#loki's mistakes are on a grander scale because he's the prince of a magical alien world where battles are commonplace

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Somebody asked me to talk about the misconception that Loki is always trying to kill Thor, so here are some thoughts.

When Loki and Thor are children, Thor is the one who expresses bloodlust: "I'll hunt the monsters down and slay them all". We can infer from this scene that Loki was not violent or murderous as a child (unlike a certain scene in Thor: Ragnarok would suggest which, let it be remembered, was completely improvised and therefore not written with Loki's actual character in mind).

Loki never expresses a desire to kill Thor (except on Svartalfheim, and we all know that was a trick).

The closest he comes to this is his command to the Destroyer: "Ensure my brother does not return. Destroy everything." Notice how direct the latter part of the sentence is, while the former is vague and left up to interpretation. This is a partial reach, but I wonder if Loki wouldn't have just told the Destroyer to kill Thor if that's what he really wanted.

Loki had the opportunity to use the Destroyer's death ray on Thor, and he didn't. He chose to slap him instead. Yes, this proved to be nearly fatal, but he could have been much more direct. The Destroyer is a literal killing machine.

Even knowing Thor was mortal, I sincerely doubt Loki believed he would actually die. To Loki, Thor has always been his strong and unbeatable older brother. He has probably seen him mortally wounded hundreds of times and it was probably impossible to imagine him dying from a slap.

Remember that at this point, Loki has no reason to believe that Thor won't try to kill him as soon as he finds out he's Jotun. Thor had been happily killing hundreds of Frost Giants just the week before, and had likely been doing so for the last several hundred years. So even in this "him or me" situation, in the midst of a mental breakdown, moments away from attempting genocide, Loki isn't able to directly attempt to kill Thor.

Loki never even comes close to killing Thor at any other point in the films. They fight on Bifrost, but they're fighting more for control of the mechanism here than with intent to hurt (let alone kill) each other.

In the Avengers, Loki doesn't even pretend to try. He stabs Thor once with a tiny dagger that looks like it affected Thor as much as a bee sting.

In TDW he takes it a step further and sacrifices himself for Thor (or at least tries to). Is the opposite of trying to kill someone trying to die to save them? I feel like it might be.

In Ragnarok he tries to... turn him over to the Grandmaster? I guess? And we get the snake story, but like I already said, that was improv done with no regard for Loki's actual character. And then Loki literally saves the entirety of the Asgardian people and supports Thor becoming king which doesn't seem very murderous to me.

In Infinity War he sacrifices himself for real this time, first throwing away a goddamn INFINITY STONE to tackle Thor to the ground with no thought for his wellbeing and then having the life choked out of him by his greatest fear and tormentor and also oh my god it's been FOUR films since the last time he sort of maybe subjectively tried to kill Thor and he's been actively trying to save him in three of those

This got a bit long and rambly but yeah. No matter how you look at it, Loki's attempt-to-kill-Thor count is either one or zero. That simply doesn't add up to any number high enough to qualify as him "constantly" trying to kill his brother. Also his attempt-to-save-Thor count is by my calculations AT LEAST six, and that's only on-screen and obviously not counting the hundreds of years they spent together before this.

#loki #loki meta #thor ragnarok critical #loki deserves better #loki did nothing wrong #i don't know how people still think of him as a villain #there's a HUGE difference between a villain and a misguided person #loki's mistakes are on a grander scale because he's the prince of a magical alien world where battles are commonplace #but by the standards of his own people his actions are not even *that* bad #not saying he didn't do terrible things #but that's not due to him being a uniquely terrible or villainous person #it's due to his fucked up circumstances and shitty cultural indoctination and years of abuse and THEN familial betrayal on a massive scale #and THEN torture and brainwashing #(because he hadn't already suffered enough ig) #absolutely baffling to me how the average viewer sees him as a villain just because he *checks notes* #wears dark colors has a cryptic way of speaking has strong emotions and did bad things under duress #mainstream audience treatment of loki parallels asgard's treatment of loki #and it's FUCKED UP #anyways