Why Loki Laughs When He Sees His Infinity War Death

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Loki episode 1, "Glorious Purpose."

Marvel's Loki saw the titular God of Mischief offer a surprising reaction when glimpsing footage of his death from Avengers: Infinity War — here's the reason behind his laugh. Returning to 2012 New York, things picked up where they left off in Avengers: Endgame. With the Tesseract in hand, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) crash-landed in Mongolia's Gobi Desert. Despite the unceremonious start, the trickster god retained every bit of his arrogant bravado. Unfortunately, he was brought crashing back down to Earth in a more metaphorical capacity when Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) arrived and took him into TVA custody.

For all his efforts, things only went even further downhill. Shunted through the Time Variance Authority's bureaucratic and often demeaning system, the traditionally unflappable Loki expressed increasing amounts of fear. This peaked when he was judged guilty of "crimes against the sacred timeline" and sentenced to be erased. Though he was ultimately gifted a stay of execution by Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson), even worse was yet to come. Already tormented by footage from a life he never got to live, Loki delved deeper into his file and witnessed even more pivotal moments in his MCU character development. The footage culminated in his violent death at the hands of Thanos (Josh Brolin). After a moment of understandable shock and pained anguish, Loki ominously broke out in a fit of laughter.

The main reason for Loki's laugh can be summed by an old adage: If you don't laugh, you'll cry. In a matter of moments, Loki learned that the sum total of his schemes and betrayals equaled absolutely nothing. Everything he did yielded no fruit but the deaths of everyone he'd cared about, including Thor (Chris Hemsworth), for all he knew. His efforts to bury his affection for his family amounted to lost time he'd never get back. For all his projected villainy, he was rendered powerless by a being that truly lived up to that description in Thanos. For all his proclamations about being a god, he now had the words "you will never be a god" fired back at him. Just a few minutes before seeing the footage of his death, the core of Loki had been shaken by the TVA's depowered Infinity Stones. His life ending so ignominiously was what truly got to Loki, however. At that moment, all he could do was laugh at the immense irony of how his life in that timeline had unfolded, all due to his own foolish mistakes.

Earlier in the episode, he'd spoken of forks in the road and wrong paths taken. Then and there, it was made apparent to Loki that he himself was not as exempt as he'd arrogantly believed. With all his delusions and twisted internal logic stripped away, he finally saw the truth of himself. He saw that he'd equally made all the wrong choices and took all the wrong paths as those he would have ruled over. For all of Loki's immense powers and abilities in the MCU, he was no better than the very humans he'd looked down upon as inferior. That lesson was hammered home when Hunter B-15 entered and asked what he was finding so funny. "Glorious purpose," Loki muttered, the irony of it bitter on his tongue.

The question remains of what Loki will do with this potentially liberating information and a new, truer sense of freedom. On one hand, realizing the empty futility of his previous ambitions could serve to make him worse than ever. After all, if he truly cannot be a god or king, then Loki might just commit to being a nihilistic devil. Alternatively, he may embrace the better parts of his nature and similarly free the timeline's residents (while no doubt still being a mischievous scamp). Facing off against the seemingly evil Loki variant would likely help with that. They could inspire Loki to be the best version of himself like he unknowingly inspired the Avengers. Whatever the case, all will be revealed in the coming weeks.

Loki releases new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

More: Loki: Why The TVA's Time-Keepers Never Arrested The Avengers