Loki’s Daggers Stayed in the MCU Thanks to Marvel Fans, Tom Hiddleston Says
Tom Hiddleston’s Loki has a deep love of daggers. The blades have long been his weapon of choice. And his affinity for them has roots in the Marvel comics and Norse mythology. Flash-forward to Loki Episode 5 where the iconic dagger flip was repeated. Loki also used the weapon as a metaphor for love, and he received a flaming dagger from Kid Loki.
In a recent interview, Hiddleston revealed the God of Mischief’s stylish brandishing of his daggers became such a staple move because fans loved it so much.
[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for Loki.]
Tom Hiddleston and ‘Thor’ director Kenneth Branagh developed Loki’s fighting style
Hiddleston worked with director Kenneth Branagh to develop Loki’s fighting style back in phase 1 of the MCU in 2011’s Thor. He told Entertainment Weekly the small blades were chosen because they aligned with the character’s origin and were a stark contrast to Loki’s adopted brother Thor‘s brute force. Hiddleston said:
“The idea of throwing knives came from something that evolved out of a conversation with Kenneth Branagh, which is that Loki’s fighting style is quick, efficient, and lethal. That Thor was like a block of granite, but Loki was like the wind. You couldn’t really pin him down. Thor was solid, stable, immovable, and enormously powerful. And Loki was dancing around him like a sprite or as unpredictable as the wind. And then the knives, I suppose, stuck in the canon.”
Indeed, they did. Fans have grown to expect Loki to have a dagger with him at all times. They especially loved it when his face lit up upon seeing a pair of daggers in Mobius’ possessions in the Disney+ series.
Loki’s knife flip became his signature move after Tom Hiddleston improvised it in ‘Thor: Ragnarok’
Of course, Loki eventually found a way to nab the blades for himself. And he repeated his iconic knife flip from Thor: Ragnarok in Loki Episode 3 in an altercation with Sylvie at the TVA. In the same episode, he compared love to a dagger, which was a drunk idea that ended up being a fairly decent metaphor.
Hiddleston knows to include some fun dagger tricks in his Marvel projects because fans love it so much. But his knife flip in Thor: Ragnarok was completely improvised out of a need to not look bored on camera. As Hiddleston told Entertainment Weekly:
“So there’s a big sequence on the bridge at the end of the film, and we all had these sequences of choreography while Chris and Cate Blanchett were fighting together, and myself and Idris and Taika had all these pieces we had to do with the fantastic stunt department in their motion capture suits. And we were doing that run, it was an afternoon, and it was myself and Idris and maybe Taika. I can’t remember. Definitely Idris was there, and it was a two-shot of us fighting these fantastic athletes that are the stunt guys. And I ran out of choreography. Basically, I think I finished my moves before Idris, and he was still rolling, and I didn’t want to just be standing there like a lemon, not doing anything interesting. So I just flipped the knives, and caught them by chance.”
What Is Kid Loki’s flaming sword?
Jack Veal’s Kid Loki gave Loki a flaming sword at the end of episode 5. And the weapon is a shout-out to Loki’s character roots in Norse mythology. In size, it’s somewhere between a dagger and a sword. And Hiddleston used it in his fight against Alioth.
The sword is called Laevateinn. And Laevateinn is to Loki as Mjolnir is to Thor, as in it’s a famous weapon for the character. It’s a magical dagger made of wood and is also referred to as a wand. It’s thought to be one of the most influential weapons in Norse mythology, per SymbolSage, as it may have led to the death of the god Baldr. That death eventually led to Ragnarok.
Hiddleston’s Loki used the flaming blade against Alioth in Loki Episode 5, “Journey Into Mystery.” And then, he conjured a hilt for it on his back and carried it with him as he and Sylvie walked toward the mysterious castle beyond Alioth’s clouds. No doubt the God of Mischief will continue to wield blades in Loki Season 2.
