So, if Loki really was tortured, mind-warped, and coerced into attacking Earth, why didn’t he ever say anything? Wouldn’t that help his case if he brought it up in the trial? In that case, wouldn’t he want to say something about it? Why would he let everyone think he’s just “evil”? Why did he never try to explain?
There are three big reasons why Loki wouldn’t immediately—especially not without prompting—and some smaller ones.
(The third reason I cover is largely inspired by one of @desertthorn’s posts; I would link it, but I tried and it’s not working. Not sure if I’m just bad at within-Tumblr links, or if it’s mobile app stupidity.)
Reason One: People never listen to him
People on Asgard have very little interest in anything Loki has to say, even when he’s trying to be helpful, or just saying things that are very obviously true. It’s shown several times throughout Thor (2011). When he tries to talk to Heimdall on the Bifrost, to ask him to let Thor and co go to Jotunheim, Heimdall interrupts him almost immediately:
And then Thor interrupts him when he tries to speak again with “Enough”. And then Volstagg makes a jab at him*:
...which is pretty weird, considering that Loki’s a prince and all.
When they’re on Jotunheim later, Loki points out that they’re outnumbered and Thor should think this through. Thor shuts this completely reasonable observation down with “know your place”. Then, when Odin and Thor are arguing in the Observatory, Loki tries to intervene. Odin roars him into silence. All of the above is just in the first part of the film.
Then, after Loki admits that he told a guard to tell Odin that they were going to Jotunheim (which saved all of their lives) and correctly points out that Thor’s not suited for the throne, Sif and the W3 assume that he’s just jealous of Thor. that he can’t undo Thor’s banishment (as it was Odin’s order).
That’s when Loki’s pointing out helpful and/or obviously true things. People don’t listen even when he’s trying to help them. They interrupt him, continue on as though he didn’t say a thing, or wave him off as being biased in some way. They’ve basically taught him through 1,000+ years of this that they really don’t care what he has to say. And then, after Avengers (2012), Thor puts a muzzle on him. “Shut up, no one wants to hear you” doesn’t exactly get less subtle than that.
After all that, of course Loki’s going to hesitate to tell people. They ignore him when he speaks anyway and, what with the muzzle, made it quite clear that they didn’t want to hear anything from him. Why tell them if they’re not going to listen? Based on the pattern they’d been showing him for the last 1,000 years, he might as well try talking to a brick wall.
Add on that the fact that no one ever asked why he did what he did, despite it being highly unusual behavior from him. No one even cared enough to ask what happened during the year he was missing. Why should he think that anyone would care if he spoke up? Why would he think anyone would listen to him if even his mother didn’t ask? Clearly no one wanted to know, and no one paid him any mind even if he said something immediately helpful to them.
And really? Torture is an extremely intense, visceral, traumatic experience. It wouldn’t be easy to talk about with anyone. It’d be difficult and painful even with highly supportive people to talk to. How much more so would it be if the people you’re supposed to talk to are so blind to you that they didn’t even notice that something was wrong? How much more difficult would it be if they hardly listened to a word you said? How much more difficult than that would it be if some of these people had themselves caused you substantial trauma by lying to you for your entire life?
Reason Two: Everyone had already made up their minds
Everyone had immediately assumed that Loki’d want to attack Earth of his own volition. In their mind it’d be something he’d do, because he just chose to, no explanation or further thought required:
(Image from @lucianalight)
Notice Thor’s reaction to the news that Loki’s on Earth, stealing the Tesseract. Not consternation that his little brother is acting like this. Not confusion as to why Loki would suddenly want anything to do with Earth when he’d showed no interest in it before. He’s already assumed that Loki simply wants revenge against him, case closed. He assumes that Loki would freely choose to attack an entire planet to get vengeance. Everyone else goes along with this assumption. They haven’t even talked to Loki yet and they’ve already decided why he’s doing what he’s doing.
Loki knows this. When he and Thor talk on the mountainside, he tells Thor what his problems are (“I remember a shadow, living in the shade of your greatness”). Thor seizes upon this immediately: “So you take the world I love as recompense for your imagined slights?” He completely dismisses Loki’s valid complaint, and he reveals his assumption that Loki attacked Earth simply because he chose to take revenge. Later in this conversation, Thor asks a question—“Who controls the would-be king?”—but Loki diverts his attention, because he can’t answer openly, since the Other has him on telepathic speakerphone and can hurt him long-distance. After that Thor never brings up that Loki might not have been fully in control again.
Odin further confirms that everyone assumes that he’s just out for power and revenge in the trial. “All this because Loki desires a throne.” Except that Loki’d already made it clear that he didn’t want to rule. He said it explicitly at the end of Thor (2011), when he’s breaking down in front of Thor: “I never wanted the throne!” Thor, at least, knows this. Or he should know it. And yet he and Odin and apparently the rest of Asgard quickly assign him this motivation.
Everyone has already assumed the worst of Loki. They believe that he’d attack Earth and slaughter its inhabitants completely of his own free will. They believe he’s simply so jealous and power-hungry that he’d attack another planet without qualms, with no outside influence whatsoever. They think they already know exactly why he did what he did without consulting him at all. Everyone he knows thinks that he’s just ruthless, vengeful, and power-mad. This despite knowing him for over a thousand years, during which he did not show wantonly violent tendencies (except for the last couple of days before he attempted suicide). This despite the fact that he’d had no prior interest in a throne; he even said point-blank that he didn’t want one.
If everyone already thinks Loki’s fully capable of the worst, why would it even matter to them that he’d been tortured? If they already think he’s just that bad, what difference would it make? Especially considering that they hardly listen to him in the first place, why would Loki think they’d change their minds about him if he told them? Easier to just play along with their misconceptions and let them believe what they will, because there’s nothing he can do about it and he’s resigned to that fact.
So play along is what he does, because no one will believe anything else. He observes that being king was “his birthright”; it’s what Odin had been telling him for his entire life. He points out that Odin himself has done far worse, which is very true. But he never refutes their claims. He allows them to believe that he only cares about power and revenge and that there’s nothing more to the story.
Nothing he can say will convince them otherwise.
Reason Three: Asgardian Warrior Culture Ideals
Asgard is a warrior culture. It’s not even a little subtle about it. Note the way they glorify battles and fighting. In TDW Thor and Sif laugh about how Sif once started a second battle in a particular place because the first one was “so much fun”. In the beginning of Thor (2011) Odin tells Thor and Loki a war story, and in TDW Thor notes that Frigga had told them of the war on the Dark Elves. People wear their armor everywhere. Anyone who doesn’t like fighting as much as expected is belittled (“Some do battle, others just do tricks.” Note how doing battle is portrayed as the ‘good’ option.)
This means that Asgardians have certain ideals and standards, traits they value above all others and try to embody. Those include bravery to the point of utter recklessness. That’s how Thor behaves in the beginning of Thor (2011), and how it’s heavily implied that he behaved for quite some time prior. (Luckily for the safety of both him and those around him, he tones down the recklessness a bit later.) Sif, too, displays this trait; she’s not afraid to keep fighting the Destroyer because “stories will be told of this day”, regardless of whether she survives it. This bravery Asgardians value is strictly of the physical sort; those who are brave enough in thought to question Asgard’s society are not nearly as honored or respected. See: Loki.
Those ideals and values also include indomitable physical strength and resilience. It means being able to push through and defeat any problem through sheer physical power. It means never giving in to physical injury or pain, no matter the severity. It’s basically being physically unstoppable. Anything less than that is unacceptable, weak. This standard is a major reason Thor is so well-loved on Asgard; he embodies this core value of Asgardian culture. The same goes with his durability and stubbornness; he ignores substantial risk of physical injury and/or death numerous times throughout the movies. He’s known for getting into massive battles (Loki’s and Fandral’s reactions indicate that Jotunheim was far from his first big fight) and getting out alive**. He attacks the Aether-enhanced Malekith despite the immense difficulty and apparent harm it’s causing him.
Loki is at a disadvantage here. Yes, he is very physically strong, and is a highly skilled fighter (about equal to Thor), but his preferred tactics fly in the face of the Asgardian stand-and-fight standard. Loki is more wily and subtle; he may avoid a head-on attack and instead use some more indirect strategy. He uses magic, which has the power to render Asgard’s prized physical prowess useless. Asgardians fear it (note the servant’s reaction when Loki turns his wine into snakes in the pre-coronation deleted scene), and scorn those who use it (see Thor’s “some do battle, some just do tricks” comment again). Loki already has a few strikes against him in this department.
It’s that particular ideal—undefeatable physical resilience—that is relevant to Loki’s silence.
Consider what would have to have happened when Loki was tortured, and when he broke under torture. He would have to be captured by an enemy force (Thanos). He would have to be restrained to remove his ability to fight back. He would be put through massive amounts of pain, while still unable to fight back or do anything to make it stop. Eventually, he would be in so much pain that his body and mind could no longer handle it. He’d break. He’d give in.
Remember the Asgardian value on pushing through any injury or pain? Remember the value on pushing through by sheer physical strength? According to Asgard’s warrior-culture ideal, he should never have allowed himself to be captured or restrained. He should never have given in, no matter how severe the pain Thanos inflicted on him. In this toxic, unhealthy approach, his torture is more on him than it is on Thanos.
In Asgard’s warrior culture, if Loki revealed that he’d broken under torture, he’d be admitting that he wasn’t strong enough to fight off his enemies. He’d be saying that he wasn’t strong enough to bear the pain. It’d be considered his fault, because he was ‘too weak’ to fight back, because he was ‘too weak’ to resist the torture indefinitely. He should have made sure he wasn’t captured, no matter how difficult. He should have made sure he was never at Thanos’ mercy. He should have been strong enough to push through whatever Thanos did to him. On Asgard, it wouldn’t help his case at all. It’d still be his fault for being ‘weak’.
And Loki grew up with this. He’d have internalized it over the course of his 1,000+ years on Asgard. He’d think himself weak for having ‘allowed’ himself to be captured and tortured, no matter how intense the pain. He’d think it was his fault for giving in, so it didn’t really matter that he’d been tortured, did it? He was already considered weak for his magic and indirectness; this would make it so much worse. Why would he want to, in his mind, display his ‘weakness’ for all to see? And if he was that ‘weak’...maybe he thinks he deserved the pain. All the more reason not to make mention of it.
Asgardian society—and his own mind—would fault him for his own torture.
So, that’s the big three. Other (less important, but present) reasons are....
Reason Four: Killing “lesser” beings isn’t that bad on Asgard—unless you’re Loki
Asgardians blatantly consider beings of many other races to be lesser. Those races include Jotuns, Dark Elves, Kree (if you consider AOS to be canon), and humans, that we’re shown. Thor and Loki both call Jotuns “monsters” in Thor (2011), and they would’ve gotten this idea from Odin (note the story he was telling them in the childhood scene). Frigga called Malekith “creature”, and Loki refers to Kursed later as “monster”. In AOS, Sif repeatedly calls Vin-Tak (I think that was his name) “Kree” despite his insistence otherwise and is clearly very distrustful of him. Odin calls humans “mortals” and compares Jane to a goat, Thor is dismissive of humans in the beginning of Thor (2011), and Loki refers to humans as being ant-like in the beginning of Avengers (2012), though it’s debatable how much of that was him projecting Thanos’ ideologies and how much was a reflection of Asgardian culture in general. The point of all of the above is to show that racism is the unfortunate state of affairs on Asgard, and it affects how actions against “lesser” races are judged.
Take Jotuns. Shortly into Thor (2011), Thor kills 145 Jotuns over an insult. No one acts like this is what it is: mass murder. Odin is the only one who reacts harshly, and he only does so after Thor calls him an “old man and a fool”—and he still never once mentions that killing Jotuns is wrong. Frigga (in a deleted scene) protests this ands says that the banishment sentence was too harsh. Sif and the W3 don’t seem to think Thor did anything wrong at all, and in fact try to bring him back to Asgard as soon as they can (despite the fact that he just started a war). Nobody even mentions it again after he comes back.
Odin’s treatment of Jane makes it clear that he does not value human life. He doesn’t care that she’s very unwell and could possibly die due to the Aether. He locks her in a room after the Dark Elves attack. As noted above, he calls humans “mortals” and therefore “nothing”. In addition, if he cared that humans were dying (in part) because of the Tesseract’s presence on Earth, why did he not intervene back in WWII when HYDRA was using it to power weapons? This is the man whose will is law on Asgard. Clearly, he doesn’t care about human life or death whatsoever. To him, killing humans is not nearly as bad as we know it is, and again—his word is law.
Killing humans would not be considered all that terrible on Asgard, at least by the standards applied to everyone whose name is not Loki. Anyone else would not have to defend themselves much at all. And yet Loki is expected to. As he does in other areas, Loki subtly observes this hypocrisy by drawing similarities between his own actions and Odin’s. When he makes his “benevolent god” comment, which also draws attention to Odin’s violent misdeeds, Odin responds by saying that humans and Asgardians are basically the same: “We’re born, we live, we die. Just as humans do.” Which Loki knows Odin doesn’t actually believe.
Reason Five: His mind is his greatest weapon
Loki’s most powerful asset is his mind. And yet Thanos and the Other could turn it against him. They used the scepter to warp and amplify his already turbulent emotions. They altered his memories to the point where he remembered his own suicide attempt as Thor trying to kill him***. His brain, his pride, his best weapon, has been violated. This has to have shaken his trust in his mind and his own perception.
Reason Six: He’d rather be hated than pitied
This also has a bit to do with Asgardian cultural ideals, but it’s also about his personal dignity. If he were to admit that someone had broken him as thoroughly as Thanos did, what’s left of his pride would be in tatters.
Reason Seven: PTSD symptoms
After all Loki went through at Thanos’ hands, it’s not unreasonable at all to conclude that Loki has severe PTSD (especially since Tom Hiddleston has noted that Loki’s experience was “scarring for life”). One of the symptoms of PTSD is not being able to clearly remember certain parts of the traumatic event(s). Loki may not actually remember everything Thanos did to him. This would further shake his confidence in his own memory and mind.
*No, I do not believe that this was ‘friendly banter’ as some have suggested, considering that Loki looks hurt afterwards and isn’t laughing along. No way was this the first time Volstagg said something like that to Loki in 1,000+ years; either Volstagg saw Loki’s reaction and ignored it, or he just wasn’t paying enough attention for, again, 1,000 years straight.
**In the deleted scene from before Thor’s coronation, Thor mentions having fought through 100 warriors; Loki corrects him that he’d veiled them (him, Thor, and any companions) so they could escape. How many times do you want to bet stuff like that’s happened? Thor’s perceived invincibility is in part due to Loki.
***Granted, this isn’t the only possible interpretation of that line.
Requested by: @fyrecrafted @makerofrunevests @trickstersteve
@alstee I think you said you were interested, like, several months ago...?
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