I haven’t read a comic since “The death of Superman”, I only watched the first Thor movie and don’t really care much about the superhero genre.
Still, I watched the first Loki episode and then I thought “he’s a god, how can humans control him like he’s a common thief”?
So, in the MCU, what is a god? Is it just a super-powerful being or are there any spiritual aspects?
A God is someone who has worshippers, Loki and some of the other Asguardians are “gods” only because they were worshipped as such by men in the past.
So, that means they somehow they showed themselves to the ancient Norse and thus gained worship?
Is it canon that MCU Loki is the “actual” Norse god Loki?
Loki is an Asgardian, a race of aliens (extradimensional, I think, compared to Earth/Midgard), who naturally have abilities that are effectively superhuman (strength, durability, lifespan, and some can use magic). While they were worshiped as gods by Earth humans in the past, there isn’t really a spiritual aspect to them.
In the Marvel comics, there are various other similar alien races, who get called “gods,” like the Olympians, most of whom are based on various Earth mythologies. But, there are also all sorts of other groups of powerful beings which also get called “gods,” like the Elder Gods, the Young Gods, etc., etc. Here’s a pretty huge list of various Marvel “deities” from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deities_in_Marvel_Comics
Yes, and that gets touched on early in the first Thor movie.
I found the relevant bit of the script from the first Thor movie – it’s spoken by Odin, I believe:
That’s a great answer to my question.
Also, in the first episode of Loki (spoilered below):
After he gets captured by the TVA, and brought back to their facility, they tell Loki that they have some sort of a dampening field in the facility, which prevents him from using his powers while he’s there.
Also, the TVA agents aren’t necessarily human. They look like humans - of course, so do the Asgardians - but we don’t know what they actually are or where they came from. The guy who didn’t know what a fish was indicated that he’s never had any kind of existence outside of the TVA. They’re likely created by the Timekeepers specifically for the purpose of running the TVA.
On the other hand, Thor: Ragnarok made it pretty clear that both Hel and Thor had some degree of power as a result of their connections to the people of Asgard as a whole. That sounds a lot like something at least similar to worship being relevant. And Thor is explicitly “the god of thunder” (and not “the god of hammers”) as a result of something he fundamentally is, in a way that ordinary Asgardians are not.
Agreed – all Asgardians seem to be superpowered (compared to Earth humans), but there’s definitely a tier of Asgardians (the royal family, among others) who are at another level of power, which also seems to be somewhat specialized in its nature (Thor’s powers are around thunder and lightning, Loki’s powers are around deception, etc.).
I hadn’t thought of that, maybe because I know so little.
Yes, they are “super powered” as we understand it to be. That doesn’t make them gods though, what makes Thor the “god of thunder” is the ancient norse watching him throw thunder around and worshipping him as the god of thunder.
I don’t think that’s right. Hel drew her power directly from Asgard, not the people - otherwise, I doubt she’d have been so liberal in slaughtering them. And I don’t think Thor is powered by his people, except in a sort of patriotic defense of them, like Steve Rogers and the American people.
There’s also a scene at the beginning of Thor: Dark World, where Loki has been dragged in front of Odin to answer for his crimes, and Odin says, “We are not gods. We’re born, we live, we die.”
Loki is actually a frost giant (who is just really short by the standards of his people) so if godhood is based on heredity then he is not a god. He was adopted by Odin and raised as an Asgardian. He can change his appearance so he normally looks like an Asgardian (who look human) and we rarely see him turn blue. Loki is resentful and said he wanted to inherit Odin’s throne, rather than let his older (adopted) brother Thor inherit.
In one of the MCU movies we are told by a SHIELD agent that Thor is “technically not a god”. I suspect that really powerful Asgardians such as Thor could be regarded as “gods” but the typical Asgardian would “merely” be superhuman. Making matters more confusing, anyone who wields Thor’s hammer is supposed to gain the powers of Thor, and I don’t think this refers merely to the things that distinguish Thor from other Asgardians. No other Asgardian has a “power” like that.
It was a whole big theme in Ragnarok that both Hel and Thor draw power from Asgard, and Odin repeatedly pointed out that Asgard was a people, not a place.
The other side of this is the word “God,” in English, covers a lot of really different concepts. An iron age Scandinavian’s concept of god was vastly different from modern Jewish/Christian/Muslim concept of god. Odin didn’t create the universe - he’s not even the first generation of deities. He’s not omnipotent, or even immortal - he and all the gods are fated to die in Ragnarok. You say, “Thor’s not really a god, he’s just from another world and has some magic powers,” and that Iron Age Scandinavian would say, “That’s exactly what a god is.”
I don’t recall anything about Thor actually drawing power from Asgard, but I could easily be forgetting something. Hel, however, was definitely drawing power from Asgard as a place - the whole point of blowing it up was to depower her enough to defeat her.
That was my take. Hel was hung up on Asgard as a geographic location because she literally drew power from that spot (for whatever reason). Odin told Thor that Asgard, to them, was the people. In other words, don’t be afraid to let Asgard the location go because Asgard, the people, would be wherever they went. But Hel wasn’t weakened by killing tons of Asgardians, she was weakened by Surtur knocking shit down.
I suppose I’d say that Odin, Thor, etc are basically superheroes among the Asgardians like most of the MCU are superheroic humans. Be it by hereditary or magic or whatever. Thor is God of Thunder because he has superheroic lightning powers that the rest lack. On ancient earth, Hulk would be God of Rage or Combat in comparison.
Thor’s power is inborn and (in the canon of the MCU) simply focused through Mjölnir (and later Stormbreaker, an artifact with no correspondence to Norse legend although the Saxon war god, Thuror, does wield a “fiery axe”). In the first Thor film the character explains that what humans mythologize as magic is actually advanced technology (nod to Arthur C. Clarke) and that certain beings have special abilities to manipulate physics through study and particular abilities (inborn with Thor or Wanda Maximoff, or endowed with Banner and Rogers).
The closest things to actual gods in the MCU are the Eternals, who cannot die and can wield the Infinity Stones without protection and wipe out entire worlds and populations. By comparison, beings like Thor, Loki, and Thanos are just physically tough compared to normal humans but hardly immortal and can even be bested by “enhanced” humans in tests of raw physical strength, to wit: “Puny god!”
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