Loki is one of the most beloved MCU characters, partially because of how interesting his journey has been in the films so far. His move from villain to anti-hero has been so fascinating to watch, and he has always had complex motivations, to the point where the audience often understands where he’s coming from, even if they don’t approve of his actions. One of his most iconic appearances was in The Avengers, where he went full super-villain in his quest to rule over the human race.
This film is the one where Loki’s goals are the grandest, and it’s when he seems to be the most evil. While he always acted out of self-interest in the past and obviously had a hunger for power, it seems so much more extreme in this movie. So what happened in between Thor and The Avengers that made him act the way he did? One theory suggests that perhaps he was not acting of his own free will, and was instead under the influence of the Mind Stone, much in the same way that his own victims were.
In Thor, Loki tells Thor that he never really wanted the throne, he just wanted to be seen as Thor’s equal after living in his shadow for so long. At the end of the film when he and Thor are hanging off of the Bifrost, he looks to Odin for recognition and when he doesn’t receive it (and believes that he’ll never really get what he wants in this life), he lets go, floating off into space (presumed dead by his family). When he shows up again in The Avengers, he seems to be on a power-grabbing spree just for the sake of it. He is a trickster god who thrives on chaos and obviously wants some sort of power and recognition, but that alone doesn’t fully explain where this much grander hunger for world domination came from. Did he just change his mind after floating into space? Did his ambitions simply grow? Or is it possible that Thanos was behind it all the entire time?
We know that Thanos was behind the attack on New York in The Avengers, which is confirmed by a post-credits scene as well as an explicit line from Bruce Banner in Avengers: Infinity War. It’s never explicitly stated in The Avengers, but there’s a good chance that Thanos was torturing and/or controlling Loki to head the attack on New York. There are scenes where Loki is in conversation with The Other (one of the Chitauri) who says, “If you fail…there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he can’t find you. You think you know pain? He’ll make you long for something sweet as pain.” This doesn’t sound like the type of message you give to someone who is doing a task completely of their own free will. It’s likely that Thanos found Loki floating in space and is now using him to do his bidding, perhaps partially against Loki’s own wishes.
His physical appearance in the movie also supports this, in that he often bears resemblance to the characters he himself put under the influence of the Mind Stone, such as Erik Selvig or Hawkeye. The area around his eyes is dark and his lips are pale and cracked. In short, he looks rough, and as though he has undergone some sort of torture, or that his mind is not entirely his own. We know that Thanos gave Loki his scepter, as The Other mentions that Loki was given the weapon by someone who also gave him “ancient knowledge and a new purpose”, who we can assume is Thanos, as he was the mastermind of the whole situation. Maybe part of this “new purpose” that he gives Loki is actually that he gave him new ambitions and a new purpose by controlling his mind.
There are moments in The Avengers where it seems that he becomes self-aware for a second, such as when Thor first begs him to stop the power trip and come home to Asgard, or later during the climactic battle where he and Thor battle on top of Stark Tower and Thor tells him to look around at the destruction he’s causing. At this moment, it almost seems as though Loki is really seeing what’s going on for the first time. He then says “It’s too late to stop it.” Though it seems that he uses this moment as a way to get Thor to let his guard down so he can stab him, there’s a possibility that for a second, he was in control of his mind again, only for it to be snatched back and for him to go right back to villain mode.
In the movie, the control of the Mind Stone can be broken by the victim being hit really hard on the head. Hawkeye is saved from mind control when Black Widow slams his head against a railing in their fight. Selvig comes out of mind control after being thrown to the ground and hitting his head. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that Loki is much more subdued when he wakes up after being thrown around like a ragdoll by the Hulk. Of course, there’s a chance that he’s simply yielding and making a joke because the Avengers have surrounded him and he knows there’s no way out, but there’s something about his demeanor that is much more characteristic of Loki in every other movie he’s in, where he’s calm and collected, rather than slightly crazed as he is for most of The Avengers.
Marvel has also essentially confirmed this theory, though never explicitly on screen. In Loki’s official character bio on the Marvel website, it states: “Gifted with a Scepter that acted as a mind-control device, Loki would be able to influence others. Unbeknownst to him, the Scepter was also influencing him, fueling his hatred over his brother Thor and the inhabitants of Earth”. This implies that Loki was only “influenced” by the Mind Stone, and that it perhaps only heightened desires and emotions that he already had, but there is still the possibility that it was a much more total control because the wording in the bio is a little ambiguous. Someone must have been making the scepter have that influence over him, but Marvel isn’t clear about who. It’s safe to assume that it’s probably Thanos, as he appears to have been controlling everything from the start.
Since Loki is getting his own show on Disney Plus, it would be really interesting to see Marvel explore this time in his life, especially considering the fact that the Loki in the show is coming directly from that New York battle. Perhaps the show will finally give explicit confirmation as to how much control Loki really had over his actions during The Avengers, and we might finally get to learn exactly how much of a hand Thanos really had on the situation.
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