can we talk about Marvel official website has updated Loki’s bio that confirms the “Loki was under the influence of the mind stone” fan theory?
Not a Loki apologist here, he did what he did, but a lot of stuff, his version of how he fell from the Bifrost, that speech in Germany, especially the “sudden clarity” scene with Thor makes a lot more sense.
Does this even matter? Does ANYONE but fans of Loki give a shit?
Loki does something while under the influence of the scepter: Thor sells his brother out to his new buddies immediately and Loki becomes a war criminal, goes home to be disowned by his father and imprisoned for life.
Erik Selvig and Clint Barton do bad shit while under the influence of the scepter: omg guys…it’s okay…you didn’t know what you were doing.
And the thing is, the words used to describe what happened to Loki (“influenced” by the stone) and the words used to describe what he’s done to Barton&Selvig (scepter allowed him to “influence” others) are the same here.
So, judging by this text, he was in the exactly same position they were.
Except for the signs of physical torture. In the scene where he’s initially influencing Selvig’s mind, there’s blood in his teeth and the same wound on his forehead that Thor got in Infinity War from Thanos burning him. In the scene where he first appears on Earth, he looks generally half-dead before anyone attacks him and is showing clear signs of a back injury he didn’t get in the fight with the humans.
Coulson also remarks that he “lacks conviction”, and there are no scenes of Coulson and Barton needing to be threatened with a fate worse than death just in case they’re not motivated enough. Even famously fight-averse Banner only needed a minor argument and proximity to the scepter to pick it up without even realizing it.
Oh and we see in other movies that Thanos is running an unusually brutal version of a cult, which even in much ‘milder’ irl versions is the type of community where people don’t get to make their own decisions.
So I’d say the signs point to him wanting to do what he was doing even less than the humans who just needed to be linked up to the hive mind with a tap to change sides. That could be because the mind stone wasn’t enough to sufficiently sway a Norse god versed in magic, or it could be because he really really didn’t want to do it. Or a bit of both.
Oh, yes, he was definitely tortured too, I was just pointing out that the mind control thing was the same because a LOT of people say that Selvig&Clint had it worse and Loki still should be held responsible because he was “just influenced, not mind controlled”.
Very much agree (my response was meant as a “yes, and” rather than a “no, instead”).
Tbf, the story of Loki in Marvel The Avengers are quite an example for Narrative Shifting














