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In The Avengers (2012), during the scene in which Loki is imprisoned aboard the Helicarrier, Black Widow interrogates him and at the end of the exchange takes place:

Black Widow: You're a monster.

Loki: Oh, no. You brought the monster.

Black Widow: So, Banner. That's your play.

Loki: What?

With the "What?" indicating confusion as his expression seems to indicate:

Image of Loki's reaction

However, I'm not entirely convinced Loki did so accidentally, for a number of reasons:

  • It didn't make a difference that she knew, as it was too late to stop him. Loki did successfully escape, though the Helicarrier didn't crash as he may have intended due to Tony fixing the rotor. Them knowing his plan also didn't lead to them fixing the Helicarrier so really it achieved nothing.
  • As it says on the Marvel Wiki, Loki is "The Asgardian God of Mischief, Madness and Evil! Beware the Treachery of Loki!", which doesn't really hold up if he can be tricked so easily by a puny mortal girl.
  • It got her to leave mere minutes before his plan was to be set in motion, which meant she wouldn't be in the way when he planned to escape.

Is there any evidence which would prove whether Black Widow really tricked Loki into revealing his plans or this was simply another step in Loki's plan?

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    I always thought the same thing, how could the trickster himself be tricked by her? But, her skills are in fact to get information, so...
    – DustinDavis
    Commented Aug 10, 2014 at 2:27
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    I think it was meant as a situation wherein he got fooled. There was nothing to suggest otherwise by his reactions in the scene. This seemed to be a "character moment" for her to show off her skill at manipulation and gain the audience's respect.
    – Meat Trademark
    Commented Aug 10, 2014 at 8:43
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    Yea, the What seems more of a wtf are you talking about instead of a damn you found out my plan type of exasperation.
    – cde
    Commented Sep 21, 2015 at 20:11
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    Please don’t use code formatting for quotation; quotation marks do the job just fine, and code formatting makes the computer think the text is code—not so big a deal in a traditional browser, but a serious one for alternative browsers, e.g. screen-readers for the blind. They may attempt to treat the text as code, which may make the text much more difficult to understand (for instance, some read code letter-by-letter).
    – KRyan
    Commented Sep 26, 2016 at 15:34

2 Answers 2

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Yes, she did.

First of all, I agree that Black Widow's discovery didn't help The Avengers that much, since it was just too late to really act on anything. However, I also can't see how this really helped Loki and what his motivation for revealing that to her would have been. (Though, I admit that I didn't completely get how The Hulk was such an important part of Loki's plan at all. The whole matter of this conversation seemed a little forced to me.)

Furthermore, he wasn't tricked by any "puny mortal girl", but by Black Widow, who is in fact "a spy and not a soldier", and not a bad spy after all. While being not bad at combat, she is established as an excellent spy and interrogator. This is emphasized as soon as her first scene in the movie, when she is "interrogating" those Russian gangsters while she is actually the one bound and supposedly interrogated by them, albeit "those idiots being about to tell her everything". So if there's anything she excels at, it's clever interrogation and this scene with Loki and the revelation that she was playing along all the time was exactly made as that kind of "Wow!"-effect to reinforce this aspect of her character.

And exactly because of this purpose of that scene and the fact that we don't know if this was part of Loki's plan and the fact that this scene makes Back Widow's victory that obvious, I don't have any reason to believe this double play to actually have been a triple play. The Avengers is a rather straight-to-the-point movie that doesn't rely on too subtle of dialogue aspects. I don't say it is a dumb movie or that it can't employ subtle hints and character aspects, but Loki actually doing a triple play in this conversation without the slightest hint of this would just not fit at all, be this just a little smile on his face after Black Widow left or a more elaborate comment later in the movie that this conversation played out as he wanted. The way this scene played out actually is the evidence that Black Widow tricked Loki.

I agree that I don't present any hard proof for one side or the other, but this is exactly the reason why I think there is not more to this scene than presented to us in the movie as that kind of ambiguity would not be coherent with the rest of the movie's style. The burden of proof that this served Loki any purpose and that he only played the surprised one thus lies completely on anyone claiming this, and for this I don't see any sufficiently obvious evidence in the movie at all.

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    Agreed. Like you I think its a little ambiguous how important The Hulk was to Loki's plans. I think the idea is to deliver the scepter to The Avengers. Given his expertise in particle physics, it would be expected that Banner would be involved in investigating it. I think the scepter is designed to aggravate negative emotions, increasing tension and irritability in the entire Avengers, as evidenced by the scene with them arguing in the lab. It seems a little 'open to chance' but the idea is that The Hulk will help destroy the helicarrier and split the Avengers up.
    – iandotkelly ♦
    Commented Sep 26, 2016 at 17:02
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    Someone explain how he gave something away at all? All he revealed, if anything, is that he knows of the hulk and knows he’s there. How does revealing that tell her his plan or give her any kind of advantage when he’s already locked up and they already know Bruce is a risk?
    – xr280xr
    Commented Oct 30, 2022 at 14:04
  • @xr280xr, it's a pure speculation, in addition to the interpretation of these words as revelatory one can offer as many interpretations as one's imagination allows. And it's a good question indeed how this 'revelation' is supposed to provide news. As if without the villain mentioning monsters, they couldn't suspect he's trying to unleash them and didn't have to take all available preventive measures. And even if Loki actually provided any useful information, how could they be certain that it says all about his plans? Talking to him longer would supply potentially any amount of additional info.
    – Noir
    Commented Jul 8, 2023 at 1:02
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I think she doesn't trick him, but she believes she did because that's what Loki intended. Think about it:

  • Loki is the God of Mischief.
  • Before the Black Widow goes to interrogate Loki, Fury comments that
    Loki seems to be the only one on the helicarrier who wants to be
    there, suggesting Loki's actually in more control of the situation than anyone suspects.
  • Upon the Black Widow's arrival, Loki comments that he expected her to be sent after Fury tried other tactics, to befriend him and then trick him. Meaning he was expecting her (and her tricks) all along.
  • As soon as Loki 'slips' and suggests to the Black Widow that Hulk is a primary part of his plan (but gives no further information) she
    immediately goes and gets Fury, taking the above expression/reaction as confirmation that she succeeded. Then, she and Fury go trigger the Hulk based on this information.
  • While the others are busy with the Hulk, Loki quietly lets himself out of his cell, escapes the helicarrier, and continues with his plans.

Considering the fact that Loki has nearly 1,000 years on Black Widow and Fury, I don't think its all that surprising. SHIELD is used to dealing with mortal men, not demigods/aliens, and especially not Loki.

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