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Diagnostically, bipolar is divided into two types. Type I bipolar involves intense mania: feeling out of control and having delusions. Type II involves more depression but a lower level of mania (hypomania) where you don’t lose touch with reality.
Type II seems to fit Loki best, as in The Avengers his feelings are obviously extreme, but his behaviour is under his control, and the actual madness is attributable to the sceptre.
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THOR I
Bipolar often starts when you’re a teenager, and the depression comes first. Young Loki seems depressed at the start of Thor: brooding, quiet and unsure of himself. Full-on mania or hypomania comes later, often when triggered by some event, and the stress of what happens in the movie could certainly do that, so by the time of the fight on the Bifrost he’s both desperate because of all the ways he’s been provoked, and because he’s hypomanic.
Contrary to popular belief, bipolar episodes don’t have to be long, obvious, or neatly divided into Up and Down, though they often are some or all of those things. Unless a person becomes psychotic (as in bipolar I), bipolar can hide in plain sight, seeming like an extreme but nevertheless logical response to events. This disorder tailors its hell to the individual.
Manic and depressive symptoms can sometimes happen at the same time, producing a horrible state of mind full of rage and dread and self-loathing and helplessness tumbling over each other (‘mixed state’). You’re frantic with energy but also suicidal. That certainly fits with Loki letting himself fall into the abyss at the end of Thor.
Child Loki headcanons
One reason he’s quite so reticent is that he’s used to hiding what’s wrong with him, from family and ‘friends’ who would not be sympathetic. Even before having a full bipolar episode you can have unstable and unusually intense feelings. Loki probably opened up to Frigga at some point, and got fobbed off. Thor would have realised on some level that this was a serious problem and not known how to deal except by ignoring it. It’s hard to imagine Odin deigning to pay any attention at all.
The gaslighting, and macho Asgardian culture, led Loki to be still more ashamed and secretive. Huge, distorted, irrational scary feelings that he can’t share are just one more reason for him to feel he’s a monster.
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THE AVENGERS MOVIE
Frantic energy, sleep deprivation, driving your body past its limits, believing you’re set apart by special knowledge or a glorious purpose, disdain for ants, uncontrollable energy, arrogant glee, aggression, lack of inhibition, recklessness, exuding magnetic sexuality, laying waste to everything around you all the while visibly disintegrating, with a terrible corrosive self-hatred underlying it all… That's textbook (hypo)mania!
“To have known the glory, violence and banality of such an experience is corrupting” – Robert Lowell (a famously bipolar poet).
The torture inflicted on Loki prior to the film slams his triggers so hard that he rockets into a kind of excruciating euphoria that fuses with his physical suffering. His torturers don’t fully understand the exact nature of the effect on him, but they’re happy to exploit it. At the same time, a bipolar Loki would be used to violently intense feelings – it’s just part of being a monster, after all – and that further hinders him from understanding he’s being manipulated.
Adult Loki headcanons
Loki can create illusions to match his extremes of mood, so that the mood seems less utterly irrational and thus a little less frightening. His mother taught him to conjure fireworks and other small, exquisite beauties in his hands. Sometimes when he’s feeling lost in his head he conjures them for himself and imagines the bursts and sparkles are his thoughts and feelings; dramatic and intense but transformed into something beautiful.
Bipolar disorder (and ‘madness’ in general, but particularly bipolar), is often associated with high intelligence. This is controversial, but it’s an idea that persists, and would certainly fit Loki. What’s definitely true is that hypomania encourages divergent thinking – such as might lead to innovative plotting or acts of mischief.
Mischief comes naturally to him, but he actively cultivates a reputation as a trickster and deceiver in part because it makes the aspects of himself that he can’t that he can’t control seem intentional – less frightening for him, and while it makes people angry with him it hides his weaknesses in plain sight.
Loki has some protracted episodes of depression and hypomania but also a lot of mixed states. This fuels how changeable he is, and the ugly jumble of warped energy contributes to his sharp edges and sarcasm.
Sometimes he acts manic to hide in plain view the fact that he really is manic and can’t control it.
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THE DARK WORLD
At first Loki seems remarkably sane for someone who has already undergone months of solitary confinement. This actually makes sense for a person used to regulating extreme moods and facing down despair: he’s away from the stresses and triggers of daily life and it’s giving his overstimulated brain a rest.
Of course, when he breaks, he’s going to break HARD.
In the film Loki’s breakdown has external causes… but nevertheless alternately slumping bloodstained against the wall and screaming in intolerable mental pain looks a lot like extreme depression, especially the foul, dysphoric, agitated brew that isn’t exclusive to bipolar but most commonly comes with it. No hope, no future, no way out, your life in wreckage around you, inescapable relentless glare slicing into your mind, the impossibility of meaningful human contact and – often – a lack of sympathy or understanding from others. And meltdown and confinement in a bare room under observation is a traumatic reality or a deep fear for many people.
Loki wouldn’t need to be bipolar to have his breakdown – there is plentiful external provocation – but a touch of it would certainly help. The scene is intensely painful and harrowing/healing (what’s the difference? idk) to watch if you’ve known a similar state yourself.
Loki’s grief and rage could be a response to actual events… but, while anyone would be glad to be broken out of jail, if they’d been in that state a few hours ago, would they be grinning, joking and virtually bouncing around? Nope. Stress has slammed Loki’s hypomania button again.
Ta-daaaa!
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IN CONCLUSION...
‘Are you mad?’ – Thor ‘Possibly!’ – Loki
‘Satisfaction is not in my nature.’ – Loki
‘Loki’s grave imbalance.’ – Thor
Could these things be any better a fit for bipolar?