#sif claimed he'd always been jealous of thor but hogun was the only one to imply that loki might have been the traitor

[evilkitten3]

i love heimdall so i tend to give him the benefit of the doubt, but i'm perfectly willing to admit that that's my own bias talking (idris elba is one damn handsome man. y'all should be glad i don't watch the wire; who knows what i'd be saying about the guy he plays there)

my less serious theory is that heimdall just really freaking loves committing treason. and that him committing treason has kept the realms from falling into chaos multiple times (that part is canonically true, technically)

my more serious theory is that, while sif and the w3 didn't have any solid evidence to point at loki being behind All The Things, heimdall actually kinda did– namely, that he couldn't see him during a time when something was clearly happening. and for a guy who can see everybody all the time, that's probably pretty noticable.

also, if the casket was in loki's magic pockets, it wouldn't really matter whether he thought he'd need it or not. it would've been accessible either way– and in his eyes, it's his anyway. i don't fully agree with that, but i can see where he's coming from.

moreover, while loki hasn't explicitly said "yes i'm the bad guy bwahahahaha", he's also not been trying too hard to hide it either. my thought there is that he figured that since heimdall kinda already knew, it was a waste of time trying to convince him otherwise (plus loki was having a massive mental breakdown and was very much not thinking clearly by then).

by the time heimdall actually takes action, though, it's pretty clear that loki is up to no good– and the most logical assumption is a power grab. thor suddenly gets banished after a bunch of frost giants break in with help from a mysterious insider, then odin falls into a coma while loki is yelling at him, then frigga decides to grant loki stewardship despite this clearly coming out of nowhere? the whole thing looks like loki decided "y'know what, i wanna be king. fuck everybody else, my throne now".

we the audience know better bc we're watching him stockpiling his mental health issues, but the other characters don't know that. from heimdall's point of view, he was trying to stop a one-man coup.

i honestly don't think it had anything to do with loki being jotun. heimdall is never shown to have any bias against anyone based on species (my personal hc for this is that each of his moms came from a different realm bc c'mon it's such a cool idea. nine realms, nine moms? it fits!!!), even asgard's enemies.

as for his relationship with loki... frankly, we never see them interact pre-coronation, since it happened so early on, so we have no idea if heimdall was suspicious of loki before that or not. personally, though, i don't think so. actually, i think heimdall is somewhat fond of him, in his own way: he allows loki's group passage to jotunheim rather than going to odin with his suspicions (given that truth serums exist in the marvel universe and in the mcu specifically, this one would've been the obvious solution), his first thought upon thor asking for helping tdw is "hey how about go get your brother", and he doesn't seem remotely annoyed with loki at all in t3 for any of the unpleasantness between them.

(also guys i know we all love loki but he absolutely was committing treason here. he was only temp king, not the real deal, and i think it's pretty clear that odin, regardless of how you see him as a person or a father, wouldn't have been ok with this)