Yeah, but I still don't think one bad thing equals full regression, and also a couple things temper it for me. One, I think the specific scenario was more for readers than in story purposes. I think Cates wanted it to be ABSOLUTELY CLEAR which role Blake was being slotted into, didn't want to leave it up for interpretation and guessing, especially since a lot of readers, if they are jumping on for Cates run, or haven't read the Loki stuff, or just aren't reading into the subtext, just aren't really grasping the roles thing, so he has been getting more and more blatant with it, pointing out what is going on explicitly. So Cates did everything he could to get that across, by recreating Loki's punishment, and maybe didn't consider the ramifications as far as Loki went as much as he should have. So I am thinking it is not necessarily meant to be super damaging to Loki's character. Or, maybe he did, and this was a way of telling us that Loki was simultaneously stepping into Odin's role. Prior to this scene, Loki hadn't done the 'he's doing Thor's job for him' thing, this was the first real instance of that, so... It wasn't entirely clear at the time, but now that we are getting more instances of Loki doing Thor's job, and Thor showing no real signs of learning to do the King thing properly... It may be that this was the moment Loki stepped into his role as well. Though we will need further clarification of that, see how the King and Champion roles get separated, it can still go a few ways.
But also, the more speculative reason... like, of all the characters, I think Loki is the most aware of the roles, the shape of the story, and the repeating story beats. After all he's been through since JIM, plus just his knowledge and conscious use of narrative tropes, there's no way he hasn't picked up on all this, even if, to most other characters, it's not something they are conscious of. In which case, he knows damn well Blake is supposed to escape. He's lived this role, he knows half of it is becoming an escape artist. But he has to want to escape for that to happen. If Loki had just sealed him away in a relatively comfortable prison, he may just.... be content to sit there take his punishment. Drip some venom in his face, and he will want to get the hell out of there. And he'll be pissed when he does. Which in a way is bad, yeah, because it means he will lash out in retaliation, but that's something that needs to happen to keep the story going. So, just saying, if Loki is aware of the shape of the story, he may just be helping to ensure it goes the way it is supposed to. We have seen him in the past acting to ensure the story goes the way it is supposed to. But that's more like, headcanon type stuff.
first, agree Thor's been shown in a far worse light, even if a lot of readers aren't getting it. Either because they are just accustomed to him being the hero and just assume anything he does is right, or there are also a subset of fans that view what are supposed to be toxic behaviours as admirable. I mean, he destroyed entire planets.I'm inclined to agree here. Thor was asking Loki to do something that would tie him to his old role. Although I agree that Thor hasn't been delegating enough. (In fact, I think he's been shown in a poorer light than Loki in Cates' run, it just fits into what people are used to seeing him do, so they don't see that it's 'wrong'.)
Right now I'm inclined to believe he's a good candidate for King, but I'm willing to entertain the notion that I'm wrong
But just to clarify (to both of you) I used the term 'Inciting Incident' rather than 'Call' intentionally for most of it, because while all calls to adventure are also inciting incidents, not all inciting incidents are calls to adventure. A Call is a specific type of inciting incident, that begins the Hero's Journey specifically. But Galactus was a Call, and the Black Winter was a Hero's Journey that was all dark and twisted, it followed all the beats, it was pretty textbook, except in the fact that it had terrible results. My thought is that the new 'Hero' would have faced the same scenarios, but dealt with them in a different way, leading to a better result. But we will likely never see the specifics of that.
So yeah, i used Call there intentionally, and I don't think it was a call to returning to villainy. Now, yes, I know that Thor was looking for Loki to be a spy for him, and that is part of why Loki refused, but that doesn't mean it can't also be a refused call. Loki could have told Thor he would help him, but not by using his old methods. He could have just straight up agreed, but once things got going, events took him in a different direction than what he or Thor thought, (it doesn't look like any spying was actually used by Throg, not like Mjolnir made it's actions a secret) etc. I mean, the Call isn't necessarily outlining exactly what the hero will do, it's just something that puts them on the Hero's Journey path, even if that's not exactly what they were expecting would happen. So it is still coming across as a refused call to me, though yeah, as with the King thing above, it depends on how future events pans out.
We have a few main possibilities here, Loki is made Champion while Thor remains King. Loki is made King while Thor continues to be champion. Or we could get some much more complicated scenario with a more complex changing of roles, like Angela is Queen, while Thor is War, and Loki Champion, or... well, lots of possibilities. A lot of this also depends on who dies, because after that, their role will be up for grabs as well. But I think the ones with the most foreshadowing are the first 2. I do think Loki was the INTENDED champion by fate, I mean we had that scene of Loki lifting Mjolnir and then Thor literally yanking it from his grasp, which i think is basically what has been going on during Black Winter and a bit after. But now that things are all mucked up, it could go lots of ways to fix things.