I’m pretty sure that some people have pointed it out before, but I’ve never actually seen those posts:
“After. After whatever tortures Fury can concoct, you would appear as a friend. As a balm. And I would cooperate.”
First I’d like to note that Loki doesn’t seem to assume that Thor would go “you can’t torture Loki he’s my brother”. He legit thinks that Thor would let SHIELD torture him.
But more than that… he seems to be projecting. He was referring to the time he spent in captivity, when he was tortured. Cooperate in the sense that “yes I will retrieve the tesseract”.
Re: Loki thinking that Thor would let SHIELD torture him: this reminds me of a post that’s gone around about someone asking Tom about why Loki tries to kill Thor in Thor 1 (apologies l, I can’t remember who originally posted it), and him responding that it was his opinion that Loki thought that Thor would kill him once Thor found out that Loki was a Frost Giant. That fear is made a little more explicit here, and it’s just so, so sad. Especially given that we see Fury talk to Thor about torturing Loki, and Thor reacts with disbelief that they’d even consider it. (there’s an essay here probably about Loki’s expectations about Thor being violent towards him and the fact that Thor rarely meets those expectations but…eh I’ll just explore in fanfiction, I can’t write essays)
Anyway, the way the Nat scene is filmed totallymakes it seem like Loki is projecting. Note his reflection in the glass:
And then we get:
“You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are part of you. And they will never go away.”
It seems clear to me from the cinematography directly preceding these lines that we are absolutely meant to see Loki talking about himselfhere, whether or not he’s aware of it. So much of this scene is about Loki, what he thinks of himself, what’s been done to him, what he’s gone through. Maybe all of it, when you take into account that Nat’s putting on an act the whole time.
t I have this headcanon that part of the reason that Loki agreed to Thanos to invade New York (not that Loki had that much of a choice since he was being tortured) was because he knew that if any of the other Black Order members - or, heck, even Gamora/Nebula, the casualty rate would have been wayhigher. That’s where the “You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something to make up for the horrors” comes from. There’s a lot of talk about Loki deliberately taking measures to notwin the battle of New York. The way he’s projecting here - maybe he’s trying to convince himself that this is inevitable. He has to carry out the invasion. This way he can lessen the casualties. But at the same time, he’s regretting it. He knows the blood is on his hands (he proceeds to taunt Natasha about the blood in her ledger - also projecting).
“But they are part of you. And they will never go away.” Regarding this statement, I’ve been thinking about the article where Marvel confirms that Loki was being influenced by the scepter. Under normal circumstances, he never would have invaded Earth. (There are fics where Loki falls into the Void only to emerge on Earth instead of Thanos’ hands - and it’s not like Loki’s first thought upon arriving to Earth was to conquer it.) But because of the scepter’s influence, it magnifies Loki’s emotions like rage and vengeance. We never actually know how long Loki was exposed to the scepter. How long did Thanos have it? Was Loki exposed to its influence for a long time even before he initiated the invasion?
Maybe, on some level, Loki knows that the scepter was influencing him somehow. Bringing out his worst emotions. All these people he killed during the invasion - that was on his hands. He was responsible. Everyone else is also holding him responsible too. Didn’t matter that he did this under duress. @magicmastered did a piece on why Loki didn’t tell others he was tortured (typical me forgot the link so…) and one of the reasons cited was that in a warrior culture like Asgard, Loki was the one who would be seen as weak because he wasn’t strong enough to resist the torture. He gave in - his fault. It doesn’t matter that there were external circumstances - being tortured, mind stone’s influence etc. Loki believes that the person who invaded NYC is Loki - it’s who he is, he is a despicable criminal.
“You put a bullet in someone. You’re not you anymore. You’ll never be you again. But then you wake up the next morning and you’re still you. And you realise that was you all along. You just didn’t know.” - HBO Chernobyl
Re: Loki’s assumption that Thor would let SHIELD torture him/Thor and Fury’s conversation, this is how I remember that going (well, paraphrased):
Fury: You think you can make Loki tell us where the Tesseract is?
Thor: He craves vengeance, upon me. There is no pain that would prise this need from him.
Fury: A lot of guys think that, till the pain [stops/starts/i forgot].
Thor: What are you asking me to do?
Fury: I’m asking you what you’re prepared to do.
(Side note: Holy crap, Fury.)
Thor’s reaction seems less “what in the crap?!?!?” and more “it’s not going to work, there’s no point”. I don’t believe Thor would’ve tortured Loki. He’s just not in total disbelief at Fury’s suggestion.
Loki’s expectations of Thor’s violence do make a sort of sense, when you consider that at this point he genuinely believes that Thor threw him off the Bifrost, and Thor didn’t really help matters when his first move upon seeing Loki was to grab him by the neck and drag him out of a plane. And then, right before Tony knocked him out-of-frame, Thor threatened Loki with Mjolnir.
It’s also, I think, an effect of Loki’s depression. He thinks Thor doesn’t care about him, and would take Thor’s rough introduction, the fact that the first thing Thor talked about was the Tesseract, and Thor’s threat as further proof.
And yes, I love that part of the Loki and Nat scene for that reason exactly. He’s projecting so much there. That section you quoted is a direct parallel to his time with Thanos (while also being true of Nat).
YES. Loki blames himself for NY. In his mind, if he was just strong enough, he could’ve held off and not broken. If anything it makes it worse than if he’d just woken up one day and decided to invade Earth and kill a bunch of people. He’d be a murderer but not weak. This way, as he sees it, he’s both.
I’m still making up my mind on what was going on with the invasion. I agree that if any of Thanos’ other people led that invasion there would’ve been a far higher death toll…but I’m also not convinced that they would’ve done the conquering Earth thing in the first place. Thanos’ big thing was getting the Tesseract. Controlling Earth (directly or indirectly) probably wouldn’t have been much of a concern for him.
And I’m just not sure Loki’d care enough at that point, what with the scepter’s influence. Note that up until Thor forced him to really see the destruction, Loki looked like this:
Not exactly “I wish I didn’t have to do this.”
Not consciously, anyway. I can buy that on some level he didn’t want there to be as much of a slaughter as there would’ve been, but I doubt it was part of his conscious decision-making process.
If Loki was sabotaging the invasion consciously, I can see how keeping down the death toll could’ve been a factor…just maybe not one he was himself aware of.
But “you pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors” is definitely coming from somewhere….
…Maybe Thanos was initially planning on doing his usual genocide routine on Earth, because why not and he’s there anyway, but eventually went with having Loki rule it instead. That genocide would have had a death toll in the billions, as opposed to Loki’s and the Chitauri’s total of 155 that we know of (assuming that Nat wasn’t exaggerating and that we put all deaths from the PEGASUS base’s collapse are on Loki).
In that case you might be right…..
It turns out I had more to add.
Loki’s self-blame may be even worse because of his particular role with regards to retrieving the Tesseract.
If Thanos knew about the Tesseract’s location before he acquired Loki, why didn’t he come to Earth earlier? Was there something stopping him? If that’s the case, Loki would’ve been a way around that (since he was able to go to Earth pretty easily). Ergo, if it wasn’t for Loki, Thanos wouldn’t have been able to come for the Tesseract for whatever reason.
If Thanos didn’t know where the Tesseract was before he got Loki…then Loki is most likely how they found out, considering how much the Other thinks of Loki’s knowledge of it. Therefore, if it wasn’t for Loki, Thanos wouldn’t have known to send anyone to Earth.
Either way, that’s even more things that Loki could blame himself for.
So many thoughts, only think I can brain properly right now is:
It is entirely possible that Loki was the one who knew where the Tesseract was, and that Thanos found out from Loki through whatever method – reading his mind? tortured it out of him? Loki offering up that info to his captors as his “cooperation” (to stop the torture)?
Odin was the one who hid the Tesseract on Earth, right? It’s possible that he shared this information with his sons, or if he didn’t, perhaps Loki found out on his own because he is totally the type to sneak around to find out secrets Odin kept.
