Long and Rambling Notes on TDW: Jessica Pontificates

[borderline_mary]

So I'm back from basically nowhere! Mostly for you, Anne. I like you. Also I feel like you might discuss all the below stuff with me, because.

Disclaimer: I liked this movie. The first big chunk of stuff below makes it look like I hated it, but I’m just getting the bad stuff out of the way first.

Comments

[silent_lorelei]

3) Loki is actually stabbed and actually dies. I think this option has the most interesting possibilities, though of course the exact mechanics of it wouldn't be explained until the next movie. He of course has his weird working relationship with Hela in the comics (and in myth is actually her father), and Hela's occasionally been involved with Malekith as well IIRC? So it's possible he died, went to Hel as he forecasted, and she let him back out, either because they made a deal or because they had arranged this in advance. If he wasn't planning on it, we finally have a scene that is exactly what it looks like from Loki - self-sacrifice, death, and using his last breaths to apologize to his brother and try to communicate his feelings - followed by a second chance in which he gets to come back badder than ever (Loki II: Trickster Boogaloo). If he was planning on it, the actual act of dying is still more of a commitment to his brother and the situation than illusion shenanigans would have been, and it also invites a lot of questions about his motivations and plans in setting that up. Did he realize that the only way to escape from his predicament permanently would be to die? Believe that only by dying could he expiate his sins, and see it as a transformative chance to atone? Was he looking for a way to pull a caper without actually lying, so that telling Odin that a body had been found was absolutely the truth and no one could call him on it later, and his return from the dead would this time be greeted with welcoming relief rather than furious rejection? Is he doing something for Hela - or Thanos, even, with whom he's already had at least secondhand contact through the Chitauri - that involves dying, or does he know they'll send him back so it's an easy gamble?

I have no idea. All the options significantly change the tenor of Loki's final scene and where he's likely to go from here. They're all thoroughly possible from a character as complicated as he is, but, in true trickster form, we didn't get to see the part of the magic trick that would have told us how it was done.

Side note: Had Loki come back and been put in jail forever, I suspect Thor wouldn't have turned down the throne. His general outlook wouldn't have been as thoroughly crushed as it was after the double-whammy loss of both mother and brother, and he might even have felt like it was his duty to do so - Odin probably wouldn't let Loki out of jail, but if Thor took power, he could. (Ah, good old flashbacks to Loki saying, "My first command as Allfather can't be to undo Odin's last!", which is legit, but I doubt Thor would be worrying about it.)

Mythology side note because I can: One of the weird things about Loki in mythology is that he's generally an ally - albeit a pain in the ass ally - to the Aesir throughout all of Norse canon until they get to Ragnarok. Suddenly he kills Baldur, for no reason that is ever expressed in any of the sagas, goes off the rails insulting all the gods, and then leads the armies of Muspelheim into Asgard after they retaliate against him. Loki's tricks prior to Baldur's death are always non-lethal and in the spirit of (mean) fun, so scholars have spent decades trying to figure out why he chose that moment to suddenly start perpetrating real evil. One of the more popular theories is that Christianity, which syncretized Loki with Satan when conversion missions started happening in northern Europe, colored the original myths in order to set him as the opposition against a Christ-like Baldur (who dies but is resurrected after the world ends), but really we don't know.

I bring it up because another less beloved but way cooler theory is that Loki killed Baldur not as a random act of malice but as a calculated way to get him into the underworld in order to marry his daughter Hel. Hel is immediately besotted with Baldur when he gets there, of course, and keeps him with her forever (until the apocalpyse) despite the entreaties of the gods; from a certain twisted point of view, Loki might have been trying to provide a bridegroom for his only daughter in spite of being forcibly separated from her by Odin's banishment. Marriage arrangement via stabbings.

[silent_lorelei]

Also, take that, Odin. If you'd just let him go to the happy afterlife, he couldn't have pulled surprise!resurrection out of his ass.

[silent_lorelei]

...unless he DID go to Valhalla, which is technically possible because that's where people who fall in battle are supposed to go, but Odin is being pretty not cool with him right now so might still be barred to him? It would be pretty poignant, after that "See you in Hel," if he actually did end up in the warriors' paradise instead. It could be Odin himself who let Loki back out of death, having accepted that he redeemed himself by aiding Thor and saving the universe, or because after all this he actually still cares enough about his adopted son that he isn't willing to just let him die.

Of course, that would not make sense with the scene of Loki returning in disguise to inform Odin of his death, though.

...unless it is a giant two-man con that they are both in on. Which is so totally possible, those motherfuckers. And would make a lot of sense, just like in the first movie, when it comes to how Thor is once again able to so easily commit treason and roll out of Asgard without Odin noticing or stopping him or having thought ahead to the possibility. The deal might have been made before Thor ever went down to "clandestinely" recruit his brother, because Odin might have just said, "Hmm, what would I do if I were Thor? I'd go get Loki. Hey, Loki, do what I want and I'll let you out of jail and/or give you some power and/or other prizes." Not a great deal for Loki, who is then once again kind of under his father's thumb and dealing with the possibility of being turned on... but then again, better trying to match wits with the Allfather than rotting in the dungeon forever.

I noticed in the theatre, actually, that when Loki says "We found a body," Odin's response is simply the word, "Loki." Which might mean he realizes that this random guard is informing him of his son's death... but also might be him just greeting the person in front of him.

I think I've strayed into "writers were not thinking about this that deeply, Anne" territory now, though.