Calling All Avengers Fans!

Because you'll be the only ones who might be interested in this post, LOL!

As Marvel fans know, the long-anticipated/dreaded movie Avengers: Infinity War opens on Friday! Everyone is busy speculating about which of the Avengers will die in the film. Personally, I think Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Vision and Hawkeye are all goners. But the real question that I want to explore today is a different one, namely --

Will Loki prove himself to be an untrustworthy villain who betrays everyone again, as he always does?

My own pet theory is that NO, HE WILL NOT. Although admittedly, things don't look good in that department right off the hop.

In the Infinity War trailer, we see Loki handing the glowing blue cube, the Tesseract (which contains the Space Stone) over to Thanos in an obvious act of betrayal against the Avengers. Fearful and wary, Loki knows to never take his eyes off Thanos even for a second.

Loki is "contractually obliged" to give the Tesseract to Thanos because that was Thanos' price for the loan of the Chitauri army when Loki attempted to conquer Earth in the first Avengers movie. If Loki tries to get out of that contract, Thanos will kill him. As Loki was famously warned --

If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us,

there will be no realm, no barren moon,

no crevice where he cannot find you.

You think you know pain?

He will make you long for something

as sweet as pain.

But I predict that Loki, God of Mischief, will be so bold and daring as to DOUBLE-CROSS Thanos! Yes, Loki gives him a Tesseract -- but is it THE Tesseract?

Remember in Thor: Ragnarok, Hela the Goddess of Death says that Odin's treasury is full of fakes. She contemptuously knocks over Odin's "Infinity Gauntlet" as an example. Walking by the Tesseract, she says something like "Oh, that's good!" What does this ambiguous statement mean? That the Tesseract is real? Or that it's a particularly convincing fake? I think she means it's a good fake.

Later, when Loki is on his way to summon Surtur the Fire Demon, he spots the Tesseract in the treasury and slows down to look at it. We don't see Loki actually take the Tesseract but clearly, that's where he gets it from.

But if the Tesseract and its Space Stone are fake, why doesn't Thanos find out right away? As shown in the Infinity War trailer, it's only the second Infinity Stone obtained by Thanos for the Gauntlet. When he fights Steve Rogers, you can see that the Gauntlet just has two Stones at that point. It is not yet up to full power.

I think the Space Stone is a good enough fake or has been put under a powerful enough spell by Loki so that it does have some diluted power, but its deficiencies will not be discernible among the other real Stones until the crucial moment when Thanos finally tries to use the completed, fully armed Gauntlet for its intended purpose -- to wipe out half the Universe with a snap of his fingers. At that moment, when FULL power is needed, the Gauntlet will fail because of the inadequate Space Stone. And the remaining Avengers will then be able to defeat Thanos. TA-DA!

Loki's trickery and duplicity will therefore SAVE THE UNIVERSE and he will finally DESERVE that saviour statue he had already narcissistically erected to himself in Thor: Ragnarok!

Only Loki would have the skill, guts and unmitigated gall to coolly double-cross Thanos and get away with it. As Loki always said, "Trust my rage."

If my prediction comes true, remember -- you read it here first!

[Note: all gifs in this post come from Tumblr]