I couldn’t contain myself. spoilers under the cut. have at thee. 

Let me preface by saying I absolutely loved this film. It was extremely well done, and I think that’s why it depressed me. It left me with a lot of questions about Thor and Loki, hopefully questions that will be answered in Thor 2.

I really feel like Loki was powered down in The Avengers. Something was off. He was too dependent on the scepter to protect him, which at first angered me. We know Loki has magic; he’s a very powerful sorcerer. In Thor, he can move between worlds effortlessly, yet in The Avengers, when he first arrives, he is visibly very weak from the journey. So what happened? We don’t know – yet. We never get told what Loki saw when he fell through that black hole - but it definitely fucked up his psyche more than it already was. Furthermore, we’re never told whether he sought out the Chitauri/Thanos or whether they found him. Did he seek them out, knowing they could give him more power? Or did he land there after his fall, right into their laps? The second make sense to me, because he does seem weaker in the film. Definitely not at full power. And I’m wondering if the wormhole did that to him. It could have stripped him of his powers, leaving him near helpless. So in order to spare his life, he promises the Tesseract to the Chitauri if he can have earth. The Other gives him the scepter, and sends him to earth to conquer it. It seems a bit like a shoddy patch job in order to get Loki to do their bidding.

In Germany, when Loki corners everyone outside the theater, he makes duplicates of himself – we saw this in Thor. But these duplicates keep flickering, almost threatening to disappear. That’s another example that honestly makes me think he wasn’t up to full power in the film.

Let’s back track to when Loki first comes back to earth. His eyes are totally sunken in, he’s sweating, almost looks shocked at first that he’s made it. He leaves with Hawkeye and Selvig under his control, as well as a random SHIELD personnel. On the way out, he nearly collapses and the SHIELD personnel helps him stay up. If I am recalling it correctly, he’s even helped onto the back of the truck. Later in the film he looks a little better, but something is still off. The Chitauri say they’ve shown him things. Loki even tells Thor that he’s seen the true power of the Tesseract - and Thor demands to know from whom. We know now that it’s Thanos he saw it from. So did Thanos give Loki some of his power in order to send him to earth and take over? He wants the Tesseract, Loki doesn’t - he just wants to rule. And I wonder just what getting Thanos’ power (essentially the personification of death) did to him, not only mentally but physically. He takes that moment in the lab to recall talking to the Other who then proceeds to threaten him with Thanos, letting him know that if he fails, there will be “no rock he cannot find him on”. He essentially lays a psychic bitchslap on Loki, and I do think Loki is scared of Thanos. He’s not stupid; he knows what’s at stake here. I do think Loki tricked them somehow into trusting him, because Loki is a tricky bastard.

Later on in the film, Loki says something to Thor that really makes me question his motivations at the end of the film. Thor says to him on Stark tower, “No, we can stop this. Together.” And Loki replies with, “It can’t be stopped” but says it in a way that makes me think he knows HE can’t stop it himself. He can’t stop anything. His own blind hatred, this war, everything. He’s realizing once again that he’s powerless (also, he sheds a tear after stabbing Thor, which makes me think he craves, no matter how deep down, to reconcile with Thor at some point).

The Chitauri were using him, in my opinion, and I think Loki knew that. They were sending him off to do their dirty work and then coming in after. I wouldn’t be surprised if they would have tried to kill him after all was said and done, but you have to wonder if Loki wanted to find a home for himself so badly that he just did not care. He tells Thor, when he first pulls Loki from the plane, that he has no home, and he truly believes it. He belongs nowhere, the lost prince, so he must make his own world. He is struggling for identity. At the same time, Loki tricked them somehow into trusting him with the scepter. We just don’t know how. What did Thanos show him in the Tesseract? I hope we find out at some point. There are just so many layers of Loki not fully taken apart in the movie (after all, he’s the villain, there’s not a lot time for that).

And now we’re left question what will happen to Loki and Thor. At the end of the film, other than successfully taking Loki home, nothing is really solved for these two. We know a few things for certain: one is that Loki will be punished somehow, but we don’t know to what end. It wouldn’t surprise me if Thor protects him from something more severe once they’re in Asgard. We also know that Thanos is going to come after Loki. The Other promised it. So Loki is in some really deep shit right now. I’m hoping, really hoping, that Loki will be forced to work with Thor, either in Thor 2 or the next installment of The Avengers, due to something with Thanos. After all, that’s what makes Loki such an interesting character; he’s constantly toeing the line between villain and hero. His motives are twisted and misguided, but come from the heart. I think Loki can still be saved, I just want to know how.

In short, Thor 2 needs to be released right the fuck now.