Ahem. A brief treatise on how the Loki series sucked rocks
No shade if you are a fan who liked the series—but maybe this will partly explain why the OG Loki fans are so mad.
I have a suspicion that most fans of the show were not OG Loki fans from the start. Maybe they did not see Thor 1, Avengers 1, and Thor 2 in real-time sequence. Maybe they just didn’t pay much attention to Loki in those movies, with everything else going on. There’s no law saying you had to! Loki series fans are still legitimate Loki fans.
But if you HAD been a fan from the years before the series, and you KNEW his character, and you had any sympathy for his tragic circumstances, you would have hated the series too.
Oh man, I remember when the commercial with this clip of Loki came out, way before the Loki series. I was so psyched for the show, and we had waited so long for Loki to finally have his turn! All of that promise in that 3-second clip—and then Episode 1 of Season 1 happened, and I was crushed. Many of us were.
In one episode, Disney-Marvel unmade everything about who Loki was and put Larry from Cleveland in his place. I will never understand why they went that route, when there was SO MUCH rich material they could have explored in Loki’s story, even if they had still only started with content from Thor 1 and Avengers1.
People who like the show say the Loki had a great character arc going from “bad guy” to “good guy.” That’s not really what happened. Most of his so-called character development was a sudden and unrealistic personality swap forced on him by crude torture methods in Ep. 1. Torture does not change a personality. It may change someone’s behavior through trauma, but it doesn’t fix a “bad guy” (which Loki never really was to begin with).
That short video clip with a defiant Loki represents how the show *should* have treated Loki—showing the strength and confidence of a master sorcerer, with respect for his intelligence, will, princely arrogance, courage, supreme self confidence, and craftiness despite the obviously tight spot he was in.
The Loki in that clip was going to figure his way out of the hands of the TVA, and it would have been a creative, sophisticated escape—because even without his sorcery, the real Loki was a threat to be reckoned with. He was a 1,000-year-old alien, people, and this was not his first rodeo.
OG Loki wasn’t a fragile, naive mensch you could put in a beige uniform, and he damn well would have been harder for the TVA to capture in the first place. It would also have been a lot more entertaining to see a proper chase scene instead of one TVA agent delivering one punch then hauling him off.
I mean, really? This guy has fought frost giants. He’s taken semiautomatic bullets. He was hulk-smashed and survived. He has taken a punch before.
Loki was also incredibly fast in battle. In that moment when he was captured, he had dozens of knives at his disposal as well as his sorcerous powers (they were still on Earth). And he somehow didn’t see the punch coming?
Oh, this was not a good start to the series. Who was this guy? Where was Loki?
The writing of the series just breaks down on every level, from one minute to the next. I felt my heart sink lower and lower when I first saw that first episode. This was not Loki—not even the version they gave us prior to his miraculous transformation into a good guy.
Loki would not have been terrified by the TVA, the way they portrayed him in the series. He would have figured his way out of that jam like he has done for 1,000 years, no matter how powerful the TVA were supposed to be. Loki’s strengths were not in brute force, but clever tactics. His mind, not his sorcery (or knives) was his greatest weapon.
OG Loki would not have been destroyed by the TVA’s cheap, transparently manipulative torture methods.
Repeatedly kicking someone in the nuts? Come on. Showing someone an easily fakeable video of his own supposed death? Our current technology on Earth could have managed that illusion. And Loki would have suspected the TVA of faking the video—but we didn’t even get that. It is supposed to have broken him to tears? Pathetic. For one thing, this is a man who recently attempted suicide. He had been tortured by Thanos. He had been defeated by the Avengers. He wasn’t so in love with his life at that moment that he would cower in fear of losing it.
Loki was so much stronger and smarter than the limited, simple, selfish villain they showed us at the start of the series. I mean, he was a master strategist and manipulator. The God of Mischief. And they had Owen Wilson showing him a sad video featuring something that was to happen to a completely different Loki variant—and that was enough to break him? It taught him the error of his ways? I call bullshit.
The TVA showed this Loki the Loki from Infinity War being strangled by Thanos. Aside from the fact that the series Loki was now on a completely different path and would not now be in that situation, Loki in Infinity War died to save his brother. How is a video of that even supposed to teach the Loki of the series to not be a selfish bad guy? Suppose another Loki variant died by tripping over a sword. Would that teach series Loki not to drink orange juice? There is no logic here.
The Loki series was the ultimate lazy writing: Michael Waldron already had a story about an Everyman American schlub encountering the TVA, and Disney bought it and shoehorned Loki—the God of Mischief, Prince of Asgard, mastermind, genius, most powerful sorcerer on Asgard, and 1,000-year-old warrior into that terrestrial, mundane role—in the span of one 1-hour episode. One.
The Disney/Marvel Powers That Be didn’t even have the decency to respect or integrate Loki’s character arc that had already been initiated with Thor 1 and the Avengers. They portrayed their “bad guy” Loki as if he actually was just a narcissistic, 2-dimensional villain who deserved a comeuppance.
What a betrayal of this complex character and of his fans—who love him because we see the troubled, betrayed, damaged, multilayered being who was driven to commit his crimes against the people of Jotunheim and Earth.
The TVA—who were themselves in the business of destroying entire universes—were supposedly in a moral position to judge Loki, and ooo they taught him a lesson, didn’t they? The series not only accused Loki of being a narcissist, they had Loki saying it himself.
I watched that with horror. Surely at some point Loki would turn the tables on this inexplicably American-appearing, mid-century modern, fascist organization, revealing that he was so much smarter and cleverer than he had led everyone to believe. But he never did.
We were actually supposed to believe that Loki was in fact a simple bad guy—that he actually was the narcissist he was accused of being. That actually hurt me to watch. Because the message is so, so wrong, and so, so damaging to anyone who ever identified with any aspect of Loki’s struggles.
Loki does not, in fact, fit the definition of a narcissist in any way. Odin does. If we are going to look at Loki through the lens of psychoanalytical theory, Loki fits into the role of the narcissist’s opposite and victim: the scapegoat. This is true of the classic Norse God of Mischief as well. (Note this continuity between the classic mythology and the portrayal in Thor 1. Because THAT movie, where we first me Loki—knew how to depict a complex, sympathetic villain—thank you, Sir Kenneth Branagh.)
To accuse Loki of being simply an evil narcissist—to have him say it is so himself and to actually portray this as if it is the truth—is an abject betrayal of every Loki fan who ever experienced scapegoating in their own lives.
This was badly done, Disney/Marvel. Badly done.
Now, what could they possibly have given us instead of this revolting farce with its utter mischaracterization of a tragic and misguided soul and its truly damaging messages? Well, let me offer just a few small suggestions literally off the top of my head.
What a fascinating story the Loki series could have been if he had had the chance to truly grapple with the terrible things he had done , and with his relationship with his father (who, as we know, had himself done far worse—and I mean Odin, not Laufey).
The series could have been so much more. What if they had had Loki deal with the rejection and cruelty Odin had showed while Loki dangled over that abyss in Thor 1—even after Loki had killed his own blood father to win Odin’s love? Even after Loki had saved Odin from his greatest nemesis?
(Yes, that is what happened in Thor 1. Give it another watch. Loki tricked Laufey by letting him think he would get to kill Odin in his sleep—all the while planning to kill Laufey himself. He tricked everyone, including the audience. This Loki was devious. He was smart. He was ruthless.)
What if the series had shown Loki dealing with the depression and angst that had led him to attempt suicide? What about forcing him to deal with the unexplored trauma he had endured at the hands of Thanos?
What about Loki’s relationship with his mother (who wasn’t dead in this time or universe)? The series could have been about his attempts to travel through time and universes to save her—only to fail due to the hands of fate? Or being thwarted by the TVA?
What if the Loki series had been about Loki grappling with his Jotun blood? Something Marvel/Disney have ignored since Thor 1!
They could have made Loki’s series about his search for his birth mother.
It could have been about a man reckoning with his self-hatred and hatred of his own species. It could have been about him coming to terms with his heritage—even finding a way to make peace with the Jotun. Maybe even somehow coming back to join them as their rightful king. that would be an arc!
Marvel could have gotten a better story with better writing from a dozen writers on AO3. They could have done right by Loki. Instead they just used him and his built-in audience as a vehicle for introducing the TVA and Kang. And that turned out so well for them, didn’t it?