I’m Crazy But It’s Okay

First of all, that snake story in Ragnarok was improvised by Chris Hemsworth, and they kept it in the movie because it was funny. But frankly it’s a retcon of Thor and Loki’s relationship growing up, if you go by the canon set up in their first three movies together.

In fact, the canon seems to show it was actually the other way around, where Thor and his friends regularly bullied Loki, who was probably like a smart, emo, loner geek. This characterization isn’t based on some story told from one character’s biased point of view; it’s based on actual events we can see ourselves in the films.

Evidence of this is in the early scene in Thor 1, where Odin takes young Thor and Loki to the weapons vault. We see a rambunctious Thor declaring, “When I am king, I’ll hunt the monsters down and slay them all,” while acting out an imaginary fight. Meanwhile, young Loki is quiet and just asks Odin a thoughtful question. Are we supposed to believe this curious young Loki was regularly terrorizing the obnoxious, loud, boastful, older brother?

In Thor 1 we also see the following:

At the start of the movie, when Thor and Loki are waiting for the coronation to begin, Thor says several things to belittle Loki. For example, he says, “Some do battle; others just do tricks.” (Mind that this is when Thor is about to be made king—and still he has to be a dick.)

When Loki tries to talk Heimdall into letting the group travel the Bifrost to Jotunheim, Heimdall is extraordinarily dismissive of Loki considering he’s a member of the royal family. Then, Thor’s buddy Volstagg adds a jab, “What’s the matter, Loki? Silver tongue turn to lead?” Again, not the way you talk to royals.

On Jotunheim, when Loki tries to calm things down between Thor and the Frost Giants, Thor snaps at him to “Know your place, brother.”

Thor’s friends are consistently nasty to Loki*, and they take their cue from Thor. So does Heimdall, and even the servant who offers Thor a cup of wine in the deleted/extended version of the pre-coronation scene.

But this dynamic shouldn’t be a surprise; the whole plot of Thor 1 was based on the idea that Thor was a jerk who needed to be taught humility and kindness before he was worthy. At the start of the movie, he’s violent, impulsive, selfish, brutish, and overentitled. This is practically the textbook definition of a bully. And he didn’t have to look far for a victim: his misfit little brother was a perfect target.

Meanwhile, in the first part of Thor 1, Loki follows Thor around like a puppy. He tells Thor he loves him; he declares, “I won’t let my brother march into Jotunheim alone”; he even looks at Thor with puppy eyes when Thor isn’t looking at him. When Odin banishes Thor, Loki is literally crying.

People get the idea that Loki was always bad because he played the villain in Thor 1 and Avengers 1. But if you go back to those earlier films, you’re reminded that Loki wasn’t a villain all his life. He was the second son in a dysfunctional royal family, who was placed in the scapegoat role, while Thor was the golden child. Loki’s parents lied to him all his life and taught both boys racism against Frost Giants. When Loki figured out he was actually a Frost Giant himself, he flipped out.

Loki is over 1,000 years old, and even according to Thor he “fought (with Thor) side by side” for all that time. Despite being the family scapegoat and being routinely disrespected by Thor and his friends, Loki was a “good guy” right up until he discovered he was “a monster” and lost his sh!t.

Does this match with Thor’s version of their childhood? For the sake of argument, suppose there was some truth to Thor’s story—that Loki was super stabby and had tried to kill Thor many times. Well, it may have seemed that way to Thor. Since theirs is a warrior culture, we can assume the two of them had countless sparring matches on the practice field. Knives are Loki’s weapon of choice. So, Loki probably accidentally stabbed Thor a number of times.

However, the idea that Loki tried to kill Thor throughout their childhoods is ludicrous. To begin with, Loki would know very well what we learned in Avengers1: you can’t kill Thor by stabbing him with a measly knife. When Loki stabs Thor in the side during the Battle of New York in Avengers 1, he does it to buy himself time to get away—not with any expectation that Thor would die. (If Loki has thought that knife wound kill Thor, he would certainly have stuck around to have a “villain’s premature gloating moment.”)

Secondly, Loki would have been imprisoned (or worse) for attacking the crown prince even once. There would have been significant political upheaval on Asgard—with one prince against the other, split factions would have developed, potentially leading to civil war. If these had been the conditions Thor and Loki had grown up in, it would have been mentioned by now.

Now, here’s the kicker:

Loki banked more than 1,000 years as a “good guy” and roughly three years as a “bad guy,” following his mental breakdown in Thor 1.

If you take Loki’s ratio of “good guy” years (1,000+) to “bad guy” years (3) overall, percentage-wise, Loki was a bad guy for roughly 0.3% of his life.

In a crude estimate of just a simple percentage of lifetime spent, Loki is far more of a “good guy” than about half of the Avengers. Consider:

Hawkeye: Let’s say he’s about 45 years old. He spent 5 years as the vigilante Ronin, assassinating people he thought deserved it. And we’ll give him all the rest of his life as a “good guy,” even though he was probably also assassinating people for the U.S. government in part of his adulthood. 5/45 = 11% bad guy.

Scarlet Witch: Suppose she’s (I have no idea) 24 years old. She worked for Hydra for about 5 years, right? 5/24 = 20.9%.

Black Widow: Lets give her 15 (adult) years as a baddie and 15 years as a goodie (including childhood and infancy). Her percentage would be 50%.

You get the idea. Calculating the years spent being “good” versus “bad” is ridiculously oversimplifiying things, but it does give some perspective on the scope of Loki’s life overall, and how unfairly he is judged simply because we have seen the worst of him and the best of others.