Marvel Confirms Loki Was Always Going To Betray Thanos

Loki Laufeyson's past gets puts through the wringer in the first episode of Disney+ series Loki, and while revisiting the events of The Avengers, it's confirmed that Loki always intended to betray Thanos. As part of his plan to rule over Midgard (more commonly known as Earth), Loki was gifted an army of Chitauri warriors and a scepter containing an Infinity Stone. In exchange, Thanos wanted Loki to retrieve the Space Stone (a.k.a. the Tesseract) for him - but Loki had other plans.

Loki episode 1, "Glorious Purpose," picks up from the last place that Loki was seen: using the Tesseract to make a timeline-violating getaway from the Avengers in 2012. He lands in the desert and enjoys just a few brief moments of freedom before being arrested by the Time Variance Authority for straying from the Sacred Timeline. Loki is saved from execution by Agent Mobius, who takes an interest in him and quizzes him about his past crimes and why he committed them.

Initially, Loki seems to consider his impromptu therapy session a fate worse than death. When he tells Mobius that cooperation is not his forte, Mobius replies, "Really? Even when you're wooing someone powerful you intend to betray?" Loki has done this several times throughout his appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, "wooing" everyone from Malekith (in Thor: The Dark World) to the Grandmaster (in Thor: Ragnarok). However, the Disney+ is set immediately after the events of The Avengers, so from Loki's perspective his most recent target was Thanos. There's a possibility he might have been referring to Thor, but by that point Thor was used to his brother's betrayals, and Loki never really wooed him (except for that time he turned himself into a snake).

This is further confirmed when Mobius asks Loki what he would do if he was allowed to return to the world. Loki tells him that he once he became the ruler of Midgard, he would conquer all the other realms until he became the "King of Space." Though Thanos offered Loki dominion over Midgard in exchange for the Tesseract, Loki clearly had no intention of stopping there, or of being willingly subservient to Thanos for any longer than necessary.

Whether Loki would actually have been a match for Thanos is another matter. The God of Mischief's biggest Achilles' heel is his own arrogance. He lost to the Avengers because he underestimated them, and his last words to Thanos (after pulling the woo-betrayal combo a second time in Avengers: Infinity War) were "You will never be a god." Watching the TVA's footage of his death later in the timeline, Loki is not only disturbed by it, but also appears shocked that Thanos was capable of defeating him.

It's possible that Loki will learn his lesson about the pitfalls of his own ego; he did experience a rare moment of awe when he realized that, to the TVA, the Infinity Stones are merely junk drawer fodder. Knowing Loki, though, he's unlikely to stay humbled for long. After all, his perpetual confidence in his own superiority - no matter how many times he's defeated - is one of his charms. But if nothing else, the ending of Loki episode 1 reveals that, in the coming episodes, Loki will finally be going up against an opponent he can respect.

Loki releases new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

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