[MCU] Loki is a Frost Giant by birth and looks Asgardian through his illusions. If he died, why wouldn't his body turn blue and red-eyed again?
Reminder clip: https://youtu.be/O-0rGuO0gy8
Posted Feb 12, 2019, 10:51 AM UTC
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It is not his illusion that makes him look Asgardian. Remember that he spend most of his life thinking that he actually was Asgardian.
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My head canon is the Odin imbued Loki with some kind of Asgardian magic/Odinforce/whatever, and having Loki grow up on Asgard continued to imbue him with that mojo (similar to how Hela drew strength from being in Asgard). All of that Asgardian contact changed Loki to a cross between Jotun and Asgardian physiology.
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This is how it was explained in the first Thor movie. Odin did his hand wave thing and gentrified him.
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Love the use of the word gentrified here
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Underrated comment right here
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How so? It doesn't explain anything.
-2†
If it was an illusion he'd have to keep it up. Seeing as he didn't know he was asguardian he had no reason to keep up an illusion.
Iirc, it was odins magic.
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That could create an interesting "Nature vs Nurture" angle to his story.
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In a deleted scene in Thor 2, Loki's mother said she gave him some of her powers.
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In the films there seems to be something inherently different about Loki compared to the other frost giants, from birth his skin colour changed when Odin touched him and he was described as being smaller than the typical frost giant.
Because of this I don’t think it’s an illusion Loki is making for his skin and eyes to be the colour they are, that just seems to be they’re natural colour except for when he comes into contact with frost giant “magic” then his latent genes come out.
So basically his skin and eyes are their natural colour when he dies and don’t change for that reason.
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Perhaps the twist is that Loki really is half Asgardian, and Odin is really his father, but wanted to keep his exploits with female frost giants under wraps.
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smaller than the typical frost giant
He was merely huge. He was barely enormous. He was... The Littlest Giant! (oh joy)
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He was a Frost Average.
I'll see myself ou t.
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He was like the Giants in Galavant.
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There's no reason for the spells to be undone by his death. The illusions that make him look Asgardian were probably laid by Odin. Those spells outlasted the Allfather and could reasonably outlast Loki, too.
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The moment Odin died, his spells died with him. Hence Hela escaping from wherever she was held, and her being able to withstand Mjölnir.
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That's speculation. There are a number of reasons why Hela's imprisonment may have been unique.
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Right. I imagine he quickly cast a spell imprisoning her until his death and then later was unable to change it without risking her escape.
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Or all his magic weakens when he dies, but since Loki isn't pushing back against Odin's spell around his appearance, it remains intact. Hela was likely actively fighting to break free all this time. Imprisoning Hela probably had a maintenance aspect for Odin that Loki's appearance doesn't.
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I would guess that Odin tied the spell to his life force which is why it broke when he died.
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You'll find removing a dead man's spell troublesome.
-Dr. Strange to Ebony Maw
Spells seem to persist in some fashion after death in the MCU. It's more likely that death only weakens spells, or that other factors were involved in Hela's escape.
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Dr strange and the alien warlock quip back and forth about this when they fight. Strange says something along the lines of good luck removing a protective spell of a dead man.
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I interpreted that as meaning "Dispel Magic" is extremely uncommon or high-level in this universe, so you need the caster to be around to turn it off. Like a phone password.
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Strange doesn't cast spells using his own power. That's the difference.
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Hela was actively fighting.
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I see it differently. Thor held out his hand, calling Mjölnir back, but Hela wouldn't let it.
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She was also the original wielder of the hammer, as seen in Ragnarok. So she may just have exerted control over the hammer that she previously had.
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The illusions that make him look Asgardian were probably laid by Odin.
Or perhaps Frigga. Either way, those would be some powerful spells.
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Frigga wasn't there when Loki's appearence changed. Odin was.
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But the illusion doesn't come from Odin, Loki shifted to look Asgardian when Odin picked him up as a baby.
-1†
That was odins doing, Odin made him look asgardian
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You're assuming Loki could use illusion magic even as a baby?
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Maybe it's not an illusion, but a natural shapeshifting ability? Ragnarok claims he could turn into a snake that Thor can pick up in his hand when they were boys.
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Hypothesis: he isn’t actually dead.
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The sun will shine on them once again.
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heck now you got me thinking about the "golden" halls of Valhalla....
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Crossing fingers for all Valkyrie to be brought back in Endgame....
Cap: "We're gonna need an army for that and we don't have one."
Thor: "I know this girl and..."
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I think there’s been a few posts theorizing that Loki pointlessly tried to stab Thanos is he could die with a weapon in his hand and go to Valhalla. Biggest strike against that imo is that Valhalla hasn’t been mentioned at the movies at all.
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Valhalla was mentioned in Thor 1 and in Ragnarok.
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I agree, Trickster god is tricky, and his seeming sacrifice was very un-Loki like. I think he'll be back.
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It was an excellent choice killing him off first though as he's been known to die and come back and you constantly expect him to show up at any part of the movie but you slowly start to see what kind of movie this is becoming and feeling that hopelessness that everyone else has.
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Giving away the space stone was also un-Loki like so I do actually think he died there. We can't set up Thanos by having his fail to kill Loki.
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Further hypothesis: Loki knew that his illusion magic wouldn't be strong enough to cover up something as powerful as the space stone, so he ditched it and faked his own death, knowing that it would be the only way he could survive the encounter. He did the double fake because he knew that, as his Thanos knew him, he would expect at least one deception. It's way more out of character for Loki to risk himself on a foolish, low-chance plan than to run away and live to fight another day.
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Thanos snapped his neck and said "no resurrections this time," do you guys want Kevin Feige to tweet that he's dead or something
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Maybe he's not dead and he's just broken
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Maybe he needs flex tape
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frost giants are shapeshifters, shapeshift the ligaments out of your neck, boom you can get it "snapped" with no lasting injury!
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....
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The Russos did explicitly say he was dead in a Q&A, but that can always be overriden in a later film by a different director. Like the director of Thor 2 saying Loki killed Odin when he replaced him.
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That would be a horrible decision
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I think he is, but if anyone can talk their way out of the Asgardian afterlife, it's Loki.
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Morphic resonance.
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^two words that explain it all.
Loki wanted to be an Asgardian all his life. By the time he died he had completely sold out his Jotun heritage and so his lifeless body had no Frost Giant element to it.
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He calls himself the rightful king of Jotunheim and a Prince of Asgard. He accepted his heritage and his adoptive family.
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Quantum morphic resonance.
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Are you guys just adding 'quantum' to everything?
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Absolutely not! We're quantum adding it to everything
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Possibly something related to Dr. Strange's dead man's spell being difficult to break?
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What if his size/looks are because he's half asgardian - but nobody, especially Odin will admit it?
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My personal head canon is he’s Laufey and Hela’s child.
Would explain why the Jotun went to war.
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Odd. I was under the impression it did
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He looks dark but that’s just from the lighting of the scene
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I still hold this theory that Hela is his mother, and he's half Asgardian, half Frost Giant, so he has 2 "true forms" and is able to switch back and forth between them.
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Odin banished Hela for the stated reasons but also because she hooked up with Laufey (perhaps in an attempt to gain power since Odin went soft). Odin sees Loki abandoned on Jotenheim so he takes him because he feels a degree of responsibility. He never tells Loki because Odin keeps secrets and doesn't want to bring up Hela. In Ragnarok, Hela doesn't know that Loki is half frost giant so she doesn't realize it. I like this theory.
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Works for me!
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It's not that he was letting down the illusion to look like a frost giant, he was setting it up. He spent most of his life Asgardian so there's no reason his illusion would have been cast unless it was laid by someone else, like Odin, but if that was the case he wouldn't be able to flip between the two appearances.
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I'm pretty certain his body will turn blue and red-eyed when he dies... heh.
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Loki changed form and gave birth to the eight legged horses Sleipnir. When he changes his form, it's not merely an illusion, it is an actual change.
Unless he's just doing an illusion.
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I don't think it was something that he needed to consciously maintain. He made himself look like that, but he didn't need to keep doing it, it was already something done. It wasn't released at his death, he would have had to make the decision to undo it. He wasn't "holding" that form, he made himself appear that way, but it would stay until he consciously changed his appearance again.
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..I mean, he sorta did....
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Wasnt his own illusion. It was odin making him look asgardian.
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Who's saying he's actually dead? Wouldn't be the first time he faked it.
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It’s a good question. Too bad he can’t die and is actually Bruce Banner
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It was Odins illusion and you'll find removing a dead mans spell troublesome.
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Hela wasn't all that troubled when she broke free immediately after Odin died.
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Odin mis-spoke when he condemned Hela saying that she would be banished while he drew breath.
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[deleted]
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He doesn't look blue-skinned all the time.
He exposed himself to the Casket of Ancient Winters which is an ancient magical artefact imbued with incredible cold and ice magic. His Frost Giant inheritance reacted to it, temporarily, turning his skin blue.
He later turned off the illusion voluntarily, when he met up with Laufey to kill Odin (really to kill Laufey and cement his loyalty to Asgard).
Or was the blue skin the illusion and he actually just turned it on?
It’s been a number of years since I’ve seen Thor, but I vaguely remember in the flashback scene where Odin originally finds Loki, he looks like a frost giant infant with the blue skin and everything
Once Odin picks him up, baby Loki then transforms into a Caucasian child more closely resembling an Asgardian
I’m sure the scene was intended to show that the character is so innately and inherently manipulative that even as a baby, Loki can reflexively show those around him exactly what they need to see in order for him to get what he wants or needs—but it also pretty firmly establishes that his natural form is that of a frost giant
(unless he was a freak frost giant baby who was born with the eyes/hair/skin tone of a Caucasian-looking Asgardian, and was just forced to maintain a frost giant illusion from birth up until the moment Odin found him, but there’s no real precedent or evidence for that and it doesn’t make nearly as much sense)
edit: here’s the scene in question—you can see the transformation about 1min20sec into the clip
See, I thought that scene was Odin transforming him somehow, to be more asgardian.
It's definitely Odin doing the changing in that scene, not Loki. The question is whether or not Odin created a permanent illusion, or if he truly changed Loki's form.
Either that was the illusion, or his body was reacting to again being in a place saturated with Frost Giant magic.
You're assuming(gonna use some D&D here for explanations sake) that he's casting a concentration spell that requires him keep it going. It seems to me that that would be the worst way to go about it. My guess is either Odin cast the illusion(as Loki couldn't have until after the first movie because he didn't know he was an ice giant.) Or that he has an enchanted ring of disguise self or something. It would just work until he deliberately turns it off.
It’s also not clear how much is illusion and how much is a real physical transformation. He’s obviously not twenty feet tall, maybe Odin can permanently change his body.
Loki is a runt. He wasn't big like the rest were.
frost giants are natural shapeshifters.