#that thing about Frigga's death being Loki's fault is a dick move but considering his job is it really so shocking that he'd say that?

[nostalgia-tblr]

You know, a lot of Loki fandom wank could be avoided if people just stopped assuming that everything Mobius says is definitely the literal truth and that he would never tell lies for whatever reason (like to GET A REACTION!) and can never just be wrong about things.

[fullofleaves]

Hi! I've been a huge fan of your work for years now. :) I think you're one of the authors who understand the depth and complexity of Loki's character the most, and you have such an amazing way of portraying both his strong and vulnerable aspects in your stories. I was just wondering if you've seen Ragnarok and if you have some time, would you be willing to share with us your honest thoughts about it? (Particularly about Loki's character development from the first two Thor films to this one?)

Yoooo sorry for taking forever to answer this, but the true fact is I had to go see Ragarok again to formulate a proper answer.  But, wow, thank you so much!  I really love Loki’s character, and spend probably Way Too Much Time thinking about him, so this is a great question.

Anyway.  HAVE I SEEN RAGNAROK.  Short answer: YES.  Longer answer: YES I HAVE SEEN IT THREE TIMES NOW AND NEED TO GO AGAIN AT SOME POINT.  It’s a very important movie to me, given my love of A) Loki, B) Loki being stuck in absolutely stupid situations, and C) Thor throwing stuff at Loki’s head.  That said, it had a couple details didn’t love so much, but overall it was exactly the kind of shit I’m in to.  I mean like… you’ve read the crap I write so you could have probably guessed that already.  I live for Loki’s suspicious relationship with the Grandmaster and the orgy ship and everyone saying the word anus a few too many times and Bruce complaining about Tony’s tight pants.  And the play.  Sweet Jesus, the play.  A+ material.  A+.

But Loki’s character.  There’s so much that could be said here, and I’ve seen a lot of really good meta floating around already, so I’m going to stick to a couple key points.

I really like this version of Loki?  And I think it’s a good direction for his character to go.  In the first Thor movie you had him starting off as a mischievous character but not really “evil”, until everything in his world went to hell and he kind of lost his shit.  In Avengers, well, he’s Full Evil, killing people for funzies and generally fucking everything up.  In Dark world, I don’t think he actually repented at all sitting locked away in prison… until Frigga’s death.  This is the first time his actions have had a real consequence for him, and you can see the change it makes when he fights alongside Thor.  And now here I feel like he has, in some ways, almost come back to who he was in the beginning.

He’s not Evil.  He didn’t kill Odin when he easily could have.  As “Odin”, he didn’t kill Thor or have him banished or send him off on a death sentence of a quest, or even try to do anything like that.  It’s implied he just kept encouraging Thor to stay away from Asgard, giving him space to build ridiculous statues of himself and commission bad theater.  He’s Loki of Asgard again, but like… a more confident, evolved version.  He’s been through actual hell with the Chitauri, did the whole supervillain thing, and now he’s just hanging around pulling the greatest con Asgard has ever seen by pretending to be king.  He didn’t even kill Heimdall, who probably saw right through his illusion.  Just discredited him and sent him on his way.  The point is: no more killing (at least of anybody more important than a random alien lackey or undead soldier) and his leadership of Asgard is more IDGAF than villainous.  Like if anybody noticed anything weird, they probably attributed it to Odin going off the deep end after Frigga’s death, not “we’re obviously being conned by an evil mastermind”.

Side note: this whole Odin charade would have been going on for several years by the time Thor finally outed him.  I think it’s possible that by this time, on some level, he was almost relieved to be caught.  It looks like he’d been pushing things further and further to see how much dumb shit he could get away with, tempting fate.  He doesn’t seem that upset at the big reveal, so obviously kingship of Asgard wasn’t a critical position for him.  He was just doing it for the lulz and basking in his own successful scheme.

And then they go to Earth to pick up Odin, and I think this is really Loki’s first wake-up call in the movie.  He had to have been expecting either Odin to still be under his enchantment (and Thor will kick his ass), or for Odin to retaliate in some way (as Odin is famous for doing).  In either case, he would have been mentally preparing himself for a confrontation.  That doesn’t happen.  Odin accepts and forgives him, which throws his whole balance completely off.  Is he reassessing all of his life choices that led up to this moment and rethinking his entire worldview?  Probably not.  But he has to, at the very least, feel kind of shitty.  You can see that in how he stays absolutely silent throughout the entire scene.  Not even a single word of argument or a weak attempt to explain himself. It’s Loki’s special brand of remorse.  You know: the kind where you don’t have to apologize (and probably get mad when somebody tries to talk to you about it.)

Now for the next wake-up call, let’s consider that Loki landed on Sakaar weeks before Thor did.  And because he was kicked out of the Bifrost beam first, he had no idea how the fight between Thor and Hela ended.  Did Thor win?  Who knows?  From his vantage point, it looked like Hela was pretty savage and had a good chance at coming out ahead.  He had to consider the very real possibility that Thor was dead or otherwise out of the way.  And you’d think that somebody who professed to have such a desire to sit on the throne would do anything to find his way back to Asgard to see WTF was going on, but… he didn’t.  He stayed where he landed. I’m still trying to figure out his motivation behind this choice.  Waiting for the right opportunity?  Maybe.  But if he’d already stolen the security codes, what was stopping him from leaving?  I think it’s more likely that he’d given up (at least for the time being) and decided this was is life now.  It was his fault Odin died and Hela was released.  His fault Thor could very well be dead and Asgard destroyed.  Add Frigga’s death on top of that and I’m thinking he’s decided at this point that Asgard is better off without him.  

And you can see this in the infamous elevator scene.  Loki mentions wanting to stay on Sakaar, in what’s pretty obviously a setup for Thor to say “oh no brother you are way too important to me, we must stay together”.  And then he’d grudgingly agree.  Instead, Thor’s like “YEP, THIS HELLHOLE SURE IS PERFECT FOR A SACK OF DICKS LIKE YOU, LMAO.”  He asks if Thor really thinks so little of him, when he has to think so little of himself.  It’s kind of a crushing blow to hear that Thor agrees.

My opinion?  Loki wouldn’t have tried to betray Thor in the following scene if Thor had given him the answer and brotherly love he was looking for.  Like, he would’ve betrayed Thor eventually, because that’s what he does, but it’d probably be more like “Hey Thor now that we’ve saved Asgard, how about you go off and restore peace to the realms while I stay behind and definitely do nothing to undermine your authority and usurp power again”.  He knows Thor’s the only one who has a chance at defeating Hela, so it’s in his best interest to stay on that side of the equation.  It’s only when Thor turns him down that his Lokiness gets the better of him and decides to turn Thor in for the bounty and go his own way.

So why does he go back to Asgard?  Spite, probably.  I don’t think he ever specifically wants to be GOOD, per se.  He’ll always have a massive chip on his shoulder that’s giving him an excuse to be a stupid shit and ruin stuff for everyone, especially himself.  But I do think, at certain points, he has wanted to ACT good.  He wants to step up and do what’s right, either to prove something to himself (ie, killing Laufey) or to prove something to Thor (ie, showing up out of the mist with a giant spaceship to save the day).  That struck me as a real “you betrayed me but now I’m helping you, don’t you feel bad?” move.

Okay.  So.  Where does Loki’s character end up after all this?  Well there’s this really great post I’ve seen going around about how the existence of Hela helps him realize that, shit, maybe he’s not a Bad Guy.  Because if Odin’s own blood daughter can turn out that spectacularly fucked up, his own problems and hangups and crimes seem kind of paltry in comparison.  And I agree with this 100%.  Compared to Hela, he’s small potatoes.  Hela is now officially the Worst Child Ever and this has to make him feel better about himself.  It has to.  Before, Thor would probably complain to his friends about how terrible Loki was (in fact, he does just this when telling the snake story), but now?  Now Thor can complain to Loki about how terrible Hela is.  And Loki can be like, “Wow, yeah, she’s just off the fucking charts with Evilness.”  And then they bond with a fistbump, or whatever.

ANYWAY, the point of all this is…?  Loki goes through a lot in this movie, but I think he ends up in the right place.  I mean, obviously not geographically, because they’re about to be screwed up the ass by Thanos (I assume).  But he’s had a four-movie arc now, bouncing all over the place in terms of motivation and emotion, and it seems like he’s kind of… settled now?  He’s back where he started, at Thor’s side, but after all he’s been through I think he now has a better handle on what he wants for himself and where he thinks he belongs, as opposed to what others tell him he wants and where they say he belongs.  Maybe it’s just me wanting to see what I want to see, but he comes across as a character who’s more comfortable with himself.  Especially compared to the Loki who was lashing out so much in earlier movies.  He’s had his rebellious phase.  Now it’s time to start over rebuilding his relationship with his brother.