Thank you for giving me the opportunity to rant. Here we go!
I love how they went from saying “those deaths will be permanent” to “those deaths were real”. Quite a big difference here. Some time ago they were saying something like “those who die stay dead” (for how long?), later “we will say goodbye to some of our favorite characters” (for how long?) and so on and so forth. They say whatever suits them best.
The so called “real deaths” were Heimdall, Gamora, Vision and perhaps Loki. Gamora will be back because they won’t leave Quill without his love interest. In the comics Gamora was trapped inside the soul stone and this is exactly what happened in the movie as well. Vision may be fucked because if time travel comes into play, there might be no stone to create him with. However, his body stayed behind for a reason. Shuri will do something about it.
Heimdall - he might be dead for good which infuriates me. If the writers are fair, Asgard, Xandar and Nidavellir should all be restored. In this way we could get him back.
Loki - his Dark World “death” was much more believable. Yet people complained, considered it a bluff and they had to bring him back. Are they not learning from their mistakes? They killed him not only in a very similar way (even the shot of him and Thor before the explosion screams The Dark World to me), but his prior behavior rendered it utterly stupid. I won’t believe even for a second that he is dead now if he wasn’t dead THEN. Do they really think that throwing “no resurrections this time” in my face will make me believe it? LOL nope. It makes me even more suspicious.
I would believe in Loki’s death if he died before or right after “the Hulk attack”. There was no need for his repetitive monologue, full of cryptic messages. He could simply attack Thanos or the Black Order together with Thor and die in the process. He could use magic to make his effort visible and rise the stakes. We could see Thanos destroy his illusions, one after another and think “wow, this guy is really something”. But no. Loki disappeared for a few long minutes and reappeared in a totally different mood - with a fucking toothpick. From scared to cocky - right after Thanos almost destroyed the Hulk. Wow. Where did his confidence come from all of the sudden?
Obviously we may still get a deleted scene: Loki saves Thor and drags him away during the Thanos/Hulk fight. They exchange some words off-screen: “We have to run now, brother!”, “No, you run. I will stay. Because that’s what heroes do” aaand something about how irresponsible it was of Loki to bring the Tesseract aboard the ship. Loki still wants to leave, but Thor’s words move him and he comes back to prove his brother that he loves him so very much in the last desperate attempt to buy him time. And now Thor will hate himself forever and I will hate myself as well for even coming up with this fucking scenario. Let’s just cross this out for now, please.
When jumping at Thanos with a dagger, Loki committed suicide. He was suicidal before, yes, but that changed clearly somewhere between the Dark World and Ragnarok. The Ragnarok Loki wants to live because he has things worth living for.
I already talked about some parallels and Loki’s cryptic monologue here, so if anyone is interested in my babbling, you can read this post as well.
Loki always pays a lot of attention to what he says. Always. Even his lines from the first Avengers turned out to be pretty meaningful in the following installments, for example: “You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers” in connection to the Winter Soldier movie. I don’t believe that he would use words like “undying”, “God of Mischief” or “the rightful king of Jotunheim” just to impress Thanos.
He knew he is going to die - he just throw a Hulk at Thanos and was about to stab him with a letter opener. Why would he use this word? The answer is simple: to give Thor hope.
God of Mischief - again, he tries to reassure Thor that he will be fine. It’s just another trick.
And the most important one: the rightful king of Jotunheim. Loki is a shapeshifter. His original form is the Forst Giant one. I might be mistaken, I know that our fandom is divided when it comes to this issue and both parties concerned have good arguments, but I think that after death he should revert to his original form. But this is not my real point here.
See, “Jotunheim” itself is a pretty Thor franchise-specific kind of thing. Even in the first Avengers movie they didn’t bother to bring it up. We got “adopted”, “your father”, “my true parentage”. That’s it. I’m pretty sure some MCU fanboys went “What was Jotunheim again?” in the cinema. What do we know about Frost Giants? Well, according to MCU, they heal pretty fucking fast. What else? They love cold. The colder the better. What happened to Ebony Maw after Spider-Man and Iron Man kicked him out of the space ship? He fucking froze. Now, Loki would love that. And that is why he mentioned his parentage two times during his really limited on-screen time.
From the original Thor 2011 script. Kenneth Branagh was involved in the production of Infinity War - he was the one sending the distress signal at the beginning of the movie. Why wouldn’t he remind them that Loki is not afraid of a little choking?
Strange, isn’t it? Oh, and talking about Strange:
There are massive parallels between Loki and Doctor Strange.
At the beginning of the movie Loki retrieves the Tesseract from a pocket dimension and gives it up for Thor’s life - someone he denied loving for a very long time.
Near the end, Doctor Strange retrieves the time stone from a pocket dimension and gives it up for Tony’s life - someone, as he claimed before, he would never give up the stone for.
Shortly before, while fighting Thanos, Strange uses one for Loki’s trademark tricks - duplication spell. I think this is the first time he ever used this technique on screen.
What I’m thinking is that either Strange met Loki during his time travel to the future or actually went back in time to talk to him - and that is why Loki is absent when Thanos deals with Thor, Hulk and Heimdall. Maybe Strange convinced Loki to sacrifice himself for Thor and for greater good (his death was Thor’s biggest motivator in the movie after all). Maybe he promised to bring him back.
Now, the dagger thing we talked about before:
One thing about MCU is pretty certain - if they want to give their characters new weapons, they give them new clothes as well. Now. Did they simply lose the Ragnarok props? Or maybe the Ragnarok daggers were too colorful and fun for this heavy and dark movie? Taking into consideration the fact that Infinity War takes off right after Ragnarok, this change is really weird.
This could be another duplication spell on Loki’s side of course. Maybe it’s someone else dying in his place. But I have another theory that I really dislike.
Change of attitude + change of weapon = what if “the Loki” that appears after the Hulk attack is the FUTURE Loki? Maybe the Future Loki comes back to save the Present Loki because the Avengers will need the Present Loki to manage their time travel? (I think we can already forget the BARF theory, because they confirmed it way too easily.) The new Ant-Man movie will surely give us some good insight into the Quantum Realm and then we will be able to say if Loki is needed or not, but for now we can speculate.
If the Future Loki indeed dies for the Present Loki, I will cry because Thor will lose him for the fourth time. Loki will be trapped in a loop of constant sacrifice. Unless they change the timeline in such a way that Thanos won’t attack the Asgardians’ ship at all.
About the set photos floating around:
We must be pretty careful because the Marvel guys usually show us what they want us to see. Remember how they photoshoped Hulk into the Wakanda battle? Yeah. I’m sure they can afford to release some set photos of no importance as well. But! Let’s consider them anyway.
The muzzle scene in the original movie was simply a farewell scene. But here Tom Hiddleston is accompanied by this STUNT DOUBLE. He also appears to hold the Tesseract in his hands. Clearly the events from Avengers 1 will be altered to some extent. Maybe the Avengers will gather all of the stones and go against Thanos from the past? Maybe Loki will never die.
When I first heard about filming in Durham Cathedral (it was previously used in AoU for Thor’s hellish vision), I thought we will get another vision in Avengers 4. But, why would they bring Rocket and Mjolnir?
Visions from AoU are coming to life, at least for Thor and Tony. We already know that Tessa Thompson was involved in filming in Durham. We can assume that Thor, Rocket and Valkyrie use the power of Bifrost to travel to the land of the dead. Seeking council? Or maybe seeking Loki? Also, some time ago Rene Russo’s makeup assistant was listed as one of the people working on set.
The issue with Loki is that he was deleted from Thor’s vision in AoU. I mean, you can still spot him, but you have to really pay attention. Does this mean he is not among the dead? Maybe. Maybe not. But I don’t really believe they deleted him just because they were afraid that he will overshadow the whole movie. “We didn’t want to distract viewers from the main storyline” my ass.
So yeah. Summing up, I don’t believe that he is dead for good or that he won’t come back. He promised Thor that sun will shine on them again and I’m pretty certain he will keep this promise.
IF NOT - wow, Marvel. You fucked up big time.
PS. Tom is less enthusiastic about everything recently, not only the Avengers. Check out his Early Man interviews.
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