Y’know, I find it disappointing that Loki never brought up Odin stashing the Tesseract on Earth in order to put the blame for his invasion at Odin’s feet. My AU Loki definitely would’ve done that if things had fallen apart, and would bring up how he got the Tesseract off of Earth once he learned that a greater power was targeting the planet because of its presence as an example of him doing more to protect Earth than the All-Father has.
Played Tales of Xillia this week, and while I found it a deeply frustrating game and I don’t know if I’ll ever do that New Game+, I found myself thinking about Maxwell, Milla, and Muzet, and how the parallel the MCU Asgardian royal family. Specifically Maxwell as Odin and Muzet as Hela, with Milla not that much like either Odinson but with parallels to Loki’s backstory.
Obviously the parallels aren’t perfect. Maxwell is actually treated as a villain for what he did, and his choice to die is part of his atonement and fixing the mistakes he made, unlike Odin where his stopping active conquest is considered enough to not make him a villain and his death is a tragedy that only makes things worse. Muzet’s given sympathy for being just the killer Maxwell intended her to be, we get to see her anguish and confusion at suddenly being considered obsolete by her father, whereas Hela isn’t given any consideration or a chance to reform. And Milla’s very different in temperament to Loki, and the lie she was given was that she was Maxwell herself. She also took the reveal a lot better and stayed on the path of her convictions even after learning that they were part of the lie.
There’s no real evidence for it in canon and (shudder) Ragnarok pretty much contradicts it, but I like to imagine Loki usurping Odin as a Loki-smoothing-things-over plan that went awry. Specifically, Odin once again fell into the Odinsleep at the worst time, right after Loki-who-barely-survived-and-disguised-himself-as-a-guard gave him the news about his own death. Loki had been planning on simply establishing that he was dead and heading off, but then Odin failed AGAIN. This time Loki didn’t call for the guards, he took matters into his own hands and hid Odin, taking his place to prevent a panic (and also get Thor and his friends pardoned while he was at it, as a parting gift). He expected Thor to take the throne when it was offered, and so when Thor turned it down, he was stymied. Odin showed no signs of recovery, so Loki decided to hide him on Earth, in a hospital as a comatose patient, and continue impersonating Odin and hope for the best.
I think that, as of the start of TDW and definitely by the end of it, Loki has stopped hating Thor. I don’t think he likes Thor, but that he’s dropped the hostility, or rather redirected it towards Odin (who, let’s face it, is far more deserving of Loki’s hate).
