I’ve always hated the damned muzzle they put on Loki at the end of the Avengers. I was really shocked when I saw Loki with it.
The handcuffs made sense but the muzzle? I thought it to be really disgusting and humiliating because imo it takes away one of the basic human rights: the right to speak. Since then, I’ve seen many theories and headcanons in fandom, trying to explain the reason Loki was muzzled and its working. Some people said it was a nod to Norse mythology and comics and the story in which Loki’s mouth is sewn shut. If EG give us one good thing, is that it finally solves the mystery.
*This Meta Contains Endgame Spoilers*
Most people believed that the muzzle prevented Loki from doing magic because he needed his words for the spells. The headcanon had some basis in canon. Since in one of the AOS episodes Sif used a muzzle/collar to silence Lorelei and take her voice.
That made sense because Lorelei’s voice could bewitch men and made them do her bidding(I’m glad they at least realized it would be a really bad idea to use a muzzle similar to Loki on a female character).The headcanon can’t be right for Loki. Because Loki never uses words/spells before doing magic. He doesn’t need his words or his voice for it. Another headcanon was that they muzzled him because his silver tongue and his ability to play with words was making him dangerous. Both of these headcanons are not far from the truth though. The muzzle prevents Loki from doing magic. In the scene when he imitates Cap and using illusions, he is handcuffed. That means the handcuffs are just there to restrict his movements, they don’t stop him from doing magic.
Then Thor takes the muzzle and puts it on Loki’s face. Not because of Loki’s silver tongue, not because he’s trying to get into their heads and deceive them, but for one simple and mundane reason: he was being annoying and making harmless mischief. And that was enough to take his ability to speak. Because they didn’t like what he was saying and doing.
(Source of EG gifs)
Look at Loki’s reaction. He isn’t shocked or surprised. On the contrary he sees how Thor moves his hand, recognizes for what it is and readies himself for what’s about to come. He doesn’t move away. The way Thor moves his hand, as if it’s not sth new and it’s kind of a muscle memory movement also shows that this isn’t the first time this happened.
Does the muzzle prevents Loki from doing magic? Yes. We see that he stops doing magic after that, until he grabs the Tesseract and escapes. My personal headcanon is that the Tessearct is so powerful that it overrides Asgard’s magic restricting tools.
But does it necessary have to be in form of a muzzle? No. We see in TDW Thor uses magic restricting handcuffs on Loki that prevents him from doing more magic.
This means Asgard built a specific magic restricting muzzle just for Loki. Not because his words/voice were dangerous but because it inconvenienced them. It gives a new significance and meaning to all the instants when he was interrupted or silenced by Thor, Heimdall and Odin in Thor1. It makes me wonder how many times he was taunted like this when they forced the muzzle on his face:
I just had a thought. How long did it take from battle of New York till Thor and Loki's departure to Asgard? A day? Two days? A week? And Loki was muzzled the whole time? And everyone, all the heroes, his brother, all of them were OK with him not being able to eat or drink anything? Really? That's what heroes do?!
foundlingmother replied to your post “I just had a thought. How long did it take from battle of New York...”
The only legit "to be fair" here is: To be fair, the writers probably didn't ever consider the full implication of the muzzle, so it's best if we don't think too much about it because it's super inhumane. Defending denying a person food, water, their voice, just treatment, etc. is weird. You don't have to defend the heroes because they're ficitional. Just say it's bad writing if you don't think the heroes would be that cruel. Like, seriously, there's no need to be like, "Thor knows what Loki can and cannot survive. That means it can't be cruelty of any sort." Thor's not actually on trial here. He's not being investigated. It's the framing of heroes and villains under scrutiny here, and the fact that people try and justify what the heroes do proves how powerful that frame can be.
Exactly! It’s a fair assessment saying it’s bad writing and they didn’t really think about it and this wasn’t the writers’ intent. It’s explaining the story from a real world perspective. A Doylist explanation and it’s totally valid. It can’t be defended from an in-universe/Watsonian point of view though. I’m ok with comments like “I don’t think they kept the muzzle on him the whole time” because not everyone know that it restricts his magic so the second they take it off Loki will escape. But I can’t understand defending the heroes with excuses like “Loki was probably fine because he’s an alien” or “Thor knows it doesn’t hurt him” and that makes it ok? And even these comments really don’t bother me. What bothers me are the comments that are absolutely hypocritical and I have no idea what to say them and I don’t find the mental energy in me to answer them. I just don’t understand how people can’t see the hypocrisy of their argument. They justify villainous/immoral/inhumane actions against villains but condemns the same actions against heroes. For my “The Silenced Silver Tongue” post I received comments like “Loki killed thousands/millions people and he isn’t human so human rights don’t apply to him” and one that totally baffled me was “I understood it like I understood why they had to cut Grindelwald’s tongue” and I was like what!??? I hate Grindelwald but they didn’t have to cut his tongue. In the same movie they showed a spell that could silence someone. So what they did(to another character) was pure torture. And people find it ok because it is done to a villain. And in this post one particular comment really left me speechless: “The Avengers did not kill Loki where he lay, even though they could have”. Like killing an enemy where he lays, defeated, without even threatening anyone and who is struggling to move because of pain, is not a heroic act. It’s what a villain would do. And if Avengers did it or even considered it, they wouldn’t be heroes at all. They don’t get brownie points from me for doing sth that’s basic morality. It’s one thing to defeat an enemy, and it’s another to kick someone when they’re down.
The only good thing about this, is that it gave me some angsty fic ideas which I may or may not add them to the pile of my unfinished fic ideas. Like I’d like to see a story where they can’t find a way around the Tessearct for Thor and Loki to go to Asgard and the situation really frustrates them because they can’t feed Loki and no needle can break his skin for an IV and they struggle with their guilty conscious because Loki looks more gaunt as days pass and someone(probably Bruce) finally says fuck it and takes the muzzle off of Loki. Or another scenario in which Hydra kidnaps Loki for their experiments and when the Avengers finally finds him and Thor sees Loki’s state he rips the damned thing off and starts apologizing to which Loki only laughs weakly and says these pathetic humans were creative but not competent. Both of the stories continue with Avengers and Loki bonding and friendship and finding about Thanos. The trope I love in Loki and Avengers fics :D
