The Bad Guy: Loki

I have this thing about bad guys, the antagonist of a piece. I just love a good bad guy. I love the truly evil and twisted bad guys that you love to hate, and I love the damaged and emotionally challenged bad guys where your heart goes out to them because you can see what made them the way they are. I think these are the bad guys that really stick with me.

Note: Beware of spoilers in this piece, as I do talk about the movie Thor. So if you haven’t seen it yet... then, here’s your warning.

Loki is one of these bad guys. Throughout many different mediums and stories, the character of Loki often comes across to me as one of those misunderstood antagonists that you want to take to the side and give them a huge hug and say ‘please, don’t go down that path’. Only, if they didn’t go down that path, there would be no story, would there?

In Thor, the movie that is because I haven’t read the comics, Loki is not a villain as such, as he is just a person trying to fit in. He was brought up in a world and with a family that wasn’t truly his. He was trapped, trying to find his place. And in the middle of all that, there was his relationship with Thor.

Thor, to Loki, was his brother. But he was more than that. He was his rival. Only, rival isn’t really the right word. Rival gives the impression of equality. That’s where the problem lies. Loki never felt like Thor was his equal. It wasn’t that he felt superior to Thor, if anything, he felt like he wasn’t good enough to be placed beside Thor. So Loki was jealous. He was the jealous in the same way any little brother would be jealous of their older brother who seemed to get everything.

It only makes sense that Loki wanted to prove himself. He wanted to be given the same chance that Thor had been given. He wanted to be his equal. Thus, the antagonist was born.

This also extends into actual Norse mythology.

In mythology, Loki was a trickster. He loved pranks and he loved stirring up trouble. There were antagonistic traits to him in early stories, but no more than any of the other gods. He was no worse than any of them, and yet he was never really an equal.

Depending on which source you read, some class Loki as one of the giants in Norse myths, one who spent a lot of time with the gods. In other sources, he is credited as a god himself. But whichever way you choose to look at it, whether he was a god or giant, he was never really an equal amongst the other gods. He was never given that.

Often, he is the scapegoat. When something goes wrong, it was Loki’s job to fix it or it would be his head on the chopping block. Sometimes, he caused the problems in the first place, like a young child acting out for attention.

Even his children were branded as dangerous and not just cast out, but punished for sins they hadn’t yet committed. But it had been foretold of what would happen, and so out of fear, the gods reacted to the extreme. When everything did come to a head, was that because what the gods had been told was true, or was it because of the whole idea of self-fulfilling prophecy? By reacting to what they feared would happen, had they caused it to happen?

I mean, I’m not an expert on Norse mythology. I haven’t read all the stories or researched them deeply, but of the ones I have read, these are the impressions I have formed.

But, I’m getting away from my main focus. Loki.

Stories need bad guys like fire needs oxygen. Sometimes, if the story had gone another path, if something had gone differently, the bad guy, the antagonist, could so easily change roles and instead become the protagonist. Sometimes, he truly believes he is the good guy. And sometimes, he gets thrust into the role of being the antagonist because someone has to do it. Somebody has to keep the balance.

Without darkness, how would we know light? Without sadness, how could we know happiness? Without someone to stand against, how could the hero prove himself?

So here’s to Loki, and all the other great bad guys out there.