Would you say that Loki being tortured by the black order/thanos/the chatauri is not quite canon but more than fanon? For me, it kind of sits in that weird in between place where technically we haven't had complete confirmation but yet there seems to be enough evidence that it's more than just fanon?
hahaha so I got this ask, uhhhh, a while ago and I was going to do a short answer but then I started tossing out bullet points and once I had those I wanted to link them to posts discussing those things in more detail and now itâs September and I definitely got this within like, a week or two of the show finale, sooooo anon whoever you are I hope youâre reading this blog enough to know that I finally got around to answering your question đŹ
anyway yeah, that's basically where I come down on it. it's never been made explicit, but I think it's also fair to say that Loki's alliance with Thanos wasn't an equal partnership at the very least, and canon heavily implies it wasn't a fully willing one either and Loki went through some seriously bad shit during his missing year. extrapolating that to "Thanos had him tortured" is an interpretation, but it's also an interpretation that makes sense of a huge pile of canonical evidence--more sense in most cases, I would argue, than any alternative explanations. I mean, there are possible alternative explanations for a lot of these individually, of course, but not all of them, and I donât know that thereâs much else that pulls together all these pieces. plus all this speculation is happening in the first place because we arenât explicitly told what a lot of these things mean, so a torture-related reason is just as likely to be accurate as an alternative one.
and when I say âa huge pile of evidence,â thereâs...well, thereâs a whole lot, at wildly varying levels of significance, and also wildly varying levels of detail because I just want to finish this post already:
he looks burned or otherwise messed up in the post-credits scene in Thor (could be from something not related to Thanos! but if thatâs the case itâs still pretty relevant in terms of, you know, Lokiâs missing year being Bad Shit)
intro scene in Avengers--sweaty, pale, dark circles under eyes, almost collapses while walking out, basically collapses into the truck and seems to need to brace himself just sitting/kneeling there (like above, could be from something else, like...coming through a portal that hasnât been properly stabilized is hard on the body? but I donât think we have any additional evidence to support that specific idea, as opposed to the likelier one that stabilizing the portal was necessary just to make it bigger and keep it open) (link also includes Thor post-credits scene)
also he's obsessed with making others kneel to him, and he comes through the portal kneeling, head bowed, so the former seems kinda weird if the latter was completely voluntary
his back seems to be hurting again after Thor yanks him out of the quinjet and dumps him on a mountain
his conversation with the Other--Loki postures a little but then goes still and silent with tears forming in his eyes and allows the Other to circle around behind him, threaten him, and visibly hurt him; clearly shaken when he comes back. adds up to YIKES.
we all remember âHe will make you long for something as sweet as painâ but as far as evidence goes, I find âYou think you know pain?â to be even stronger, because it seems...fairly definitive and personal, implying that Loki has experienced significant pain and the Other knows about it, either because it happened on Sanctuary itself or because it happened during Lokiâs missing year in general but was significant enough that it came up later (as in, it was discussed, or there was physical evidence when Loki got there)
hereâs another great post going over evidence of Loki carrying out the invasion under duress
edit: hereâs another one
I always kinda thought "burdened with glorious purpose" could imply someone else did the burdening (which is...only part of the reason I did get super annoyed about it being turned into a context-free catchphrase even before the show, yes, and then the show made that about 10 times worse--not so much in episode 1, I think it's reasonable to assume he's still somewhat under the scepter's influence in the opening scene, but I mean the way the other Lokis and the marketing absolutely ran it into the ground)
Fury says âthis doesnât have to get any messier,â and Loki replies, "I've come too far for anything else." on Avengers Tower, he tells Thor, "it's too late to stop it.â Iâm not saying those lines indicate torture, or really anything at all specific, but they do seem relevant in terms of Loki not being the mastermind of this whole mess
"I remember you tossing me into an abyss" indicates possible memory issues, which is...also pretty damn relevant
the scepter is shown affecting the Avengers' moods just by being in the same room, and Bruce even grabs it without realizing (theyâre all human except Thor, who doesnât seem as affected, but itâs still textual evidence of the scepter affecting people without being deliberately used on them)
as a textual comparison, there's a huge contrast between the way Loki behaves toward the Other and by extension Thanos, and the way Ronan behaves toward both of them in GotG, which also implies some things about the differences between those alliances
Ragnarok post-credits: Loki seemed to recognize Sanctuary II and was immediately horrified/terrified, compared to Thor who just looked kinda confused
Infinity War: on the one hand Thanos maybe doesn't know Lokiâs Jotun (âwell for one thing, Iâm not Asgardianâ) and that's weird, but on the other, he knows Loki well enough to know the most effective possible way to make Loki give up the Tesseract, and the way he kills him is like...unnecessarily personal, not to mention unnecessary in general because he couldâve just backhanded Loki into the wall, used the Power Stone to explode the ship, and teleported out. instead he wanted Lokiâs pain and fear because he liked it. it is really not a stretch to suppose that this was also true when they first knew each other.
and despite the show not really addressing this, at least not directly/explicitly, it actually does provide several new pieces that also fit the theory:
additional (possible) evidence of spinal issues and other indications that heâs frequently in pain--which could of course be from the battle, the Hulk-smashing, and the Tesseract dumping him in the desert, but the fact that Avengers gives us two different pre-battle scenes of possible back issues indicates they mightâve already been around (i.e., from Sanctuary) and just worsened by the battle etc.
heâs absolutely terrified the instant he sees Thanos onscreen in the Time Theater--I mean, the first thing he sees is himself trying to stab Thanos and Thanos stopping him, so yeah, itâs...probably reasonable to assume Thanos isnât going to have a nice response to somebody trying to stab him? but for somebody who doesn't know the specific context, which show!Loki doesnât, it could just be part of a battle, and/or it wouldn't seem out of the question for Thanos to just smack him aside. but Loki seems to know immediately that something awful is about to happen and he isn't surprised when it does...only when it actually leads to his death
edit: hereâs a fantastic gifset juxtaposing scenes from Avengers, Infinity War, and the show, and basically it just makes all my points for me
edit, January 2024: I didn't realize until much later, but you know how that gifset above juxtaposes Ebony Maw's creepy "even in death you have become Children of Thanos" quote with Loki stuff? well, the actual Loki episode in Legends season 1, which is literally just a clip show catching audiences up on his time in the MCU before the show, also does exactly that. so I'm not saying that Marvel's saying Thanos actually considered Loki one of his kids or at least one of his potential kids for a minute there, with everything that implies given the way he treats his actual kids, but like. I'm not not saying that, and it's interesting, isn't it? Thanos wouldn't even be the only person to use Loki's insecurities and daddy issues to get him to do something (you know, because Mobius literally tells him he's doing this).
edit: when Loki tells Mobius that he hurts people because heâs had to, heâs referring to a lot of things, and he doesnât necessarily mean âI have literally been hurt by people who will hurt me again if I donât make them happyâ but also, I mean...he could mean that, and putting this scene together with the conversation between him and the Other is...really something.
thereâs an early scene on Lamentis where Loki might just be out of breath again as he is many times during the series (from, I would imagine, a lack of ability to stay in shape over the past year, so thatâs...also a thing), but he might also be fending off a panic attack--from scary situation in general? orrrrr from dodging asteroids, something that potentially could have happened on Sanctuary, which is itself an asteroid field? I recognize this is kind of a stretch but like, I'm just saying, it does fit
Similarly, his abilities (physical and magical) are pretty damn inconsistent and this is a possible reason
"I've lost track of the number of times Iâve been killed"--either it's hyperbolic bravado that's way more nonsensical than his usual, or...??? combine this with âno resurrections this timeâ and itâs INTERESTING
additional extratextual evidence:
thereâs an Avengers deleted scene where the Other contacts him two more times, once before the battle really gets going and once midbattle (thanks @scintillatingshortgirl19 for the link!). the first time doesnât look too bad; the second time, though, the contact definitely seems to hurt him. maybe that's not deliberate on the Otherâs part like it was before, but it also means the Other is cool with causing him significant (and distracting) pain in the middle of a battle? and also shows he's always watching? plus there are two different instances shown here, only one of which shows Loki reacting with obvious pain when contacted, which certainly could indicate the Other is doing that part deliberately
Hiddleston interviews--didn't give specifics but did say Loki's missing year was Very Very Bad, a struggle to survive a very precarious existence, run-ins with the universe's worst people, lots of brushes with death, etc.; specifically compared it to being kidnapped by terrorists, which doesn't necessarily mean that Loki was kidnapped by terrorists (or that his situation was directly comparable to Tony's in Iron Man, but I assume thatâs what he was thinking about), just that it was that level of scary and dangerous, but...it's also a very specific comparison to make!
Marvel confirmed in Loki's bio that the scepter was influencing him and he didn't know it, so although this doesnât necessarily rise to the level of mind control, torture, etc., itâs still...very relevant
Aug. 2022 edit to add: remember the fan theory that MCU Lokiâs eyes are green, but theyâre blue in The Avengers because of the scepterâs influence/control? not as blue as the other people completely controlled by the scepter, obviously, but blue enough to suggest Loki wasnât really in control either? I think this has been mostly debunked as a legit theory based on things like...Tom Hiddleston has blue eyes and thereâs no evidence heâs worn colored contacts or had his eyes digitally recolored while playing Loki, so any apparent color change is likely the result of lighting or fans recoloring screenshots after the fact. on the other hand, comics Loki has green eyes for sure, and Iâm fairly certain the original Thor posters recolored his eyes to be extremely green and then just dropped that later...and even as late as season 1 of the Loki show, Marvel canât make up their minds on his eye color as shown in a couple of official licensed figures from the exact same line of toys. the toys in particular almost certainly werenât intended to mean anything except lousy quality control, but on the other hand if Marvel keeps refusing to be clear about this, then Iâm absolutely going to continue finding evidence where none was intended.
so--yes, Loki being tortured by Thanos is...not canon, strictly speaking. but Iâm also never going to say itâs just fanon, because thereâs a ton of evidence supporting the idea that Loki was not fully in control during the invasion and was doing it under a combination of duress and external influences, and âsaid duress included actual torture and/or the use of the Mind Stoneâ is like, maybe one step beyond that. itâs an interpretation, sure, but it fits well enough that itâs an extremely reasonable interpretation, to the point that it seems very possible at least some of the people in charge of Lokiâs story did actually intend to imply it.
