#and all the emotional elements present in the interrogation contributed to loki's more fragile state

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Just put this together and I know I've made like 800 posts just about episode one but I've been thinking about this for the past two days and it FINALLY makes sense

I have been puzzling over the oddly intense reaction Loki had to finding the collection of Infinity Stones in the drawer. I couldn't figure out why he was so affected by it--I mean, he seems gutted. Crushed. Because of how striking it was, that response screamed "this is an important moment," and I finally have an answer as to what makes it so.

When Mobius leaves the interrogation room, Loki takes the opportunity to escape. This is after Mobius has been psychologically attacking him and both Loki's verbal and physical outbursts have done nothing. He's tried reasoning and questioning, he's tried intimidating, he's tried attacking his environment and his captor, and has even tried other methods of escape--none of these have worked. To his massive credit, Loki keeps his wits about him enough to steal the only tool he knows can get him out of there, and uses it. But though he's escaped the room, he's still in the TVA. He needs something more powerful to get him out entirely.

That's the first, and more obvious, reason that Loki responds as he does when the Tesseract is just sitting in a drawer, lumped in with a bunch of other Infinity Stones. If something that powerful is useless in the TVA, then Loki really can't get out on his own. His last method of defense--escape--is gone, and nothing else he's done has worked. He is, effectively, helpless. I understand why that would cause a pretty dramatic response.

But then he stands, shaken to his core, and says, "Is this the greatest power in the universe?" He looks almost on the verge of tears. And I just...did not get it. Why that question, and why such a strong reaction? But then I remembered: this is 2012's Loki.

Thanos brutally tortured, manipulated, and abused Loki, for who knows how long, all so that Loki could be sent to Earth to get the Tesseract. One Infinity Stone. And the TVA uses that exact stone as a paperweight. If Thanos went to such lengths, and if Loki went through so much, to try to get something that is so inconsequential to the TVA, how powerful must they be? And, the more pressing question--what must they be capable of? They have hardly been hospitable to Loki; he's been being attacked, controlled, or manipulated since the moment he arrived. And Thanos, the last person who'd controlled him, was much less powerful than they were. If Loki went through so much at his hands, what horrors would his new captors be willing to inflict?

Additionally, Loki had just been on Earth, under Thanos' influence and threat, desperately trying to get the Tesseract, that very day. This isn't something he's had time to distance himself from; this is what he's been told mere hours before that if he did not deliver it to Thanos, he would "long for something as sweet as pain". And now it's sitting in a drawer. It can't even help Loki get out of the prison he's trapped in, having gone from one form of captivity to another; it is utterly useless. It's easy to imagine what Loki must have been thinking: it wasn't worth it. How could it have been? All that suffering, all that fear, all the death and destruction and pain he had had to cause, and for this?

The moment he realized that was another huge blow to Loki's mental state. At a loss, and unable to really go anywhere else, Loki returns to the room he'd escaped from, and goes to watch the life he'd escaped from the same. In that raw state, he cries over the family he won't get to see again. Maybe that releases some of the stress he's been feeling, maybe he feels a little safer. Maybe that means something.

And then he watches himself die at Thanos' hand.

For a paperweight.

"Glorious purpose" indeed.

This is the point at which Loki recognizes that he can't go back to his original timeline (despite having said previously that he'd "like to go home"); it's the first thing he says to Mobius when he returns. It breaks him, in a way--even if he were to escape, he wouldn't have anywhere to go. Fittingly, the TVA have left him only one way forward. So, out of options, and exhausted in every way from the sheer amount he's endured over the past 24 hours, Loki presents himself as open to work with the TVA. And while I think he will still be looking for an out, he's stopped actively fighting for his freedom, because--at least for the moment--he no longer believes he could win.

#loki #loki series #loki series spoilers #meta #my meta posts #quality meta seal of approval #not to hype my own post up i just put that on all meta posts so that i can find them #kay can i just catch my breath for a second #marvel #that's what the whole thing is about is it just hammers it into him that he's got no shot #starting from them knowing about his whole life to finding that the tesseract (and all infinity stones) are utterly useless #they are just clearly so much more massively powerful than him and he cannot handle any more than what he's already gone through #so basically i think loki's breakdown was genuine but i can't be 100% on what he says to mobius at the end #i think it's the truth--it is accurately how he perceives himself--but i tend to think he is still being strategic with it #but even the fact that they got him to cooperate is impressive and that is the thing i've been struggling to express #is i DON'T think he's only cooperating because he's 'trying to woo them' he is responding partially because he's being manipulated #and all the emotional elements present in the interrogation contributed to loki's more fragile state #i mean he didn't even need to be threatened too directly (although the tva did like. chase him down and try to kill him) #i don't know idk what i'm saying just it's important we recognize that loki is very fragile atm bc his actions are not normal for him #and i love him but he is vulnerable to manipulation we have seen it happen and that is partially what this is #mobius gets exactly the emotional responses out of loki that he wants. he gets loki to stop fighting back. even a genuine admission #and that last *may* have been strategic but the others were not #we do have that quote from the trailers: 'it's adorable that you think you can manipulate me' so to some degree loki knows what's going on #but i don't know that he fully recognizes the extent to which they're succeeding #anyways! #kay has a party in the tags #1k