- Loki gets therapized.
We're going to explore the Disney+ series and what it
means for people to come around and change who they are,
change what they want and turn away from bad habits and
desires towards something more positive and healthy.
Let's do this.
(big band music)
I'm Jonathan Decker, licensed therapist,
and "I am burdened with a glorious purpose."
I want to talk about Loki today,
Thor's adopted brother in the series
"Loki" of the Disney+ series.
I've actually covered Loki's entire film arc
on my other channel "Cinema Therapy."
But the thing is we have like a divergence of Loki's,
which is going to be a theme in this series.
And in other words, we have the Loki who went through
the entire film series and gave his life.
Spoiler alerts gave his life for his brother.
But honestly, if you haven't watched
Avengers, Infinity Wars, what are you even doing here?
But then his story ended, but now we have a branch off.
As we saw in Avengers, End Game,
when the Loki from 2012's The Avengers
grabs the Tesseract, and now he's,
he's captured by the Time Variance Authority.
Is that what it's called? I can't remember.
He's counting, He's captured by the Time Variance Authority,
and he gets to start a whole new timeline,
a whole new life for himself.
What I want to talk about is I once heard a story of a man
who did work in prisons, helped rehabilitate prisoners,
prepare them to reenter society.
And someone told this man,
"I don't know why you waste your time.
Leopards don't change their spots."
And he said, "That may be true, but I don't
work with leopards, I work with people,
and people change every day."
Loki's been captured. Right now, he's still in this
"I need to conquer a world, I need to be a king,
I need to prove myself to my father,
I need to prove myself to my brother
or just really stick it to him."
And he's given the opportunity to see
how the rest of his life would have played out
or, or did play out in the coming years.
And so we're gonna, we're gonna to watch him
watch what his life, you know, in the other timeline was.
And what I want you to pay attention to and think about is
if you could see the rest of your life,
if you could see the choices you made,
the relationships that you had.
We often talk about looking into the past and what would,
what would we do differently?
But I love the idea of considering our futures
and where we're headed if we just keep doing things
as we've been doing them and asking ourself
"Is this the outcome that I want for myself?"
So let's watch this clip and then we'll talk about it.
- I love you, my sons.
- [Odin] Remember this place.
- Never knew that his father truly loved him
When he witnesses his father's death,
and as he starts to cry here,
the veneer of the villainous conquerer starts to fall.
(somber music)
- Loki, I thought the world of you.
- I thought we would fight side by side forever
- His brother loves him and sees himself
choosing to be a hero.
- You know, maybe you're not so bad after all, brother.
- Maybe not.
- [Thor] Thank you. If you were here
I might even give you a hug.
- The connection that he always really wanted.
(somber cinematic music)
Freaking Thanos.
He's like "What's this? I thought I had a happy ending,
things were good with my family."
(music intensifies) (sword clattering)
- [Thanos] You should choose your words more carefully.
- Hiddleston's great here, great actor.
(somber music continues)
It's like that movie, Big Fish
where he sees his future and how he dies.
What if you knew how and when you died,
would that change things for you?
What would you do differently?
(music swells)
And he just sees his own neck get snapped.
Yeah, that's pretty brutal.
(music continues swelling)
I've had occasions, I've had times where
I could, not literally see my future,
obviously I don't have that gift,
but see from the past, these are the choices
I've been making and where's that going to land me.
And is that the future that I want?
Now, in Loki's case,
he had no idea that he would actually
connect with his father,
connect with his brother,
that he would give his life to save his brother's life.
He gets to see what literally happens.
But consider your future.
Are you becoming who you want to be?
If not, how are you going to pivot, right?
How are you going to change direction?
What habits do you need to break and stop procrastinating,
breaking them, but actually do the work.
What weaknesses do you need to challenge and fight against
and push against and turn them into strengths
instead of saying, "Well, this is just me."
I mean, self-acceptance is a beautiful thing,
but self-acceptance, without any desire
for growth and change,
it tends to kill relationships, honestly.
And it tends to kill opportunities in your life.
So Loki, after seeing this, he has a talk
with Morbius' character Mo,
Morbius is played by Owen Wilson,
does a great job in the show
and, oh, and Morbius had accused Loki of enjoying
hurting people of enjoying killing people.
And here Loki has a moment of real self-reflections.
Check it out.
- I can't go back, can I?
Back to my timeline?
I don't enjoy hurting people.
I- (sighs)
I don't enjoy it.
I do it because
I have to,
because I've had to.
- Okay, explain that to me.
- Because it's part of the illusion.
It's the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak
to inspire fear.
- The desperate play for control.
You do know yourself.
- A villain.
- That's not how I see it.
- Some people are without compassion. Some people are.
They like hurting people. Some people are scary.
Most of the time though, people who hurt others,
physically, yes, but more often than not emotionally
it's because they themselves are hurting.
Doesn't justify the behavior, not by a long shot.
And it doesn't mean you should be in a relationship with
someone who continues to hurt you without change,
without penitence, without making things right.
But it does mean that we can look at ourselves and look at
others and realize that, you know,
we talked, Loki talks about,
"I don't enjoy hurting people."
It's necessary for the illusion of fear, right?
A lot of people, they want love,
but they don't think they can get it.
So they'll settle for being feared.
They'll settle for being respected.
They'll settle for being powerful.
A lot of, you know, macho behavior
displayed by both men and women,
but, macho, this macho behavior of "I'm tough, I'm strong,
don't mess with me, don't cross me," really comes from
"I want to be loved, but I don't think I'm going to get it.
I don't think I'm lovable.
So I'll settle for being feared and respected."
Desperate...
play for control.
Most people who, project
menace
and power
and "I can't be wrong" and "I'm never wrong."
They're generally afraid.
They'll never admit it to themselves,
but they're generally afraid.
The world is big, it's scary, they can't control everything.
They'd like to believe they can.
The more things they control, the safer they feel.
And then paradoxically, they push people away.
That's what Loki did for a long time.
That's why he could never truly
get close to Thor or to Odin.
And he blamed it on them, but they always loved him.
And they always wanted that connection.
If you've seen the series,
this new timeline version of Loki,
he experiences a lot of growth to the point where he
encounters a bunch of other Loki's from different timelines.
And he witnesses what his own narcissism looks like.
And my favorite moment is when all the Lokis start fighting
and arguing, and this Loki is like, oh gosh, like this is,
so this is so obnoxious that
he can't even stand himself at this point.
And that helps him to change,
and he grows into a more compassionate person.
He actually becomes a hero.
I've met people who've done awful things, hurtful things.
I, being human, have set, said and done awful things
and hurtful things that I deeply regret.
But it's never too late to change.
It's never too late to be the best version of yourself.
It's never too late to make amends if you can.
And if you can't, then at very least to make changes.
So, if you like comic books and superhero stuff,
and also like deep dives into psychology,
I want to invite you to check out this video.
"The Dark Knight gets therapized" where I talk about
Bruce Wayne and The Dark Knight Rises
and how he uses fear as his ally
instead of being overcome by it.
Super cool.
If you dig what we're doing here at Mended Light,
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every time we drop a new video, so you don't miss a thing.
So I'm Jonathan Decker here with Mended Light,
and I'll see you next time.
And here comes that Dark Knight video
I was telling you about.
Swear. Swear that you're going to watch it.
Swear to me!