What If Reveals How Loki Would Look If He Wasn't Raised By Odin

Full spoilers for What If...? below! The latest episode of Marvel's animated series What If...? on Disney+ asked a very important question, what if Thor was an only child? Marvel's latest opens up to a world where Odin did not adopt an infant Loki and raise him as his own son but instead gave him back the Frost Giants, as a result, Thor became "Party Thor" and Loki became....well, about what you might expect. The episode spends most of its opening minutes with the god of thunder but full Frost Giant Loki arrives on the scene later as the party continues across Midgard. As you can expect, he looks like a Frost Giant.

Actor Tom Hiddleston once again reprised his role for the episode, with his arrival in the scene implying that he and Thor will fight. Naturally, par for the course with What If..?, that's a smokescreen. Some of his first lines to Thor are: "You're my brother from another mother...brothers forever!" Loki pops up throughout the rest of the episode, even speaking into a regular sized cellphone despite being a literal giant in this universe.

Loki has now in multiple episodes of What If...?, previously in Episode 3 ("What If... the World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?") where he ascended to the throne of Asgard and nearly lead an invasion on Earth after Thor was killed. The entirety of What If...? even exists because of what happened in the flagship Loki TV series, with the sacred timeline becoming fractured and creating all these new worlds. Speaking in a previous interview, What If....? head writer AC Bradley revealed one major change they would have made to the show if they'd actually seen Loki beforehand.

"When you're writing animation, you're writing so far into the future that you can't think four years down the line," Bradley said in a recent appearance on YouTube's The GOAT Movie Podcast. "That Doctor Strange episode, I wrote in February of 2019. I think I should've called it a Nexus Point instead of an Absolute Point. The Loki scripts weren't even written yet, so that animatic locked before Loki even finished their scripts because you're always writing about two years ahead of animation. It's kind of intense and insane."  

Catch new episodes of Marvel's What If...? on Disney+ every Wednesday with new seasons of both it and Loki coming at a later date.