Loki

In Thor (2011), Loki sabotages his brother's coronation by letting Frost Giants into Asgard's vault and then eggs Thor on to strike back at Jotunheim. Odin banishes Thor to Earth. In the middle of all this, Loki discovers the truth about himself: he's a Frost Giant, Laufey's son, taken in as a baby by Odin after a war.

With Odin sunk in the Odinsleep, Loki takes the throne, sends the Destroyer after Thor on Earth, lures Laufey into a trap and kills him, and tries to wipe out Jotunheim using the Bifrost. Thor comes back, destroys the bridge and holds his brother over the abyss. When Odin says "no," Loki lets go and falls into the void.

He resurfaces in The Avengers with the Tesseract and a mind-controlling scepter that turns Hawkeye and Erik Selvig into his servants. In exchange for the Chitauri army, he promises to hand Earth over to a mysterious ally. He lets himself get captured on purpose, taunts the team from his cell on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, kills Agent Coulson and opens the portal over Manhattan. He loses, gets thrashed by the Hulk and goes back to Asgard in chains.

In Thor: The Dark World, Loki is in a cell in Asgard. The only person who still visits him is his mother, Frigga, who is killed during the Dark Elves' attack. Thor frees him for an alliance of convenience against Malekith, and Loki seems to die on Svartalfheim saving his brother. The last scene reveals he survived and is sitting on the throne disguised as Odin.

Thor: Ragnarok opens with Thor unmasking the fake Odin. The brothers find their real father in Norway, he dies and Hela, their older sister, is set free. Loki ends up on Sakaar, where he cozies up to the Grandmaster, and tries to betray Thor again. This time his brother saw it coming and leaves him stuck to the floor with an obedience disk.

Even so, Loki returns to Asgard with a ship full of gladiators and helps evacuate the people. He's the one who awakens Surtur to destroy Hela along with Asgard, and he takes the chance to sneak off with the Tesseract.

Avengers: Infinity War opens with the Asgardian refugee ship destroyed. To save Thor, Loki hands the Tesseract to Thanos, pretends to side with him and tries to stab him. Thanos strangles him. Loki dies declaring himself "Loki, of Asgard."

Avengers: Endgame brings back an earlier version. During the Time Heist, the Avengers go back to 2012, right after the Battle of New York. A mix-up sends the Tesseract sliding over to the captured Loki, who grabs it and disappears. That escape was not in time's script.

This 2012 Loki is the lead of the Loki series. In episode 1, "Glorious Purpose", he's captured by the Time Variance Authority, the agency that prunes any deviation from the Sacred Timeline. Agent Mobius shows him what his own future would have been, including his mother's death and his own, and offers a deal: help hunt down another Loki variant.

The variant being hunted is Sylvie, a female Loki who attacks the TVA. The two get stranded together on the moon Lamentis-1 and start to bond, which causes a branch in the timeline. Loki is pruned and wakes up in the Void, a dumping ground at the end of time full of other versions of him, guarded by the creature Alioth. Sylvie joins him and the two enchant Alioth, opening the way to a citadel.

In episode 6, "For All Time. Always.", they meet He Who Remains, the TVA's creator, who offers them control of the timeline. Loki is suspicious and hesitates. Sylvie doesn't: she kills him, and the timeline branches into countless universes. Loki is thrown back into a TVA where Mobius doesn't recognize him.

Season 2 opens with Loki jumping uncontrollably between past and future. He, Mobius and the tech team discover that the Temporal Loom, the machine that processes the timelines, is overloaded with so many new branches. The fix runs through Victor Timely, a variant of He Who Remains. In the repair attempt, Timely dies and the Loom explodes.

In the final episodes, Loki learns to control the jumps and gathers his friends, who had been sent back to their ordinary lives. He tries again and again to save the Loom by going back to the past, never succeeding. When he meets He Who Remains again, he's told the only way out would be to kill Sylvie and give the power back to him.

Loki refuses. He destroys the Loom, grabs the dying branches with his own hands and arranges them into the shape of a tree. Then he sits alone on the throne at the end of time, stuck there forever, holding up the multiverse. The character who spent years chasing a throne ends up on one that brings no power at all, only responsibility.

Tom Hiddleston is confirmed in the cast of Avengers: Doomsday, which opens December 18, 2026. Marvel hasn't revealed what the movie will do with the character.

Loki debuted as a villain in Journey into Mystery #85, in 1962, and the next year he was indirectly responsible for the Avengers forming, in The Avengers #1. Over the decades he's been reborn in several versions, like Kid Loki, and has moved between villain, antihero and lead.