I don’t want to piss off other fans, but I’ve been mulling over this for a while. The whole “Thor loves Loki and Loki loves Thor” “there is not Thor without Loki & no Loki without Thor” thing – I can’t see it. From Loki, yes, but not from Thor.
TDW was what really killed this supposed relationship for me. After Loki is put in his cell – to be locked away for the rest of his life, solitary confinement 24/7 – Thor doesn’t mention Loki at all. We’re not shown someone mentioning him, and Thor reacting with some emotion (hurt, anger, grief, nostalgia, regret, ANYTHING). Loki is out of sight and out of mind, and it’s easy for Thor to get over him. As I said just before, it would make sense if Thor was deliberately shutting down his emotions with regard to Loki, but we’re not shown that, either. There’s nothing.
The one exception is the deleted scene of a conversation between Frigga & Thor, after Frigga has been secretly visiting Loki. And that scene horrifies me even more than Thor’s silence does.
In the MCU, Thor explains that magic = science. He asks his mother if she regrets educating her son. Her asks why the “indulgences” of books and visits. Thor believes that Loki should be locked away and left to rot, for the rest of his entire life, and that even his mother shouldn’t bother about him. There is zero compassion, only confusion. He genuinely doesn’t understand why Frigga is having anything to do with her son anymore. This shows exactly how Thor is feeling about Loki – he doesn’t care. You would think they were speaking about a random prisoner whom Thor barely knows.
There’s no relationship there. There’s no love. Thor isn’t lost without Loki. He barely spares him a thought.
It’s not just TDW, though. I was shocked at how the first Thor movie ended. The focus is on Jane trying to get back to Thor, not Loki’s suicide. Like in TDW, Thor spends more energy pining over his girlfriend of three days than his brother of a thousand years. Yes, he’s anguished and grieving and horrified when Loki lets go. But he gets past that very quickly. Hell, Sif shows more emotion over Loki after the initial shock of his fall.
I know a lot of Loki fans don’t like Thor: Ragnarok, but unfortunately, it is canon. And I don’t think that the way Thor treats Loki is out of character for him at all – it’s got worse, sure, but it’s not much different. Why should the man who refused to acknowledge Loki’s grief for their mother, care about Loki’s feelings after their father’s death? Thor has already questioned if Loki has literally any good qualities anymore, and threatens to kill him if he “betrays” him again, so why not the electrocution scene?
You could say – oh, “you don’t understand what you love until you lose it”, but Thor has “lost” Loki 2x before his real death, and didn’t come away from that with any more appreciation for his brother. And the scenes where he grieves over Loki’s body are moving, but who wouldn’t react that way if a family member was killed in front of them – whether they were close to them or not?? Hell, I suspect I’d react that way if my father was killed like that, and I certainly do not love him.
Grief over a person – even the amount that Thor shows – does not necessarily mean a genuine, heartfelt love for them. There are all sorts of reasons we mourn a person. Often, it’s for ourselves rather than for them.
I’m sure that at one point Thor loved Loki. But he’s mourning for the past, not for Loki himself. As he says before letting him out his cell, the Loki he once knew is gone. But that’s always the case – we change, we grow, we become better, we become worse. I’m not saying Thor has to love Loki. Sometimes, because people change, we can’t love them any more. But Thor got over Loki pretty easily – his deaths, his imprisonment, even his relief at finding he was alive after all. Which suggests to me that his love for Loki wasn’t all that strong in the first place.
Maybe the script-writers didn’t intend it to be that way. Maybe the intention was to show that close, brotherly relationship that TH goes on about in interviews. But if so, they failed at making it happen, and this is what we were given instead.
please don’t hate me
I totally agree with you on this. Thor had actually given up on Loki in TDW, and his indifference was clear even then, like when he visited Loki in his cell for the first time, and refused to join Loki in grief for their mother even for afew seconds, and treated Loki like any other enemy, any other common prisoner. But years before Ragnarok came out, before we heard anything about what it was going to be like, I felt that by the end of TDW their relationship had at least taken a small step in the right direction. Thor was expecting Loki to betray him, and he would’ve killed him for it, but Loki didn’t betray him. Loki proved himself, he saved Thor and he saved Jane. Loki didn’t have to do any of those things. Why should he? He had officially been completely disowned by Odin, cast out once again, in the dungeon for eternity. Out of sight, out of mind. But he did it. Loki had grown, he had changed, and Thor saw it with his own eyes. But then Ragnarok came out. And now having learned that every degrading treatment, every humiliation, every “joke” at Loki’s expense was partly orchestrated by CH himself, I don’t feel the love anymore. Knowing that that is how CH wants Thor to treat Loki, that right there killed their relationship for me. And it’s killed any hope I had for their relationship in the future, if there even is a future for them. CH is determined to hold on to his “new improved” Thor, and I don’t see that bringing anything good for Loki.
Knowing that that is how CH wants Thor to treat Loki, that right there killed their relationship for me. And it’s killed any hope I had for their relationship in the future, if there even is a future for them. CH is determined to hold on to his “new improved” Thor, and I don’t see that bringing anything good for Loki.
Yes, I agree!! This is why I hope Thor isn’t in the Loki TV series. He needs to get away from Thor, find his way on his own. His relationship with Thor is toxic (and there is fault on both sides there, I’m not denying that) and tbh I would say it is holding him back.