#ikol loki

Basically this run does not focus on the original Loki, who died a long time before. However, Lokis do not tend to stay dead due to their name not being in the Book of the Dead or something like that (don't worry about it) so Loki is reborn as a child, dubbed Kid Loki. However, an echo of his first self lingers and in order to come back to life, drives Kid Loki, who is much kinder, and much more loved, to annihilate themself in order to make way for the echo to take over their body.

Agent of Asgard focuses on this echo, Ikol Loki, who is, in fact, not actually a successful full resurrection of the original Loki but a melange of the echo and of Kid Loki, and endlessly guilty for the self-cannibalistic murder/suicide that brought them to existence, while also trying to temper the volatile, violent instincts that still live inside of him. The situation is complicated-- Ikol Loki describes themself as not the murderer but the murder weapon, but the remnants of Kid Loki describe themself as the crime that cannot be forgiven, so it doesn't matter really; Ikol Loki is stuck there, and bound by the reputation and memory of the crimes of their original self. In order to achieve true redemption, they make a deal to execute missions for Asgard in exchange for one of their sins being erased from the collective memory of Asgard each time. Throughout the story, though, they are chased and stalked by a Loki that seems to be the original, and by a bird that warns them that ego death is coming for them. Eventually, Ikol Loki finds out that this Loki, King Loki, is actually themself from the future, what they are bound to become, and what the story they live in necessitates of them. It is the only role they will ever be allowed to play. When this comes to a head, after Asgard and his brother have turned their back on Ikol Loki, King Loki kidnaps them and attempts to push them over the edge, but instead drives them to a between-plane of existence, wherein Ikol Loki realizes the only way to escape their fate is to become an entirely new version of themself-- to stop hanging onto what they thought they were, what they feel they are and how they exist, and accept ego death in order to move forward and live, and further to become a version of themself that exists on the boundaries of the medium.

SO! Jason. First of all the most obvious points of commonality here being resurrection but also, of course, the haunting of his prior self and the expectations that distort and direct his life. While Jason is not trapped by the narrative in a manner so literal and so acknowledged as Loki does, nor is Jason responsible for his death as OG Loki mostly was, I'm not trying for a direct transfer of character into story, nor am I talking about the following of an authority to work on missions as @liedownquisition suggested (though their observations are apt!)-- nothing so literal. I'm talking about autocannibalism, self-haunting, self-mythologizing. I am talking about ego death.

I feel like I'm literally always saying this but let me say it again: i want jason deconstructed. The closest we ever got was Countdown, and unfortunately that was walked back. So here what I am picturing is a moment of metatextual awareness, a moment of exterior choice that places Jason in the situation where he is able to make the choice of not continuing in the endless death spiral he's been locked in and locked himself in for almost twenty years now, sees where this is going, has gone, is, and, miraculously having managed to realize or choose what is actually essential to a Jason Todd, decides to become something else. Loki's broken crown, Countdown breaking Jason's helmet, let it stay broken! And let Jason be the one to break it!

Now, Loki makes this choice after they have lost everything, and they have no guarantee of getting anything back. Because it's no longer about getting anything back. There is no going back, but this time said as liberation instead of mourning. Jason cannot go back. As Anne Carson said, the dead don't actually walk backward, but he's made a habit of it, and as she also said, the dead do walk behind the living, reaching and reaching, which Jason has never once stopped doing, but he's not dead. Either the living need to turn around, or he needs to do something else. Robin Jason is the crime that will not be forgiven, Red Hood is the weapon forged from the consequences, and I want to see what could bring Jason to a point of putting it down.

That aside, as @liedownquisition pointed out, gender reasons also would be fun and not negligible here; Loki is genderfluid and this transformation and becoming is in no small part an inherently genderqueer story. Would love to get Jason some of that. Also just the dark, liminal aspects of Agent of Asgard; let's let Jason get a bit esoteric with it for once (the all-caste does NOT count). Also Odin as a drifting figure at the edges of the story whose clear praise comes too late and only after Loki saved Themself........ yall can see where i'm going with this lol.

But yeah the rest of it was the point for me. You can decide what and who you are. You can save your own life. You can walk forwards. Ego death! Ego death! Ego death!