I agree that Marvel has no idea about what to do with Loki, but I have to disagree with this being the intention behind that deleted scene. Degrading Loki in order to prop up Thor is certainly something that Marvel has done, but notably that originated in Ragnarok in reaction to how Loki took over TDW. They also killed him off to prop up Thanos and when all that failed to make him less popular and just resulted in enraged fans they decided to ridicule him in his own show to prop up new OCs. And they also turned him into a straight up caricature, just the powerhungry villain that Marvel always wanted to paint him as and the way the MCU’s main audience always saw him as, in order to give him a very basic “redemption arc” and make him into just another boring and basic hero. Honestly, I don’t even know how they can’t see how they’ve wasted such a great character. Just the sheer blindness or stupidity of those decisions confuses me.
But notably, that was all after TDW. And degrading Loki wasn’t the intention behind this scene. What the MCU used to do to Loki pre-Ragnarok is delete every single scene in which he comes across as sympathetic, every scene that contrasts him being the powerhungry villain out to steal a throne, so that the audience takes what other characters and the framing say about him at face value. They want Loki to be a villain because that is easier, because that lines up with audience expectations and is therefore the safe option (and good for having villain-branded merchandise and stuff). They have never wanted Loki to be the grey character he is and just stuffed him into a black box, despite Loki never fitting into any box being a core trait of his. For sure, the MCU never liked Loki’s existance, but they got rid of him by deleting him but mostly not by degrading him or by propping Thor up. There is a reason Loki’s appearances in TDW are seen as the best parts of that movie.
Coming back to this scene, if the intention was to degrade Loki and prop Thor up, why would they delete it? It would fit in with their goals after all and they would probably make it a priority goal to keep that in the movie somehow (note that the director of this movie expressed discontent with the way execs at Marvel had the final say at what scenes were allowed into the movie).
It’s far more likely that this scene was meant exactly the way we interpreted. That the symbology of the red cloak and Mjolnir was indeed Loki thinking no one would love him unless he became like Thor in the eyes of the people of Asgard. In universe it makes perfect sense, Loki has always felt different, seen as lesser because he was interested magic and books and not at all like shiny Thor.
I have to say that I don’t like the way the previous addition to this post called Loki’s “daydream” pathetic. Considering that Loki was sentenced to 4000(?) years of solitary confinement with no contact except with Frigga, who kept trying to manipulate him into accepting Odin as his parent and falling back in line with how Odin wants him to behave (as his tool), and the fact that he wasn’t allowed out to have fresh air or feel the sun or anything, he had very little to fill his time with other than books. It’s only natural that he’d try to find some other entertainment or a way to pretend this wasn’t the situation he was in. If reality is being stuck in those 4 walls forever, why not pretend to have what you always wanted (love and affection) instead? It’s just sad that he feels like he has to be Thor in order to get that, even in his dreams.
I hadn’t actually noted the similarities between this scene and Tom’s appearance at comic-con, mostly because of the differences in Loki’s body language here. At comic-con it’s Loki’s proud, arrogant act, the one he puts on in order to hide his insecurities and give away no weaknesses. In the deleted scene we see underneath that, we get to see what Loki wants the most, we get to see his true feelings. He’s way more hesistant than at comic-con. Both are part of him, obviously, but because these appearances are two different sides of the same character, I hadn’t seen the link until I saw this post.
Going back to the intentions behind the deleted scene, if it isn’t meant the way we interpreted it, it’s more likely that they meant to show Loki as dreaming of stealing Thor’s power and becoming king instead of tryign to prop Thor up. After all, that’s how Marvel wants us to view Loki and how the main audience does view him and would have interpreted that scene (maybe in the end it’s better that it was deleted, because now the show wasn’t able to stain this scene the way it did so many others). But even then, why delete it if that was the intention? They notably only deleted scenes that make Loki sympathetic and if the intention was to show Loki as being powerhungry, I don’t think they would have deleted it. So that makes me think that our interpretation is the correct one.
I could be wrong. A lot of what we read into TDW wasn’t entirely intentional. I’m pretty sure that Frigga was in fact meant to be a perfect mother and her intentions to call Loki out on his behaviour towards his family were meant to be viewed at face value. Even though he was right to call Odin out on his hypocrisy. I don’t even think they meant Loki’s sentence as solitary confinement, even though that is what it is, but as “just” a life sentence. And they may not entirely have intended the toxic abusive family dynamics this movie ended up painting. Notably, in articles surrounding this movie they did talk about Loki as powerhungry I believe, which would be a retcon of Thor 1 as well as Loki’s hidden, actual circumstances in Avengers. That article could have been the creator’s true views, but it could also just as well have been messaging Disney wanted to push (they muddled the summary of the first Thor movie back when it released to show Loki as stealing the throne too, when we know that’s not true!). Or it could’ve just been red herring in order to shock the audience when the opposite happened.
in any case, we’ll likely never known, especially after Disney’s retcon of Loki in the show. They got what they always wanted in the end. It still triggers me whenever I see another person talking about how the ending of the show was the best thing ever written and the perfect character arc for Loki when it was wrong from the very concept. There’s no way they’ll reveal the deleted scene as anything other than a powerhungry delusion.
In conclusion, I don’t think it was the (original) intention of this scene to make us love Thor instead of Loki or to prop up Thor or degrade Loki at all.
