could i get a director's commentary on loki's coronation ritual in chapter one of yonder? i love the way it's structured.
Yes, of course! Let's do this old school DVD commentary style since it's a long scene and it's been a minute since I've done the line by line thing, which is always very fun.
The coronation was either the first or second scene written -- I can't remember now. It's something of an artifact of when the story was originally going to be more Loki-focused, closer to Yonder that way, and I'm not sure I would have made that choice if I had known upfront it was going to be a Steve-and-Natasha-centric story. But once it was written I wanted to keep it.
I actually wrote this coronation and the one in Morning 9 back to back, though I can't remember which was written first. If the one in Morning (which takes its cues from Thor's coronation in Thor, which Yonder establishes is to crown a co- or junior king rather than a ruling monarch, in the fashion of the Roman augustus and caesar (senior and junior emperor) system) is the public ceremony that the Valkyrie refers to, then this is the private version meant entirely for the people of Asgard. This is the coronation ceremony that crowns a ruling king, which is why it's distinct from Thor's coronation.
“This is the old way,” the Valkyrie had said when she was telling Natasha that the humans could watch the coronation but they had better stay the hell out of the way. “Bor and Odin prettied the public parts of it up when they decided that there was no reason that Asgard shouldn’t rule the Nine, but this is what all that gilding covers up. It’s what our ancestors have done since before the Aesir split from the Vanir. Odin did it, Bor did it, Buri did it before him – Thor never got the chance.”
The rivalry between the Aesir and the Vanir is referred to a few times in this story as well as in Yonder. The version of the history that the Aesir tell is that the Aesir left Vanaheim amongst some kind of conflict and eventually settled on Asgard.
I can't remember if this is said explicitly in Yonder, Horizon, Morning, or never and just threaded through all of them, but the way I have the Asgardian imperial system working is that Yggdrasil, the Nine Realms (which actually encompasses far more than nine planets), was a loose confederation prior to Bor's day. When Malekith and the Dark Elves went on their crusade, Asgard's victory over Svartalfheim let them rise to prominence, which is where the original Protectorate of the Nine Realms comes from, and that was political alliance with a much tighter grip than earlier. It didn't go to direct conquest until Odin's time, though over the millennia since Odin's and Hela's campaigns Asgard has very much backed off of direct rule and mostly just gone back to interfering in most cases. "Lord Protector" is a title that Loki still takes very seriously, as comes up in Yonder.
There was pain briefly on her face at the mention of Thor, but by now Natasha knew that the Valkyrie hadn’t known him for very long before the attack on the Statesman. Maybe it was the potential she mourned, not the man, but it was hard to tell. Maybe to the Valkyrie it didn’t really matter; maybe for her the two had been one and the same.
The Valkyrie only knew Thor for about a week in the timeline I use, which has Ragnarok and the attack on the Statesman very close together but not on the same day.
The old way, she thought now, watching the intent faces of the Asgardians in the flickering firelight of the bonfires set up at the top of the cliff face where New Asgard would be built. It was the dark of the moon, the night sky so clear that the stars looked like gems spilled out on dark velvet. She didn’t know if Asgard was up there somewhere, still shining, still visible from Earth because the light of its destruction hadn’t reached them yet.
Most of the time it was easy to pretend that the Asgardians were human, or at least close enough to it not to matter. They looked human unless you were close enough to note the handful of minute differences visible to the naked eye – a certain sharpness to their features, a heavier tread, a slightly lower center of gravity. Natasha suspected that there were more that even she just hadn’t noticed yet; it was easier to see when there were more Asgardians around than just Thor or Loki, where discrepancies could just be written off as individual quirks rather than characteristics of the whole species. Even after two months – nearer three now – she was still finding out all the numerous other ways in which Asgardians differed from humans in ways other than their lifespan and physical strength. It went beyond enhanced senses – it had been a shock to realize that they really could see in the dark, something she had vaguely been aware of when Thor had been with the Avengers but written off only as good night vision.
Obsessed with making aliens be aliens, especially the more humanoid aliens like Asgardians. There are other physical differences that Natasha isn't aware of so aren't mentioned here, but they pop up occasionally in some of my other fic.
Their eyes flashed now in the reflection of the bonfires – fewer than two hundred and fifty people, from the oldest grandmother to the two infants in arms (one with its father, one with an older sister), less the handful of Asgardians who had been cloistered in the purpose-built little hof for the past twelve hours. Natasha was uncomfortably aware of how small and human she was compared to them and was glad to have Steve and Bruce with her, the three Avengers standing at the back of the gathered crowd. Since they were allies, they hadn’t come armed – Natasha wasn’t even wearing her widow’s bites – but it left her feeling vulnerable in a way she disliked. It wasn’t that she thought she was in any danger, since the Asgardians seemed barely aware of the humans watching them. But she didn’t belong here. None of them did, never mind that it was their planet in the first place.
The number of surviving Asgardians was established in Yonder: 223 in New Asgard, 143 on Vanaheim, and 9 elsewhere in the Realms. I think in retrospect I might have upped the number of survivors, but it is what it is and the numbers were set in Yonder.
I remember that there were a few early versions of this scene that had Rhodey present.
“The king comes!”
She didn’t see who had called out. It was a woman’s voice, but that didn’t mean much; three out of every four Asgardian survivors were women. Others took up the cry until Natasha could feel it pulsing in her bones.
Something else established in Yonder: between Ragnarok and the attack on the Statesman Asgard has a pretty drastic gender disparity, since most of the male Asgardians were killed fighting either Hela or Thanos's forces.
“The king comes! The king comes! The king comes!”
In the glittering firelight that punctuated the lambent darkness, Loki’s eyes gleamed with reflected brilliance.
He was in white – undyed wool, rather – and it was pale against the darkness as he came up the marked path from the hof, accompanied by the Valkyrie and one of the other Asgardian survivors. He looked very little like the would-be conqueror Natasha remembered from six years earlier, his hair loose around his shoulders and his hands empty at his sides. She couldn’t see his expression from here.
The first of several tests. Note that Loki is never the one who responds to the initial question.
An Asgardian man stepped out of the crowd before Loki and the two women could enter the circle of firelight and set the butt of his spear against the ground, blocking their way. “Who comes?”
“The King of Asgard,” the Valkyrie said. “The Allfather of the Aesir.”
None of the other Asgardian royal titles (Lord Protector, etc.) are being used, emphasizing that this is a ceremony solely focused on the Aesir.
“Who claims this?”
“I do.” Loki’s voice was hoarse. “I am Loki, son of Odin, son of Bor, son of Buri. I am Loki, son of Frigga, daughter of Fjörgynn, son of Nörvi. I am Loki, brother of Thor, son of Odin; I am Loki, brother of Hela, daughter of Odin. I am Loki, blood-son of Laufey, son of Bergelmir, son of Þrudgelmir, son of Ymir. I do not know my blood-mother.”
Loki doesn't find out that Farbauti is his birth-mother until that scene in Yonder 6. Fjörgynn is the mythological Frigg's father. Bergelmir and Þrudgelmir are both mythological jotunns; I figured Laufey's parentage would be well-known enough that Loki would know it. (Best I could find there is no parentage for the mythological Laufey, who in the myths is Loki's mother, not father; Marvel switched the genders of the parents.)
“Will any vouch for you?”
“I do,” said the Valkyrie. “I am Brunnhilde, daughter of Viðrir, last of the Valkyrie. My oath is to the throne of Asgard; I have sworn my sword to Loki Odinson.”
Viðrir is one of Odin's many names -- not that I think the Valkyrie is Odin's daughter on the wrong side of the sheets, I was just running through likely names. MCU's STILL never given the Valkyrie a real name; Brunnhilde is the name of the comics character.
“I do,” said the other Asgardian, a handsome older woman whose dark hair was shot through with threads of silver. “I am Eir, daughter of Hjukí, healer of the house of Odin. I have seen Loki Odinson grow from babyhood to manhood: he is the son of Odin.”
We never see Eir's fate in Ragnarok so I have made the executive decision that she survives -- as Natasha says in a later chapter, it's the equivalent of having Loki's pediatrician survive, but it also means that there's someone who has a long history with the royal family surviving who can vouch for him. Hjuki is another Norse mythological figure, who might be related to health/healing.
The Asgardian man stood aside. “Pass, then, King of Asgard.”
The trio proceeded nearly a double handful of steps until another Asgardian stepped out of the crowd. She held a battered shield in one hand and brought it up before her. “Who comes?”
The passage between each of the tests is nine steps, from the Völuspá in the Poetic Edda, which talks about the mythological Ragnarok. Although Thor fights and defeats Jormungandr, the world serpent, he is poisoned by its venom and is only able to take nine steps before he falls and dies.
“The King of Asgard,” the Valkyrie repeated. “The Allfather of the Aesir.”
“By what right does he claim this?”
“By kin-right; I am the son of Odin, King of Asgard, who has passed the great gates and feasts now in Valhalla; I am the brother of Thor, King of Asgard, who has passed the great gates and drinks now in Valhalla with all the rest of our kin.” Loki’s voice broke slightly on his brother’s name, but he didn’t hesitate. “By acclaim of the Althing, who are the voice of Asgard and speak for all the Aesir.”
My "Asgard is an elective monarchy" agenda. The Althing is still the parliament of Norway and has been for the past millennia plus.
“Will any vouch for you?”
“Of those among the living I alone saw my father and my brother die,” Loki said. “It is my word alone you must trust in this. My brother –” He stumbled over the words, but managed to push on. “My brother died for me, and I will carry the burden of that all the days of my life.”
Natasha had the sudden visceral memory of Loki screaming in Wakanda after Thanos had snapped his fingers and left them all behind – that awful, barely comprehending grief of someone pushed to their breaking point. He had screamed until his voice gave out, the only real sound that Natasha could remember from that first awful hour. Everything else she remembered only in flashes of sensation – the breeze on her face, the ruined metal of the War Machine suit under her hands as they had pried Rhodey out of it, Steve’s bruising grip on her as he had wept. All of it overlaid by the memory of Loki screaming.
Yonder establishes Loki just snapping and screaming and screaming after Thanos leaves. Didn't know at this point that the Battle of Wakanda was going to make it into Horizon. Rhodey has to be pried out of the War Machine because Thanos crushes it with, I think, the Power Stone.
A woman stepped out of the crowd of Asgardians – barely more than a girl, at least by human standards; Natasha still wasn’t certain what that meant for an Asgardian. She was visibly pregnant, her hands resting on the curve of her belly. “I speak for the Althing,” she said. “I am the voice of Asgard and the tongue of the Aesir. By our choice Loki Odinson is King of Asgard and Allfather of the Aesir.”
Deliberate choice to have a pregnant woman as voice of Asgard, signifying both present and future.
The other woman lowered her shield and stood aside. “Pass, then, King of Asgard.”
Natasha counted the number of steps Loki took before his path was blocked again – nine steps, carefully measured. The gray-haired man who stopped him this time had a sword in each hand, bringing them up before him in an X. “Who comes?”
Not named in this scene, but this is Ullr, who appears again in the next chapter. Ullr is the Norse god of skiing and hunting, and associated with swearing oaths -- oaths in this 'verse, where there are a few other mentions of whether he can/should get Loki out of his. It's mentioned briefly later, but Ullr wasn't on Asgard during Ragnarok, he was with the Asgardian garrison on Vanaheim and chose to come to New Asgard. He's one of the older surviving Asgardians. The mythological Ullr is the son of Sif; it's not mentioned in this story, but he's probably either her father or her uncle, some kind of relation.
“The King of Asgard,” said the Valkyrie. “The Allfather of the Aesir.”
“Loki Jotun-born, by his own admission,” said the man, who was muscled like a blacksmith and might well have been one. “Laufeyson, not Odinson. What right has he to Asgard? What claim does he have on the Aesir? Go back to Jotunheim, frost giant.”
The tests have to actually be TESTS. They're ritualized, but it's not a gimme that Loki will get through them.
From the way Loki flinched back, Natasha guessed he hadn’t expected this, though neither Eir nor the Valkyrie looked surprised. His mouth worked silently for a moment, then he said, “Jotunheim has no – no claim on me, nor I on Jotunheim. By our laws and Jotunheim’s there is nothing between us, neither by kin-right or law-right.”
Note that kin-right and law-right are two separate things here, as are Asgard's and Jotunheim's legal codes.
“Kin-right, law-right.” The man made a scoffing sound. “No child of the Aesir are you, sly-skinned false godling. No Ás fathered you, no Ásynja bore you. Even the rime-cursed Jotnar cast you out.”
This was the part where I had to really sit down and grapple with the hold that genealogy and blood descent have on high fantasy, and I tried to be really careful with my phrasing throughout this scene, since Loki's claim to the throne relies so heavily on his kin-relationship to Odin and Thor, and I didn't want to accidentally default to blood-relationship language.
Loki’s eyes were shocked and huge with hurt, but there was more resignation on his face than anything else – the shock, Natasha thought, came from the fact that the accusation had come so publicly, not that it had come at all. His gaze flickered to either side very quickly; whatever he saw on Eir’s and the Valkyrie’s faces seemed to reassure him. What had come as a surprise to him had clearly been planned by the two women.
It still took him a moment to answer, his tongue darting out to moisten his lips. “Jotun-born am I, yes,” he said haltingly. “No Ás fathered me, no Ásynja bore me. But never have I known any father but Odin Borson, nor any mother but Frigga Fjörgynndottir, nor any brother but Thor Odinson. In all the years of my life I have called no realm home but Asgard, no house such but the great palace of Valaskjalf. Sly-skinned am I, yes, but this skin is my own by choice; I know no people but the Aesir, nor would I have any were they offered me.” He took another breath. “I was offered that choice. I denied it. The Aesir are my people by my choice, not by raising alone. I have no claim on Jotunheim; Jotunheim has no claim on me.”
Loki's ritual language slips a little with "I was offered that choice" -- a reference to his time with the Black Order. I wanted to really, really emphasize here that this is Loki's choice to stay with Asgard, to continue being Asgardian, to remain with the Asgardian people, to continue claiming his family.
The repetition of the "I have no claim on Jotunheim; Jotunheim has no claim on me" is Asgardian legal language, going back to the fact that Asgard and Jotunheim have different laws. By Jotun law Loki lost all legal rights when Farbauti made the decision to abandon him, but by Asgardian law he still has some rights. He has to revoke them in order to take the Asgardian throne, giving up what he calls on at the beginning of IW when he calls himself "rightful king of Jotunheim." (In Yonder when he invokes the "name of Jotunheim which bore me" during the summoning it's actually a major, major legal fuck-up, which is what Farbauti takes him to task for.)
“Will you go to the gates of Valhalla and ask those whom you claim as your kin if they see it so?”
Only way to go to Valhalla is to go to the verge of death.
A muscle jumped in Loki’s jaw, the flickering firelight illuminating the sharp planes of his face. He was very pale. “Yes.”
The Valkyrie stepped forward. “Even the divine Aesir may pass the great gates but once,” she said, grasping the hilt of her sheathed sword. “My oath is to the throne of Asgard. I can let no harm come to Odin’s kin while I yet draw breath.”
A woman stepped onto the pathway behind the man with the swords – Forseti, the goddess of justice. Her voice rang out clearly as she said, “If he is worthy, then he may go to the great gates and no further.”
Because "worthy" isn't a loaded term at all in the MCU.
“Not even the divine Aesir may go that far without dying themselves,” said Eir.
“Every living thing must die, even the gods,” Loki said; there was a heavy ritual note to the words, as there had been to everything that had happened since the sun had gone down. “Even stars burn out.” He shut his eyes briefly before he went on, his breath coming out in short, sharp pants; he was afraid. “I have faced death before. Death is an old friend. One way or another I will see my kin again.”
Callback to what Loki says to the Ancient One and later Thanos in Yonder. One of the recurring themes in Norse mythology is that the gods lose in Ragnarok; they aren't immortal in the way, say, the Greek gods are. They can still die. And Loki's pretty fresh off both Ragnarok and the massacre on Statesman, not to mention the Snap; he and the other Asgardians are all VERY aware that they can die. Loki's also scared that at the end of the day, he's not Asgardian by birth; he might not be able to survive what an Asgardian could.
The man looked at him for what felt like a long time, though was in reality only a few seconds, then lowered his swords and stepped aside. “Pass then, King of Asgard.”
Loki moved past him to stand before Forseti; the other Asgardian moved back into his former position before Eir and the Valkyrie could follow him. “This path can be walked only by one. Your oath has no place here, last of the Valkyrie.”
“I will guard his body, then, while his spirit goes seeking,” the Valkyrie said, and sat cross-legged, drawing her sword as she did so and resting it across her knees. Eir sat beside her in the same position, her hands resting palm-up on her knees.
Loki stood looking at Forseti – a tall, dark-skinned woman with her hair dressed in elaborate braids. A girl stepped out of the crowd and offered Forseti a wide-bowled cup, flicking a fascinated glance at Loki as she did so. Forseti took the cup, careful not to spill a drop – firelight gleamed off the surface of the golden liquid that filled it to the brim – and passed it to Loki.
Alcohol, honey (of course), drugs that thin the veil between the realms of the dead and the realms of the living, and more drugs to accelerate even an Asgardian's accelerated healing.
He raised it in salute. “I drink to our glorious dead!” he cried, then raised it to his lips, his throat working as he drank. He didn’t pause for breath, just tipped it back; when he was done, he turned the cup over to show it was empty before passing it back to Forseti.
A lot of the ritual language in this scene goes back to Loki's battlefield prayer/speech and the toasts in Yonder. Asgard's religion is a form of ancestor worship; there's a difference between the divine (living) Aesir and deified (dead) Æsir, and it's the latter Loki's calling on here.
He was breathing hard as he went to his knees with what Natasha thought was exaggerated care. Even in the flickering firelight that she could see that his normally-pale eyes were dark, the pupils blown wide; she guessed that whatever had been in that cup hadn’t just been alcohol. He put one hand to the ground in front of him, then touched a clod of soil and grass to his lips. “Earth must be fed.”
The "Earth must be fed" line is actually borrowed straight out of S.M. Stirling's Emberverse and isn't from Norse mythology at all, though in its original appearance back in Yonder, when it's Sif doing so at first, it was a reference to the mythological Sif as an earth goddess, bridging war/death and earth.
There was an echoing murmur from the watching Asgardians, like a swift flurry of wind through cornstalks. Beside her, Steve shifted uneasily, one hand twitching like he was thinking of crossing himself with his old childhood instincts. The back of Natasha’s neck prickled and she found herself feeling automatically for the widow’s bites she wasn’t wearing, as though they might have any place here.
I have a whole elaborate headcanon/backstory for Steve's relationship with religion that's mostly only hinted at in Horizon and later Home.
It wasn’t the planet Earth the Asgardians meant, she knew. It was primordial earth, where the Asgardians believed that the roots of the World Tree Yggdrasil were watered by the three wells that ran through all the realms.
Primordial earth as the place where the roots of Yggdrasil are watered by the three wells is from Yonder -- the wells are from Norse mythology, primordial earth is mine. Asgardian religion and cosmology is NOT Norse mythology.
Forseti touched her fingers to her lips in the same gesture, then drew a knife out from inside the loose sleeve of her gown. As Loki raised his gaze to her, she stooped and in one quick, liquid motion cut his throat.
A few earlier versions of the scene had sacrificial animals, because I did want to have a blood sacrifice. I was thinking about different ways to do this scene and play more into the alien-ness of the Asgardians and eventually hit on actually bringing Loki to the edge of death, because of the Asgardian accelerated healing. As he tells Natasha the next morning, if he dies, he dies: there has to be real risk.
Steve jerked forward as the knife flashed. Natasha and Bruce both grabbed his arms, Natasha hissing, “Remember the Valkyrie said not to interrupt, no matter what happened.”
This is the only line of dialogue any of the humans have in this scene.
Loki hadn’t even flinched as the knife opened his throat, sending a spray of blood across Forseti’s face and gown. He was gasping now, his blood a dark waterfall across his chest as he raised his empty hands over his head, turning his face upwards towards the stars – absurdly bright out here, far from Oslo or any other city. His voice was hoarse as he spoke, barely audible from having his throat laid open nearly to the bone, and his eyes were glowing gold.
The gold-glowing eyes are a reference to Heimdall's eyes -- Loki can see well beyond what a normal Asgardian can right now.
“I stand at the gates of Valhalla and they are open for me!” he cried, his pale face ecstatic in the firelight. “There beyond them do I see my father and my mother. There beyond them do I see my father’s father and my mother’s mother. There beyond them do I see my father’s father’s father and my mother’s mother’s mother and all the line of our people back to the beginning of time.”
This is a take on the Viking prayer for the dead that was dramatized in The Thirteenth Warrior and which Thor: Ragnarok later used parts of when Thor is mourning Odin on Sakaar: Lo there do I see my father, Lo there do I see my mother, my sisters, and my brothers; Lo there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning. Lo, they do call me, they bid me take my place among them, in the halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever. (The Thirteenth Warrior, based on Michael Crichton's novel Eaters of the Dead, which in turn is based off Beowulf, does not really...hmm. either age well or hang together, but the prayer for the dead was probably its greatest legacy: it's a good scene. This version also has ibn Fadlan's prayer at the beginning. Fun fact: the red-headed Viking in the mail shirt is actually played by the same actor as Bor in TDW.)
There were tears running down his face, shining in the firelight as he rocked back and forth on his knees. The wound in his throat was still streaming blood, but Natasha could see it already beginning to close. His voice rose again, stronger now.
Loki is, quite literally, having a religious experience, because he didn't actually know if it would work. Not just because it really could straight-up kill him, but because he didn't know if it would work because he isn't Asgardian by birth.
“Even now my kin are pouring out the grave-ale in the great hall where the brave will live forever! They are calling to me! They bid me take my place among them beyond the great gates which even the divine Aesir may pass but once!”
Still playing off the Viking prayer for the dead. Loki uses the same language during the prayer/speech before the battle in Yonder.
There was a low rising murmur from the watching Asgardians. They seemed to eddy like a tide, leaning towards Loki as though they could see what he saw, into the afterlife where all of Asgard but them now dwelt.
Every living Asgardian has in the space of a few days seen ninety-nine percent of their species die, their planet destroyed, and then half of the remaining one percent of surviving Asgardians be snuffed out of existence. For the king -- the interlocutor between the living Aesir and the dead Æsir -- to be able to publicly see and speak with the dead...it's a big deal.
Loki threw his head back suddenly, voice raised in a wordless hawk-screech of triumph as he spread his arms to the stars above him. “Allfather Odin!” he shouted. “Your son calls you! God to god, king to king, Allfather to Allfather! My people, who were once yours, send me now to stand at the gates of Valhalla to look upon the faces of the Æsir and the Ásynjur; I may come this far but no further, for they are calling me back to them.”
Another line straight out of Loki's prayer/speech in Yonder. If you pay close attention to Yonder and Horizon, you'll notice that outside of this ritualized language, no one ever refers to Odin as Allfather again; Loki is the only one who gets that title until he also gives it to Thor in the final chapter of Yonder.
He paused to take a breath, his face gilded with tears as he cried out again. “Allmother Frigga! Your son calls you! God to goddess, king to queen, Allfather to Allmother! My people, who were once yours, send me now to stand at the gates of Valhalla where all the line of our kin have passed before; I may come this far but no further, for they are calling me back to them.”
The wound across his throat was little more than a thin red line now.
“I bid you pour a cup for your son in Valhalla and think of me kindly until I come to dine with you again, for even the gods must die. Hail Æsir! Hail Ásynjur!”
Yonder again. Loki says the same thing before he bloods Thanos and then turns him over to the other leaders of Yggdrasil.
Whatever Loki had been about to say next died on his lips as his eyes went wide. “Thor!”
Not ritualized, not expected. But who else would it be?
He jerked forward with his hand outstretched, reaching for something – someone – no one else could see. There was a sudden stillness in the air, all of the Asgardians staring fixedly at Loki with somehow even more intensity than they had before. By now there was no question that Loki loved his brother beyond all reason, despite what Natasha thought were several determined attempts to kill him; every Asgardian there had to be terrified that given the chance he would follow Thor into death.
“Thor,” he said, pleading. “Brother –” He was weeping now in earnest, tears spilling from his still-golden eyes and dripping off his chin to water the earth where he knelt.
Earth must be fed.
There was agony on Loki’s face as he finally drew his hand back, curling briefly in on himself with his palms pressed to his stomach, as if holding in a mortal wound. “I cannot do it,” he whispered. “I cannot do it. There is no one else.” He raised his head again, golden eyes glowing in the firelight before they began to fade back to his normal blue-green. “Asgard is ashes and atoms and all of my kin are feasting now in Valhalla, save for she who rules in Hel. I will have no homecoming in this life, not until I come to the great gates once more.”
As the gold fades from his eyes his vision is returning to the real world.
One of my favorite bits in this scene, and I went through a lot of variations on Loki's exact phrasing. At the end of the day it always has to be his choice, whether to stay and take up the responsibility or to walk away. I've always seen Loki as having a very strong sense of responsibility.
It's left deliberately vague whether he really saw Thor or if Thor spoke to him. A few later scenes call back to this specific sequence:
“Not long now, brother.” Loki’s voice was so low that Steve didn’t think he would have heard it if they hadn’t been standing side by side. The words weren’t meant for him anyway. “Meet me at the gates.” (Horizon 16, flashback to the Battle of Wakanda)
and of course, when Loki returns to New Asgard in the last scene
The great hall’s carved wooden doors were shut to keep out the cold. Loki vanished his glowing ball with a twitch of his fingers and took a deep breath, then pushed open the doors.
Light and sound spilled out, the cheerful scrape of the guitar- and fiddle- like Asgardian string instruments and the characteristic three stroke double-beat of the drums, a woman’s voice singing along with it. It continued on for a few seconds before someone noticed the open doors.
“The king!” someone cried, and then in eerie echo of the coronation ceremony months earlier, “The king comes! The king comes!”
“King Loki!” The little girl who had brought Loki the kittens to bless the day they had left came tearing down the aisle, making Loki stagger backwards as she flung herself into his arms. “King Loki, you’re back!”
They might not be the great gates of Valhalla and it might not be his family, but he gets a homecoming at the doors of Iðavoll nevertheless.
Loki stayed on his knees for a few moments more, then rose to his feet, a little unsteady as the Valkyrie came to help him – the man that had blocked her path had stepped aside. He took the knife that the Valkyrie handed him and breathed on it, raising it so that the mist of his breath could be seen on the metal, then drew the blade slowly and deliberately across his palm. The wound began to close up again nearly as soon as he took the blade away and held his hand up but the blood ran down his wrist to stain the sleeve of his white shirt. “I bleed! I breathe! I live! I have gone to the great gates but no further; I have looked upon that which is not to be looked upon by the eyes of the living and I will not see its like again in this life. I have spoken with the Allfathers and Allmothers who came before and returned to stand before you now.”
To show that he's returned in body, not just spirit: he draws breath, he bleeds. Note how quick he starts to heal up again; the drugs in the drink are still working on him.
He flung the knife point-down into the ground before him, where it stood quivering like a giant bee, and let his gaze travel around the circle of watching Asgardians. “I am Loki, King of Asgard, God of Mischief, Allfather of the Aesir! Does any deny me? Speak now!”
This is the first time Loki himself claims his titles; previously during the coronation Eir and the Valkyrie have announced him.
The only sound was the crashing of the waves against the cliff below them.
“Speak now!” It was Eir.
Another long pause.
“Speak now!” Forseti cried out.
Silence, and then someone – Natasha couldn’t tell who – shouted out, “The king comes!”
Others took the cry up. “The king comes! The king comes! The king comes!”
As if it had been a signal, the Asgardians began to kneel – one by one at first, then in clumps and finally the stragglers in a great wave, until Loki and the three humans at the back were the only ones still standing. Steve twitched a little, uneasy – possibly at the same memory Natasha was having right now, but somehow she could feel the difference between this and Stuttgart. Maybe it was the expression on Loki’s face. Maybe it was the hum of magic in the air, something that raised the hair on the back of Natasha’s neck and made her feel painfully small and human. Like she was the alien here, not the Asgardians.
Loki's got a complicated history with large masses of people kneeling to him.
“I am King of Asgard,” Loki said again – for himself this time, the words falling like stones into a still pond. He shut his eyes, as if trying to hold onto the shining image of whatever it was he had seen when Forseti had cut his throat. “Farewell, brother,” he whispered into the firelit darkness, with the only other sound the pounding of the Skagerrak’s waves against the cliffs below. “Pour a cup for me and think of me kindly, little though I have deserved it at times. I will not see you again this side of the great gates. Wait for me a while longer, if you will.”
Another callforward to what Loki says during the Battle of Wakanda, that's quoted up above: "Not long [to wait] now, brother. Meet me at the gates." That scene was not written when this scene was, so that scene's actually a callback to this one.
I've said a few times that for a big chunk of Yonder I wasn't certain whether Thor was going to actually come back. That's even more true here, where we know that none of the snapped people are going to return for at least five years. One of the things that I really wanted to keep in mind throughout Horizon in regards to the Snap was that as far as any of the characters are concerned, they're dead. Really, truly, not coming back, dead. And for the Asgardians that goes double, because most of the Asgardians were massacred, not snapped. Loki has no idea that Thor was snapped and not killed until he shows up on the battlefield in Yonder. Part of him is always going to hang onto Thor, but he's also releasing him here, accepting that he has to stay on this side of the gates.
dapurinthos replied to your post: I wanna know what you all think is going to happen...
I can say that I want to pack up everything associated with Rebels and keep it far, far away from cinematic SW because I do not trust them (Thrawn and Ezra are staying over here, deep in the Unknown Regions, right. by. me.). If anything, I would like to see Hux’s hundred assassination attempts on Kylo Ren.
I’m so torn on this because I completely get where you’re coming from in re: not trusting the powers that be to execute it the way I/you/we might like to see it. I feel the same way about my need for Force Ghost Closure. I have MANY reservations. That said, my nerdy heart does love the idea of seeing some of these storylines connect up, as @ellagenetics mentioned in another reply.
I doubt those elements will come into play, though, if only because they have a TON of things to conclude and address just with the pieces of the story that have already been IN the films. Pulling in stuff that might require more explanation (given that many/most people seeing 9 won’t have extensively read the comics/novels/watched the TV show(s)) is something they may not have time for.
dapurinthos replied to your photo: SPOILERS FOR THE LAST JEDI VISUAL DICTIONARY: This...
Rebels leaned pretty hard in the direction of balance with the Bendu is season 3. & I’m hoping that one of the books Luke has is Shall Mar’s Life in Balance because it’s all heading back toward the Je'daii pre-the many schisms.
Honestly, I’m not sure what to think of Bendu, because he was “the one in the middle”, which can lead to the idea of balance, but also ultimately Bendu didn’t help them and was called a coward for backing away from the fight, rather than helping. Has Filoni given an interview about whether or not we’re supposed to approve of Bendu peacing out on them?
While in Legends of Luke Skywalker, the people of Lew’el were of the idea that pacifism was the way to go (along with light/dark being balanced), but also they had the idea that you shouldn’t actively use the Force, should only let it use you, and Luke’s Ultimate Lesson Learned of “that providing a sanctuary is just as worthwhile as fighting” comes from the point of view of one of the people telling the story about him.
Then you have A Princess of Alderaan, where one of the core themes of the book was the struggle between providing a safe shelter for people to live in peace and hope versus that Alderaan could help fight against an evil that needed stopping--and ultimately, yes, they needed to fight.
You could also include Jyn in this idea of neutrality vs “balance” (because they seem to get conflated with each other a lot, which I don’t think they should, they’re separate issues, but I’m wary that that’s what’s going to happen)(and the conversation naturally turns this direction for me because I’m not sure Bendu’s a great example of “balance”, but instead he’s more about “neutrality”), where we see her being not really on one side or the other, she’s in the middle, she’s neutral--and, well, that’s not a great place to be.
So, I’m not really sure what the ultimate direction is here, other than that they seem to be obviously heading towards the idea of light and dark both being necessary, and that I agree with that, George has been saying that from the beginning, and that the PT Jedi’s take on it matches up with the idea of balance.
