ignoring the absolute comedic genius that is thor 1. the entire movie is set off by loki essentially performing a prank on his brother because he thinks he's dumb and doesn't deserve to be king but it backfires so horribly that loki finds out he's adopted from a race of people he was taught to hate and his brother is straight up exiled. and when he tries to talk to his father about this he doesn't want to talk to loki SO much that he falls into a coma and loki becomes king. i cannot stress enough how he just accidentally performed a coup. he literally just played a prank on his brother and ended up on the throne of asgard
Thor. (Thor 1)
Thor is a brother. A prince. King. Lover. Fighter. Avenger. His identity is wrapped so tightly around these fragments that if he lets go, he’ll fall to pieces. But he’s fragmented because he shattered. And he shattered because of what happened in Thor: God of Thunder.
Thor’s arc in the first movie, I believe, centers around the idea of consequences. It’s not falling in love with Jane, it’s not Asgard, not someone slapping him over the head. It’s the fact that his choices suddenly have weight and meaning.
Thor gets banished for slaughtering Jotun unprovoked.
Thor’s relationship with Jane, Darcy, and Erik is poor because he’s treating them like crap.
Thor fails to capture his hammer because he’s not worthy. (To whatever standard Odin has set.)
Thor, as he’s told, is the catalyst of his father’s death.
There’s this moment in this scene when you can watch his face go from earnest to oh. That was me. I did that. Me. Not you. ME.
Thor is the prince of Asgard, which is basically an empire of nine worlds. He is used to having diplomatic immunity. He could do no wrong. With that ripped out away from him, Thor doesn’t talk. He shuts down, and settles inside himself, thinking.
Not reacting. Thinking.
Thor isn’t an idiot. He’s impulsive, there’s a difference. His first reaction is violence, because he was raised in a society where slapping your enemies over the head brutally was just something that was done. As much as I love Frigga, when Thor was banished, in the deleted scene, she didn’t go to Odin so tell him oh my gosh, our son killed all these Jotuns, why didn’t we teach him better? She complains that Odin’s punishment was too harsh.
Thor has never been told to stretch this much, and had it stick before. And Loki does it. He does it in a way that’s a little cruel, and cold, but he tells Thor to stop being such an idiot.
And Thor, miracle of miracles, actually listens.
This is not a story of Thor becoming worthy. This is the story of Thor realizing where his priorities need to be. It’s the story of him growing up.
And this is where we get to my final point. I think that almost none of this–none of it–would have sunk deeply into Thor’s psyche if Loki didn’t fall of the Bifrost when they fought.
Look at them. Loki is dangling. Thor is being held onto by his foot.
And Thor doesn’t care.
Because the only thing he’s focused on is his little brother. Hanging there. Dying. His best friend that just tried to kill all the Jotuns. His confidante that just disowned him. His biggest supporter that fought him. And Thor doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know what Loki uncovered at that point.
This is just his brother who is going to die if he doesn’t do anything.
And then Loki addresses his last words to their father. Not him. Their father. And Odin rejects him. It always struck me that Thor sees Loki’s face close off and then immediately knows what Loki is going to do. He’s not surprised, he’s not shocked. He knows. Loki lets go, and Thor can’t catch him.
Thor can fly. Odin didn’t let him go until Loki was beyond any chance of recovery, and Thor blamed himself. He’s solemn after Loki’s death. He rejects his parents’ and friends’ comfort. He goes to Heimdall to start looking out for Jane, because he is not going to let someone else he cares about slip beyond his reach.
Thor’s consequence for his actions in Thor 1 was his brother. And that nearly killed him. Thor 1 was never, never about becoming worthy. At least, not for Thor.
“How is he?”
“He mourns for his brother.”
What the fuck
Are they seriously holding against him that he tried to kill Thanos????? Or Malekith???
I think that mcu making up flaws that Loki allegedly has and "fixing" them but never even briefly exploring the flaws he actually has has a lot to do with the fact that his flaws aren't the ones that movies or books usually deal with.
Because mcu Loki does have some genuine flaws: guys, he tried to destroy Jotunheim and walked over his own beliefs in order to be liked and deserving to be loved by his family. That's the hugest people-pleasing issues you can come up with.
He's so overly private that he never even mentioned Thanos. Not once. Yes, there were different reasons, but this was one of them.
His trust issues? His desire to portray himself as worse than he is?
Him ruining Thor's coronation out of mix of jealousy AND altruism????
All of that are real flaws, but the writers of popular media usually don't deal with such kind of flaws - they deal with arrogant, selfish, power-hungry characters, so yeah, of course later mcu claims that Loki didn't know how to care about others. Of course the show states he was power-hungry.
Not only that, but the flaws mcu Loki has aren't always seen as flaws by many people: "oh, so he's a people-pleaser, it's like being too much of a hard worker", etc.
Mcu Loki is a complex character who is flawed in such interesting ways, but of course it's easier to give him classic bad-to-good guy story.
100% agree, i miss the time in the loki fandom where loki could just be shipped with whoever
as a person who has always seen mcu!loki as an aroace peep (because the aroace-spec people are sorely missing representation) to the extent that i headcanon that multiple characters, especially those that have gone through similar trauma as me. there are few of us, but we are proud and we are strong
First Sylvie invaded the Echantress and Enchantricks tag, then she invaded the Lady Loki/Fem Loki tag, now Sylvie has invaded the Sigyn tag. 🥲 Why can’t people tag her properly?
They want attention
Sanctuary and Loki's "adoption"
I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before now, but… Odin said he found Loki in the temple in Jotunheimr. Of course that didn’t fit very well with his claim of Loki being abandoned there, buutt…
What if the Jotun had some concept like the old Christian “Sanctuary”, in which holy places were refuges where even the bitterest enemy could not touch you or force you out? (Not without risking their soul, as the lore had it.) Even when babies were abandoned to sanctuary it was specifically so they would not die, so that they would be kept safe until a home was found for them.
If that’s the case, then the explanation for Loki being there could have been totally different from what Odin claimed: he could have been put there in hopes of keeping him safe. In the midst of an attack by bitter foes like the Aesir such a move would make perfect sense, the only flaw being the assumption that the Aesir would know and respect the sanctuary.
If that was true, then the best case scenario for Odin is that he found baby Loki and just didn’t know Jotun custom enough to understand why the infant was there. It would show a woeful lack of knowledge of their enemies’ customs, but sadly it’s not very farfetched that he might be so ignorant of their culture, considering the blatant contempt many Asgardians exhibited toward frost giants.
Unfortunately it’s more likely he did know (witness the fact that he knew whose child Loki was) and simply took the child anyway.
So if the Jotun rules are anything like the old church rules - which they’d pretty well have to be just to make the sanctuary concept work - then going in the temple and taking Loki out of it was one of the vilest things Odin could do. Even on the scale of war crimes it would be, well, monstrous.
Yet we’re supposed to believe that Loki is the monster in the House of Odin?
In comics Loki is immune to Wanda's magic. Thats how powerful he is.
In MCU Val knocks him off with 1 hit.
Any time I see someone say "Marvel knew what they were doing when they cast Tom Hiddleston" I feel a bit like...they didn't though? I think you're projecting some 4D chess grandmaster stuff onto Marvel Studios that doesn't really exist.
Tom was cast via Kenneth Branagh and yes it was PHENOMENAL casting but let's not pretend like Marvel Studios didn't spend the next near-decade and a half deleting Loki's scenes, killing him then instantly reviving him, deleting yet more of his scenes, killing him again, retconning killing him, sticking him off-screen for almost half a decade, removing yet another scene and not even compensating his fans with a DVD extra, killing him again, then suddenly remembering he's popular (again) and coming up with something to use a now-for-real-dead character as the lead but it wasn't exactly the same character (just another version of him) and now they're apparently done with him again when it's pretty obvious he'll be wheeled out of that tree at some point.
I love Loki. I love Tom's portrayal of Loki but the only people who have consistently genuinely seemed to care about the character are the fans. Because we've been given nothing but crumbs by Marvel and yet produce all this beautiful fan art, fan fic and meta. Marvel have just kinda stumbled around Loki like some perpetually confused pigeon in a hall of mirrors that keeps crashing into its own reflection shrugging "huh...what IS this? Ooh shiny!"
Knew what they were doing? More like lucked out with a very talented and charismatic actor and a dedicated fanbase that formed 2011-12 and is somehow, despite everything still here.