Is Loki The True Hero Of The Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Loki is, without a doubt, one of the most popular characters of the MCU. It’s a popular belief that Marvel movies have a villain problem, yet the God of Mischief is always refered to as the exception. I have recently been thinking about his character and what his role in Infinity War will be, and i’ve come to realise that he might be part of a way bigger scheme. My theory is that he knows Thanos is coming and that he’s doing everything in his power to stop him. Following this theory, Loki hasn’t done anything wrong, well at least he didn’t have evil ends, only the means were bad. I think that as the God of Mischief that he is... he’s been tricking us all!


First of all, let’s take a look back at when Loki hadn’t met Thanos yet. In Thor , he ploted against Thor so that he would be vanished. He knew that once he let the Jotuns into Asgard, his brother would freak out and fight them in Jotunheim. This led to Thor’s vanish to earth. He knew that Thor was too unstable to rule Asgard, so it was a difficult but wise decision. Then, he tricked the Jotuns into thinking that he was gonna let them into Asgard, only to finally kill king Laufey and his men. So up until now, he hasn’t done anything evil, he has only done things for the well-being of Asgard. As he said: “For you! For all of us!” Things get controversial when he sends the Destroyer to earth as a necessary evil to stop Thor from coming back and when he tries to destroy Jotunheim (although the Jotuns had already said that they were gonna go to war). But as i’ve already said, these are means to keep Asgard and its people safe. Maybe he was wrong in doing these things, but his intentions weren’t actually evil as he genuinely thoguht he was doing the right thing.

We can also appreciate this at the end of the film:
LOKI: I could’ve done it father! For you! For all of us!
ODIN: No, Loki...
After this, he decides to let go into the void and we don’t know if he knew that he was gonna survive or if he actually wanted to kill himself after realising nobody around him cares for him or appreciates his intentions. As the screewriter himself says, Loki “just wanted to impress his father”.
LOKI: When he wakes, I will have saved his life, I will have destroyed that race of monsters, and I will be true heir to the throne!

So as we can see, he’s just a conflicted character, he’s not fully evil. I hope that by now you see him with other eyes because this is where my theory begins:

We can clearly see that when he lets go he falls into some kind of portal so we can asume that’s how he survives and comes across with Thanos. I believe that’s when Thanos tells Loki that he wants to unite the Infinity Gauntlet, Loki feels the responsability to stop him and embarks on a secret and personal mision to stop this from happening.

First of all, when he meets Thanos, the mad titan gives him his Sceptre, the mind stone. Now, one of the many asked questions about the MCU is, why would Thanos give away an Infnity Stone when he’s actually trying to collect them? Well, who else but the God of Mischief to deceive him into giving it away? This way, Loki has already taken one gem from him.

 

The next part of my theory is based on the asumption that Loki’s plan on The Avengers was supossed to fail from the beggining. This theory is pretty popular but i gave a spin to it. My theory is that he didn’t want to invade earth and he just wanted to destroy the Chitauri army and get the Tesseract and the Sceptre away from Thanos.  In Thor and Thor: The Dark World, Loki shows no interest in earth, so why would he literally go from wanting to impress his dad to wanting to rule earth? I don’t buy it. He never wanted earth.

First of all, in the Thor post-credit scene and in The Aveners , Loki seems to know a lot of things: He somehow knows that the Tesseract is in SHIELD’s possesion. He also knows about the Avengers initiative and its members given that he had a master plan to destroy them in the helicarrier. If he knew all of this secret info, it’s very possible that he also knew that SHIELD was making weapons of mass destruction out of the Tesseract. He even says to Widow: “You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers”. If he knew all of that that, I think he knew it was a safe bet that the World Security Council was gonna send the nuclear bomb and destroy the Chitauri.

Better yet, what if he even knew that HYDRA was within SHIELD? Curiously, the movie cuts to Steve finding HYDRA weapondry just after Loki says this line. He could’ve known that the Wolrd Security Council was corrupted by Hydra by Alexander Pierce and Gideon Malik (played by the same actor in AoS and in the Avengers) and that they were gonna send the nuclear bomb to New York.

In the scene with Loki and The Other, The Other keeps insisting that him and Thanos want the Tesseract while Loki kept pressuring about the army blackmailing him with the fact that the Tesseract was in his possession. So Thanos and the Chitauri have no interest in sending an army to earth. Loki got the Chitauri into New York, got them destroyed by the nuclear bomb and both the mind and space stone were far from Thanos’ hands. Yes, a lot of people died in the process, but Loki did it all to save the universe.

But here is when things get interesting: At the end of Thor: The Dark World, he takes Odin’s place as the king of Asgard and in the mid-credit scene of Thor: The Dark World, two Asgardians are sent to the Collector’s chambers to give him the Aether so the stones can be kept separated. Why in the hell would Loki give away an Infinity Stone if he’s supposedly working for Thanos? It really doesn't make any sense and i think that's what gives his plan away. So now Loki is finally ruling Asgard with no problem, he has spared Odin’s life and the universe is safe from Thanos so far.