Long before he was the handsome antihero in multiple blockbuster movies, he was a cackling
supervillain in a whole bunch of old comics.
And before that, of course, he was an actual god in mythology.
Here's the untold truth of Marvel's Loki.
Like Thor and Odin, Loki originated in Norse mythology, where they were all major pre-Christian
deities of the Scandinavian people.
Whereas most Norse gods were big burly guys with long beards, Loki was always portrayed
as lithe, androgynous, and sneaky.
Although he was the child of Frost Giants, he was associated with fire and the color
red.
Like fire, he could not be easily contained and never kept to just one shape.
He and Odin, king of the gods, were blood brothers, which made him basically a member
of the family no matter how much trouble he caused.
And as the god of mischief, he caused no end of trouble.
He also produced monstrous children, who had their own roles to play in the mythology.
He was the father of Hel, the half-withered goddess of the underworld, and of Fenrir,
the giant Wolf who bit the hand off of the god Tyr.
Having once taken the form of a mare, he was the mother of Odin's eight-legged horse, Sleipnir.
As a prank, Loki once cut all of the hair off of Thor's wife Sif.
When he got in trouble for it, he made amends by giving Sif new hair spun of gold, and also
commissioning the dwarves to forge Thor's famous hammer, Mjolnir.
When Loki proved too troublesome, Odin bound him under the Earth, where a serpent constantly
drips poison on his face.
He'll be released with the coming of Ragnarok, the Norse apocalypse, in which all the gods
and monsters will fight to the death.
Loki's first appearance in Marvel Comics was in Journey into Mystery #85, published in
1962.
This version was created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, who had introduced Thor only two
issues earlier.
Once Thor had become a superhero, it only made sense to bring in Loki as a supervillain.
Stan Lee freely drew what he wanted from the Norse myths, while Kirby created a visual
language for Marvel's Asgard — one that made these super-gods look unlike any Norse
people who'd ever lived, while retaining some basic iconography.
The new Loki was still slimmer than Thor and Odin, but now he had black hair and dressed
in green and gold.
Whereas Thor's helmet had wings, Loki's had large horns.
Instead of Odin's blood brother, Marvel Loki was his adopted son, making him Thor's brother,
and thus a more equal adversary.
He relied less on shapeshifting than his mythical counterpart, but made up for it with impressive
skills at sorcery.
Loki became Thor's recurring arch enemy, and perhaps even more importantly, he was the
very first villain who faced the Avengers.
In fact, he accidentally brought the team together.
Attempting to mess with Thor from a distance while imprisoned in Asgard in Avengers #1,
Loki manipulated the Hulk to make people think he was on a rampage.
That got not only Thor involved, but also Iron Man, Ant-Man, and the Wasp.
When the four heroes realized Loki was the true culprit, they teamed up with the Hulk
to battle Loki.
Afterwards, they decided to stay together as a team, using their combined powers to
protect the world from threats too big for just one hero.
"Avengers... assemble."
Supervillain or not, Loki was still Thor's brother.
That made their relationship much more complex than other heroes and their archenemies.
With Loki, there's some part of him that loves Thor, and knows Thor loves him back, just
as they both love their father Odin.
On top of that, as more of a mischievous sorcerer than an evil world-conqueror, Loki was just
too interesting to stay entirely a villain forever.
So, in time, there were stories where he teamed up with Thor to face greater threats.
The most notable example was in the 1980s, during the acclaimed Thor run by writer/artist
Walt Simonson.
In the culmination of a long-foreshadowed plot, the fire giant Surtur was attacking
Asgard with an army of the dead, and threatening all the realms beyond.
Odin and his two sons stormed into battle together, each with a battle cry and that
revealed their priorities in resisting Surtur.
During the "Siege" crossover, Loki sacrificed himself and died.
He was then reincarnated as an adolescent boy.
Far more pure of heart than his older counterpart, Kid Loki had his own series of adventures
in a new volume of "Journey Into Mystery."
At the end of that story, Kid Loki's body was taken over by a more amoral version of
the character from his previous incarnation — although he retained the Kid Loki identity.
Kid Loki went on to found a new version of the Young Avengers, featuring the Kate Bishop
version of Hawkeye, as well as Wiccan, Hulkling, Marvel Boy, and America Chavez.
Over the course of that series, the other young heroes gradually came to trust this
young god of mischief, even as Loki himself struggled with whether or not he was worthy
of that trust.
Late in "Young Avengers," Kid Loki is magically aged up to around college age.
He remained younger than he'd previously been, while becoming enough of an adult to interact
with Thor and other adult characters without being treated like a child.
After the end of "Young Avengers," Loki got his own comic, titled "Loki: Agent of Asgard."
The idea behind the title was that Loki, no longer villainous but still amoral, was perfectly
suited to take on secret and sometimes ethically suspect missions for the rulers of Asgard,
like a one-god black ops team.
It was a perfect premise for the character, and led to some well-loved stories.
Meanwhile, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was making Loki more popular than he'd ever been,
with tons of people who'd never read a Marvel comic becoming big fans of the character.
A huge part of that popularity has to be attributed to the work of Tom Hiddleston, the handsome
English actor who was cast in the role.
Most of Hiddleston's previous acting work was on British television, and he was largely
unknown in the United States.
That changed with the release of "Thor" in 2011, in which Hiddleston's Loki was the primary
antagonist.
At the beginning of the movie, Loki is presented as an ally to his brother Thor, accompanying
the thunder god and his friends on an ill-fated trip to Jotunheim, home of the Frost Giants.
Things soon break down, however, when Thor is exiled to Earth and Loki learns he's actually
of the Frost Giant race himself.
As Odin enters a mystical slumber, Loki plots to take over Asgard.
To do that he has to remove Thor from the line of succession, even if it means killing
him.
Although he was the villain of the piece, fans enjoyed his complicated morality as much
as his handsome face.
Just as Loki was responsible for the founding of the original Avengers in the comics, so
too was Hiddleston's version in 2012's "The Avengers."
In this version, Loki is wielding a mind-controlling staff and is working in tandem with an alien
race in an attempt to conquer the Earth.
To stop him, SHIELD brings together Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Black
Widow, and Hawkeye.
Once again, Loki's actions lead to the formation of Earth's greatest super-team, to his regret.
"You are all of you beneath me.
I am a god, you dull creature.
And I will not be bullied by—"
2013's "Thor: The Dark World" finds Loki imprisoned in Asgard following the events of "The Avengers."
When Dark Elves invade and kill Frigga, mother of Thor and adoptive mother of Loki, Thor
releases Loki to help defeat the Elves.
While this sequel is frequently criticized, audiences did get something they'd been wanting:
a less evil Loki.
In fact, that's what Tom Hiddleston wanted as well.
In a 2013 interview with Total Film magazine, Hiddleston explained,
"When I met Alan [Taylor, director of 'Dark World'], he asked me how I thought I could
do Loki again without repeating myself and I remembered talking with Kevin Feige when
we were on the 'Avengers' promotional tour.
I said, 'OK, you've seen Thor and Loki be antagonistic for two films now.
It would be amazing to see them fight side by side."
Loki's duplicity inevitably emerges at the film's end, of course.
The god of mischief appears to die heroically in battle with the Dark Elves, but he later
reveals himself as alive and masquerading as Odin.
By taking his father's form, Loki has achieved his ambition to rule Asgard.
After appearing in Marvel movies for three years in a row, Loki had a four-year break
before turning back up in 2017's "Thor: Ragnarok."
Upon returning to Asgard, Thor finds his brother still impersonating Odin.
The two go in search of the real Odin, who has returned to Norway, the land where he
once was worshiped, to die.
Upon his death, the Death Goddess Hela is freed from an ancient imprisonment.
She effortlessly destroys Thor's hammer and then sends Thor and Loki careening into endless
space.
Loki finds himself on the planet Sakaar and ingratiates himself to its ruler, the hedonistic
Grandmaster.
Thor soon arrives as well and is forced to fight as a slave in the gladiatorial arena,
where his first opponent is the Hulk.
Soon Thor and Loki team up with Bruce Banner and a long-lost Asgardian Valkyrie to escape
Sakaar and return to Asgard to face Hela.
In "Ragnarok," Loki's still not exactly trustworthy, but he's not a villain at all anymore, and
ultimately proves himself a worthy ally to his brother as the two escape the destruction
of Asgard with most of the population in a huge ship.
"I wouldn't worry, brother.
I have a feeling that everything's going to work out fine."
This new status quo, however, would be sadly short-lived.
Avengers: Infinity War, released in 2018, is the climax of the Marvel meta-story that
had been building since the first movie.
It's fitting, therefore, that it begins with Thanos invading the Asgardian ship and killing
Loki.
The original Avengers villain dies a hero, at the hands of the ultimate villain who was
secretly using Loki during the invasion of Earth in "The Avengers."
At this point, Thanos is gathering the Infinity Stones as part of his mission to wipe out
half of all life in the universe, and none of the Asgardians are powerful enough to stop
him from gaining the Tesseract, the Infinity Stone that was at the center of that plot
in Avengers.
Hiddleston's Loki had evolved so far by this point that it was sad for basically everyone,
not just the Loki mega-fans, to see him strangled to death by Thanos.
He came so close to being a hero in his own right, and maybe, there at the end, he was
one.
When he turned up next, however, it was as the villain he'd once been.
Thanos wins at the end of "Infinity War," so in 2019's "Avengers: Endgame," the surviving
Avengers have to go back in time to recover the Infinity Stones from various points in
history — before they were acquired by Thanos.
As they explain before doing so, each time they change the past, their actions create
an alternate timeline where things went differently.
One of their time travel destinations is the aftermath of the invasion in the first "Avengers,"
when Loki had been defeated and taken into custody.
During the confusion, Loki is able to get his hands on the Tesseract once more, and
use it to escape to parts unknown.
What this means, of course, is that there's a Loki out there in the Marvel multiverse
again, despite his death at Thanos' hands in the main timeline.
But what it also means is that the Loki who now exists is one who'd never fought alongside
Thor against the Dark Elves or helped save the other Asgardians from Hela.
This Loki comes directly from a time when he was very much a villain.
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