Originally Posted by
Raye
Just saw this and had a 'duh, how did I miss that? ' moment. I bet you anything that the reason the scene of him as a child was included (it really didn't have much of anything to do with events in the issue) and he suffered an injury that mirrored that incident and made him think of it, is probably because of Now and Then. Like Cowboy Loki in the old west, I don't think that scene happened originally, but if he is going to die a hero, he needs to have a somewhat sympathetic backstory for him to return to and motivate him. So some of the new blank pages were filled with him as a child, providing those moments. And now he is being 'reminded' of the new/old events. Basically, it is implying that some of the more sympathetic aspects of his past may have been Now and Then retcons.
It could pose some problems, in that it implies that without this sort of meddling in his backstory Loki would be incapable of making lasting change in the present, and that all his past attempts at turning over a new leaf were doomed without them. I don't like this idea, I think he was on track before his encounter with Now and Then, and could have done it himself without their intervention, even if it would have been harder. (he is taking a shortcut again, where he can get the reward without the work, which will presumably, as it has before, have unforeseen consequences) but it could also just be there to give the turn a bit more resonance in-universe as well as out of it. And, also like Wolverine, it could be seen as a fix-it patch in a way, in that it adds context for events in the present that otherwise would not really make sense.
With Wolverine, besides it just being a fun story, it retroactively fixes the whole thing with the Infinity stuff with Loki and Wolverine acting like they had known each other for years, despite barely ever appearing on panel at the same time before, let alone speaking to one another. Of course there is some weirdness there, in that at that time, Loki's past hadn't been changed... But when you meddle with the past, then I guess it doesn't really matter when the decision to meddle was made, the actual meddling still happened in the past no matter what, so it would have happened regardless even if the characters had not yet reached this moment in time. But then we kind of get into paradox territory where what if he made this decision in part because of the meddling and....
I dunno, I am just rambling at this point.