Then you notice that Loki is actually crying in the last gif.
And you notice he’s crying, but do you know why?
I do.
Loki has green eyes. That’s Loki’s colour so they used an effect to make his eyes green. And that’s important. Why? Because in The Avengers Tom Hiddleston’s eyes are blue. Now, why, you may ask, is Tom Hiddleston not wearing contacts in The Avengers? Is it a mistake? No, there is no such thing as a mistake as big as that when it comes to this character. His eyes are blue because he is being possessed, controlled, by the tesseract. Like with every person who’s chest he touched with his staff, he had fallen prey to it’s power.
When Loki let go of his staff and fell into the abyss, where do you think he landed? Happy sunshine land? Of course not. Wherever he was, it was terrible. It broke him. He had to fight, he had to protect himself, he had to become a savage to survive. He fell to a cruel and evil planet, an every-man-for-himself planet, a place where the meaning of the words ‘family’ and ‘love’ were forgotten. And this is where he lived for untold amounts of time. And eventually, one day, someone came looking for a servant. A scapegoat. And they found the broken once-prince of Asgard, something one could no longer call a man, alone and crying dry tears. They said redemption. They said power. They said friendship. And this once-man fell in love with the idea. His honour was returned, his staff, his fighting force and a reason- a reason to do something.
Redemption.
Loki, the once future king of Asgard, wanted only redemption. But he didn’t know the price he would have to pay to get it. In the end, he was merely a marionette puppet, his strings being toyed with by the one person he had learned to trust. The person who had taught him again what love was, what friendship was, and what it meant to be a warrior. But he had been manipulated. Instead of how to love, he had been taught how to hate. And oh, he hated everyone and everything. But above all, deep down, he hated himself.
But he would have redemption.
Because that’s what he really wanted, right? Loki didn’t want to kill, or maim, or destroy- that’s what he wanted. Loki wanted only a father’s love. A brothers companionship. And he had been manipulated into thinking he didn’t have that. But he could rectify his name, if he could prove himself capable, he would be redeemed! His father would be proud of him, his brother would trust him, and he could have that normal life he had always secretly wanted to have.
When he realised this, Loki did something he had not done in days, or months, or years.
He let out a tear.
Because he saw then that, for him, there was no going back. His brother did love him, after all that had happened, Thor wanted only to have his brother back. But Loki had ruined that. He had fallen prey to doubt and greed and judgement. He knew at that moment that he- and only he- had destroyed every good thing he had had, every chance of having the family that ran through his dreams. He saw that by that day, all hope was lost. No matter what Thor said, things would never be the same for the two of them as they had been when they were children. He knew that they had both changed too much and seen to much to ever look at each other the same again. He knew that from that point on, the two could never truly be brothers.
So when Thor said ‘Together,’ Loki cried.
Oh.
Anything clever and insightful I was about to say was completely destroyed in that beautiful mini-essay. In a good way.
