huh. this is the only reading of Loki I’ve ever seen that doesn’t completely woobify him, excuse all of his actions, and turn him into a poor, precious, misunderstood baby
accepted!
sorry if i’m just re-stating what was said in the tags there but yeah ever since i saw ragnarok i’ve been of the firm belief that up until the elevator scene™ loki hadn’t planned on betraying thor. Once he was already somewhat on the outs with the grandmaster i think he really did wasnt to leave sakaar asap, it’s not in his nature to want to grovel to get back into his good graces.
so i think he was actually planning on helping steal the ship and leaving with thor. And in the elevator where he says that they probably shouldn’t ever see each other again, he’s totally just testing thor and WANTS thor to challenge him or disagree. But then he’s thrown for a loop because for the first time in his life thor doesn’t challenge him; he just agrees with him. And then you see loki have a sort of mini crisis of “oh shit he doesn’t care about me?” and his thoughts go immediately to “shit i gotta do something crazy to get his attention.” So forgive me if this is just the common interpretation of that scene that everybody’s already on the same page about but i think that 100% the only reason loki betrays thor at the last minute there on sakaar is because he’s freaking out and trying to do something dramatic to get thor’s attention and create conflict/make him angry because HE’S AN IDIOT AND THAT’S THE ONLY WAY HE KNOWS HOW TO KEEP THE PEOPLE HE LOVES FROM LEAVING HIM. This especially makes sense when like literally 5 minutes before this scene he says something to thor like “open communication has never been our strong suit”
and then thor blindsides him again by being indifferent towards his predictable betrayal and gives a good-ass speech about growth and people changing and leaves loki there and that’s finally what it takes to get through his idiot brain and make him realize “damn i gotta get my shit together”
