This Wednesday, June 9th, the hotly anticipated Marvel series Loki with Tom Hiddleston as the god of mischief and deception will start on Disney+. We’ll quickly review what you need to know from the Marvel Cinematic Universe history of this beloved antihero.
The little (adoptive) brother of the mighty Thor
Loki made his first appearance in the first Thor movie from 2011, which is based on the character from Marvel Comics. Thor is the fourth film of phase one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Odin (Sir Anthony Hopkins) is the king of the Norse gods and Asgard. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is to inherit the throne of his aging father. When the Frost Giants attack, Thor gathers his brother Loki and some friends to take revenge by waging a war against their enemies. This results in Thor being cast out from Asgard. His father Odin sends him to one of the other realms as a punishment for his disobedience.
While Thor is stuck on Midgard (a.k.a. Earth) without his powers and without a way to get back to Asgard, Loki conjectures after one encounter with one of the Frost Giants, that he might not be a pure Asgardian. He confronts Odin with his assumption. Odin admits that he found Loki as a baby at the ice city Jötunheim, which is connected to Asgard through the Bifröst, a bridge, and portal. He took baby Loki, who is indeed the son of the Frost Giant leader, and raised him as his own child. Loki is devastated and when he accuses Odin of not loving him, Odin falls asleep from the exertion.
On Earth, Thor meets astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), her assistant Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings), and her mentor, Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård). When Thor learns that his hammer Mjölnir, the source of his powers, has been found and the site has been secured by S.H.I.E.L.D., he sets off into the desert. Thor secretly gains access to the cordoned off-site but is unable to lift the hammer. Thereupon he lets S.H.I.E.L.D. taking him into custody.
Loki becomes acting King of Asgard but won’t recall Thor’s punishment. When he pays him a visit at the S.H.I.E.L.D. quarters, he lies and tells him that Odin has died and that the mother would forbid Thor’s return in favor of a peace deal with the ice giants. Soon after, Loki helps the Frost Giants to secretly enter Asgard – again. In exchange for his help, Loki demands from their leader Laufey that he murders Odin and then should leave Asgard to go to Earth and kill Thor.
With the help of Heimdall, the guard of Asgard, Thor can return. Loki meanwhile has brought Laufey and some of his warriors to Asgard but kills his biological father before he can murder Odin. Loki intends to kill all the ice giants to erase the memory of his origin once and for all. He wants to prove himself a worthy successor to Odin. For this purpose, Loki wants to destroy Jötunheim with the help of the Bifröst, but Thor stands in his way.
Unable to deactivate it, Thor eventually destroys the bridge. The awakened Odin saves his sons from falling into the abyss under the bridge, but Loki, who realizes that his father does not approve of his deeds, throws himself into the depths. But no worries. We already see Loki In the post-credit scene. Erik Selvig is brought to the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, where Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), head of the secret service, asks him for help in investigating a mysterious artifact, the “Tesseract Cube”. However, Selvig is under the influence of Loki, who came to earth, unknown to Fury.
The Avengers assemble to defeat Loki
The next time we see Loki is in The Avengers (2012) where he is somewhat the reason the Avengers got assembled by Nick Fury. It is the sixth film of phase one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In a secret research facility S.H.I.E.L.D. considers using the Tesseract as an inexhaustible source of energy. However, the cube from Asgard is also an interdimensional portal opener. Loki and the Chitauri, an evil alien race, form an alliance and want to use the Tesseract to conquer the earth. With his scepter, Loki opens a portal inside the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility. He can penetrate the facility through the tesseract, kills some of the employees, and brings the mind of Dr. Selvig and S.H.I.E.L.D. Special Agent Clint Barton a.k.a. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) under his control. With their help, he takes the Tesseract and escapes from the facility, which is then destroyed by the portal that has become unstable.
With the help of his agents Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Fury, recruits some superheroes to help him recover the tesseract: the brilliant inventor Tony Stark, known as Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), and the gamma radiation expert Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), who transforms into the Hulk. Together with Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America (Chris Evans), they try to find the Tesseract.
A short time later, Loki and Hawkeye show up in Stuttgart to steal a sample of iridium. The superheroes confront Loki, who surrenders surprisingly quickly. On the way to Loki’s interrogation on the S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft, Thor intercepts them. He has come to Earth to bring Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard but joins the superheroes after a brief discussion with Iron Man over responsibility for his adoptive brother. Loki is locked in a special prison cell but refuses to divulge any information. However, Stark and Banner find out that Loki wants to use the Tesseract to create a portal and the iridium to stabilize it.
Loki’s capture turns out to be part of a devious plot. Hawkeye prepares sabotage to the aircraft, Loki ignites disputes between the superheroes with his manipulative skills. Spurred on by Loki’s influence, the Hulk finally breaks loose. While Captain America and Iron Man try to prevent the aircraft from crashing, Black Widow and Thor need to fight Hawkeye and the Hulk in a duel. Hawkeye is knocked out and freed from Loki’s manipulation, but the Hulk goes overboard. In this chaos, Loki breaks out of his cell and fatally wounds Coulson. He locks Thor in the cell and lets him fall with it to Earth. Both, Thor and the Hulk survived their fall to Earth unharmed.
Loki wants to open the portal on the newly built Stark Tower in New York to use its arc reactor as a source of energy. When the superheroes arrive, the portal is already open and the Chitauri forces begin their attack on Earth. The superheroes fend off the first onslaught, but more and more enemy forces pour out of the portal. Despite Fury’s objection, the Security Council that S.H.I.E.L.D. is subordinated to wants to eliminate the threat by a nuclear missile. Iron Man intercepts the rocket in flight and steers it through the portal. The missile destroys the Chitauri mother ship on the other side of the portal, thereby shutting down their combat units. With Selvig’s help, freed from Loki’s control, Black Widow closes the portal immediately after the enemy is shut down. The unconscious Iron Man falls through the portal right before it closes and gets caught by the Hulk.
Loki has to admit defeat to the Avengers in the end. He gets captured and put into chains and muzzles before Thor returns him and the Tesseract to Asgard.
When does the “Loki” series take place?
As we could see from the trailers, the solo adventure of Loki kicks off with a flashback scene from the Avengers: Endgame (2019). We see Thor, Tony Stark, and some guards walking the captured Loki into the Stark Tower entrance hall after he tried to conquer the world. Iron Man and Ant-Man travel back in time to this moment in the year 2012 to steal the Tesseract. However, in 2012 Hulk ruins their plan. Eventually, Loki can pick up the Tesseract, whereupon he disappears.
Ant-Man says to Iron Man via radio, that this was not supposed to happen. And he is right: Loki should never have gotten the Tesseract but should have been taken to Asgard by his brother Thor. This unexpected event leads us directly to the Disney+ series. By taking the Tesseract, Loki creates new timelines and variants of himself, that live along with these timelines. This is where the Time Variance Authority (TVA), a group of timeline monitors, jumps in.
The TVA takes responsibility for monitoring the multiverse. By altering the timeline, Loki gets onto the radar of the TVA. Timetravel is a complicated matter and so we’ll have to watch the new series to see where the original Loki went and how he will get returned to his own timeline.
Marvel Studios’ Loki will premiere on Disney+ on June 9th. Tom Hiddleston returns as the title character, joined by Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sophia Di Martino, Wunmi Mosaku, and Richard E. Grant. Kate Herron directs “Loki,” and Michael Waldron is the head writer.
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