Despite an impressive $644.7 million at the worldwide box office, "Thor: The Dark World" is arguably the least well received film in Marvel's Cinematic Universe. Issues ranging from loose plot structure, underdeveloped characters and familiar clichés dot the entire movie and fail to establish Thor as a genuine (critical) standalone success. Although Tom Hiddleston's Loki was present throughout the film, even his incredibly popular villain Loki couldn't help the poorly drawn story of "The Dark World."
But the franchise has a genuine shot at redemption with Phase Three's "Thor: Ragnarok." One of the most popular storylines in the comic books, "Ragnarok" will feature a crisis not yet encountered by our titular hero that threatens the existence of the realm. But, in an attempt to gain favor with audiences, will it once again feature the fan favorite Loki? Not even Hiddleston seems to know the answer to that question.
"I don't know," he said while talking with Coming Soon recently. "I think I won't be able to help it if I ever play him again, and I just don't know when that's gonna happen, if that's gonna happen. I would never lose his dimension, but it's so interesting. I've talked with Chris Hemsworth, how those characters have changed as we've changed. It's five years ago since I played him for the first time. That's a long time ago. So who knows what I'll be cooking up."
Along with Loki's role, it is unknown who else will round out the cast or will even be behind the camera. But "Thor: Ragnarok" points to big things either way thanks to what came before.
When last we saw Loki at the end of "The Dark World," he had faked his death and returned to Asgard to usurp the throne from his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins). Chris Hemswroth's Thor decided to return home following the events of "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and will surely discover the truth upon his arrival.
But does that necessarily mean he will be the villain? No. It's hard to believe that Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige would return to that well for a third time. Instead, fans should likely expect Loki to be kept in a strong supporting role with perhaps MCU Big Bad Thanos acting as the primary antagonist. Although Thanos will mainly be center stage for the two-part "Infinity Wars" series, the last we saw of him in the "Age of Ultron" post-credits scenes he was preparing to collect the Infinity stones himself. Remember, the Tesseract (Space Stone) is in the Asgardian vaults and Thor is returning to his home world to learn more about it. Could the two come face-to-face in advance of "Avengers: Infinity War - Part I?"
It's possible.
