Double Your Loki: Ragnarok 2 and Loki 1 Review

Welcome to my first official review! I’ll get to that awful Dinotopia mini-series soon, but I wanted to warm up with a more pleasant topic. I’m so used to taking a more objective stance even in the near-reviews where I talk about mythology in media, like Ice Fantasy or the Grishaverse. Those posts also focused on more or less completed series. But sometimes I just want to share my thoughts and opinions about the latest installments of ongoing series. Such is the case with the second season of the Norwegian high school drama Ragnarok and the first of Marvel’s Loki show. So here is my take on these two Lokis who made me smile this summer.

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Thor and Loki in Modern Media, Part 2: So Far, So Close

Welcome to the second part of my discussion on modern media portrayals of Thor and Loki! Each of these movies, TV shows, and book series could easily take up a whole post, so I’ve split things into two. The first part looked at brotherly depictions from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Norwegian show Ragnarok. These next two works put them in the same story, but they never directly interact. Even without a close relationship, however, they still reflect how their writers approached bringing mythology to modern viewers. For the overview on the original Thor and Loki, see Part 1. Now, let’s take a look at a couple classic Thor and Loki stories before we see how their modern versions work at a distance.

Thor and Loki in Modern Media, Part 1: Brother Bonds

Chances are if you know any Norse gods by name, Thor and Loki are among them. Along with Odin, they are the stars of the Norse pantheon, appearing frequently in modern movies and novels. Sometimes they feature separately, but I find Thor and Loki most fascinating when they appear together. They’re such a study in opposites. Thor has some nuance but is mostly a predictable muscle god, while Loki is a slippery shapeshifter who defies morals as easily as labels. The popularity of this duo means they have been used in stories around the world. I’d like to look at four of those stories and how they compare to the original mythology. I want to discuss the interpretations of Thor and Loki in a bit more detail, so I’ll break things up into two parts, starting with stories that show the pair as brothers.