#odin does definitely get some bad writing and he's often the obligatory bad parent for thor and loki childhood angst plotlines

[odin-suggestion]

I still think about that moment in the comics where Odin hired Black Panther to kill Loki. But then how Odin gets very upset if anything happens to Loki. If BP had done it, what do you think Odin would have done?

I think about this so much.

Like, here's the context: The War of the Realms is imminent and Odin is finally realizing that he picked the wrongest possible way to deal with it. Freyja called it, and Loki sided with her when she rebelled against Odin over it, and then he (apparently) defected to the enemy, then he (apparently) tried to kill Freyja and nearly succeeded. Odin is going through some shit and once again, much of it is Loki's fault. So it's not that shocking that he'd want something done about Loki, and let's be real: for Asgardians, killing them is just making them go somewhere. To a god, death is a prison sentence, and Loki is the gods' best escape artist.

And while Odin absolutely (even by his own admission), has his moments... he's not stupid.

In that comic, Odin goes to Black Panther and starts off by saying, "Let me tell you a story."

In this story, Odin says, "A long time ago, I, a young god, and your ancestor, the first Black Panther, fought a terrible creature together with some other heroes. When we had defeated it, the Black Panther called for mercy -- something was clearly wrong with this creature, and he wanted to help it. I disagreed: I thought we should kill it and nail its corpse to the moon as a warning to the rest of its kind."

And then Odin says, "I was wrong. The Black Panther was wiser than I was."

He uses this story to illustrate why he respects the Black Panther -- a fellow king, a powerful warrior, and a man of great wisdom. And then Odin says, "That creature we fought: its friends are coming to Earth to get revenge for what we did, and Loki is helping them.* I want you to kill him for the greater good."

*(Loki, for his part, is doing all of this because Malekith intends to use Earth as the battleground for the War of the Realms and the Avengers aren't Avengering hard enough. They need a bad guy to fight so they'll have an excuse to get the band back together.)

Odin says he can't do it because he's weak, he loves his son too much to kill him himself, even knowing the destruction he's about to cause. And it seems like it doesn't quite fit together, does it? Odin didn't go to one of the other heroes he fought alongside in that fight. He didn't ask the Ghost Rider, arbiter of cosmic justice. He didn't ask Earth's Sorcerer Supreme, who's recently had to deal with Loki's bullshit and is eager to kick his ass. He didn't ask the Phoenix, favorite of his old companions. He asked the Black Panther -- the only one to disagree with him. The one who wisely called for mercy and understanding.

And then I remember Young Avengers.

And I remember when the whole thing first starts, and Billy's in trouble and America swoops in to rescue him -- not from the terrible mage-eating monster he's just accidentally summoned, but from Loki. And when they finally get a moment to sit down to talk about it, she tells Billy:

"Don't trust Loki. He knew something was going to happen and he told me that to prevent it, I should kill you."

And Loki says, "Sometimes the only way to be the good guy is to play the bad guy everyone expects you to be. What would you have done if I'd told you Billy was in trouble?"

"Nothing," she admits.

A year after this conversation with Odin, T'Challa walks into Avengers tower with a file on everything Loki's been up to recently and says to the Avengers, "What have all of you heard about the War of the Realms?"

#ooc obvs #character analysis #listen they are both bastards and they are so so alike #both of them are just over here playing 5d chess with the realms as their game board #odin does definitely get some bad writing and he's often the obligatory bad parent for thor and loki childhood angst plotlines #which is fine!!! he's a narrative tool!!! they're stories!!! #but he's a way more complex and interesting character than he gets credit for in fandom i think