Tom Hiddleston Gets Real About Loki's 'Love Is A Dagger' Speech From Episode 3
People have many ways to explain the ineffable nature of love: Love is a many-splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love. And those are just song lyrics, themselves cobbled together for the "Elephant Love Medley" from "Moulin Rouge."
Love is altogether more complex if, rather than any ordinary, mewling human, you're a trickster god — like Loki (Tom Hiddleston). The closest thing Loki has to love is his family who, it turns out, adopted him on the sly from Frost Giants and never told him. Loki loves his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins), but he feels betrayed by him — until Odin dies, of course. Then Loki has tons of things to say, but they're too late. And Loki loves his mother Frigga (Rene Russo), but his actions also sort of, kind of lead to her death in "Thor: The Dark World." And then there's Loki's brother, Thor — they enjoy watching each other get flipped and flopped around by a giant green guy. We're not saying Thor and Loki don't care for each other, but it's complicated.
It gets even more complicated when dealing with the Loki from "Loki," who didn't even live most of that stuff. He's just an angry trickster, drawn out of time and space, working for the Time Variance Authority for his own personal ends when he finds himself teamed up with yet another Loki variant who has so much self-loathing that she's changed her name to Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino).
Naturally, Loki and Sylvie wind up trapped on a planet about to be destroyed by its own moon where they talk to each other about — what else? — love. And they're absolutely terrible at it. We know they're terrible at it, because even Loki actor Tom Hiddleston thinks so.
'Love is a dagger' isn't as clever as it sounds, but neither is Loki
We discover some useful facts about Loki in Episode 3 of his self-titled Disney+ series — namely that he's dated both men and women (the term "chaotic bisexual" has perhaps never been more apt). But we also discover that both Loki and Sylvie have never loved in a way that's truly real. And, so, as they await the impending doom of the planet they're stuck on, they trade some amorous verses. "Love is hate," says Sylvie. Not bad ... but Loki has his own ideas about love.
"Love is a dagger," Loki explains drunkenly. "It's a weapon to be wielded far away or up close. You can see yourself in it. It's beautiful until it makes you bleed. But ultimately, when you reach for it ... "
"It isn't real," Sylvie says, completing Loki's sentence. Sylvie concludes that calling love an imaginary dagger is a "terrible metaphor." It turns out that Tom Hiddleston agrees.
"It's one of those things that Loki comes up with spontaneously," Hiddleston told Marvel.com. "They were having a talk about love and trusting other people, and not being able to either love or trust for whatever reason, and Loki thinks he's come up with something profound." The entire speech doesn't only serve to underscore the fact that Loki isn't as smart as he thinks he is; it also works to develop his relationship with Sylvie. "It's a chance for Sylvie to burst the bubble of Loki's pomposity," Hiddleston explains. "He's always coming up with things that he thinks are profound, but actually, they're not particularly profound."
"Love is a dagger," sounds like a line that might work in a bar after a few too many, but "love is a dagger" as a means to build something romantic and meaningful? Maybe Loki should stick to faking his own death and getting thrown around like Hulk's personal rag doll.
New episodes of "Loki" stream Wednesdays on Disney+.