WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Loki Episode 5, "Journey Into Mystery" now streaming on Disney+.
The penultimate episode of Loki is the wildest yet, leaning into its premise of Variant Lokis with mischievous glee. But it's all balanced by the terror the massive beast Alioth evokes whenever it appears and marked by the pasts the different Lokis left behind. It's the youngest Loki who has the darkest history of them all, though, and the other Lokis defer to him with the respect he's due. That's because Kid Loki, who most resembles his Journey Into Mystery comic book counterpart, killed his brother, Thor.
It's a discordant moment in the hilarious first half of "Journey Into Mystery." The Variant Lokis are exhausted with their new Loki, fresh from being pruned in the hall of the false Timekeepers. Loki has dozens of questions but they go ignored. Instead, the Variants do their best to chivvy him towards safety, away from the hunger of Alioth, the beast who feeds on the remnants sent to this timeless Void. Gradually the power structure among the Lokis becomes clear, and the alligator, the boastful Loki and the classic Loki in his green tights all defer to the kid. When pushed by the new Loki for taking orders from a child, Kid Loki makes the reason clear: his Nexus Event was killing Thor, and he doesn't sound proud of that fact.
It's obvious Kid Loki has earned the quiet respect of other Lokis for the most divergent crime against the timeline known so far. While Loki has decades of comic book scheming against Thor and the Avengers under his belt, he has never before killed his brother. Thor has died in some comic continuities, including a distant-future showdown with Gorr the God Butcher in Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic's King Thor, and is fated to fall at Ragnarok to please Those Who Sit Above In Shadow. But Loki has never done the deed himself.
It's especially jarring since it's Kid Loki who commits a crime that cannot be forgiven, and with that comes some disquieting possibilities. While Kid Loki is based on his appearance in Kieron Gillen and Doug Braithwaite's run on Journey Into Mystery, the similarities may stop there. The Lokis mostly have parallel histories, meant to face Thanos and die, as seen in Avengers: Endgame. In his comics, Kid Loki is a new, reborn God of Mischief, trying to change who he's fated to be, despite the reveal that he's meant to become a new shell for an old, deceased Loki. But Loki implies that this is a young Loki who diverged from his Asgardian childhood in a chilling way.
Loki and Thor were raised as brothers, roughly the same age and inseparable for many years. And it's in Thor: Ragnarok where fans get an idea of just how friendly but sometimes dangerous their Asgardian childhood was. In that movie, Thor tells Valkyrie and Bruce Banner a story about the time Loki transformed into a snake and stabbed him when they were eight years old. The Kid Loki in the Void is clearly older than that, but there's the nagging fear that something similar happened. It's possible a prank went too far, a kid's moment of crude violence turned fatal or Kid Loki had enough anger in him to commit murder.
Any of those scenarios is horrifying and something any fan could rightly call a Nexus Event. It's a turn no Loki has ever taken, and the lack of information about what actually happened between the brothers makes it worse. Kid Loki admits his crime in the grim, flat tones of an adult, and there's no trace of satisfaction in his voice. With Classic Loki's later admittance that his Nexus Event was nothing more than wanting to go home to see his brother, what Kid Loki did is highlighted further. Thor is a crucial part of Loki's life; sometimes a friend, often an enemy, but always his brother. Kid Loki irrevocably cut that part of himself out, so it's no wonder that, at the end of "Journey Into Mystery," he has no interest in going home.
Created by Michael Waldron and directed by Kate Herron, Loki stars Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Owen Wilson as Mobius M. Mobius, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna Renslayer, Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15, Tara Strong as Miss Minutes, Eugene Cordero as Casey, Sasha Lane as Hunter C-20 and Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie, with Richard E. Grant and Jack Veal. New episodes premiere Wednesdays on Disney+.
0 Comments