Wolfgang Puck and the God of Mischief

It sounds like a stretch at first glance – what does celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck have to do with Loki, the Norse God of Mischief?

- Pic from: CinemaBlend

Well, for starters, both have exploded onto the streaming service Disney+ recently – Chef Puck in his documentary, Wolfgang, and the Norse God via his Marvel/Disney incarnation in Loki.

I have been a Marvel fan since I first picked up old second-or-third-hand copies of Spider-Man back in the late 1980’s. While Wolfgang’s celebrity was on the rise, I was growing up and I can’t remember seeing him on my TV at all. As an adult, now I can’t get enough of good cooking shows and I stumbled across The Chef Show and the Chef movie via Disney’s rival streaming service, Netflix.

Marvel alumni actor and director, Jon Favreau, made a wonderful film about cooking and the background life of a chef behind the scenes. The story was a masterpiece, one I can’t get enough of, because of its rich human elements. Even as a teacher, it made me think of giving it all up and buying a food truck – a decision I am glad to say I did not make. All that being said, I stumbled across the spin-off hit The Chef Show first, and loved the simple, wonderful cooking done by Jon and his cooking mentor, Chef Roy Choi. I have even tried to emulate a few of the dishes themselves a few times – with varying degrees of success. And, to come full circle, one of the episodes in the first season showed Jon cooking for the illustrious Chef Wolfgang Puck. He looked and sounded familiar, but I couldn't say from where. Wolfgang took Jon to task over an omelette and the whole thing was amazing to me – an omelette!! It’s just scrambled eggs untouched, right? Apparently, I was wrong about that too!

Cut forward a year or two and I am enjoying the spectacle of Marvel’s latest TV juggernaut, Loki, with my eldest daughter – another die-hard Marvel fan who loves this character deeply. Loki’s charisma and charm are wonderful to watch and the journey for him from being a straight-up villain to a sort of misunderstood person trying to be a hero is always fun to watch. Actor Tom Hiddleston is wonderfully enticing. You almost forget he’s the bad guy, forget that we are told that he killed 80-something people his first couple of days on Earth (in Marvel’s The Avengers), that he constantly tries to make a kingdom for himself and that he desperately clawed to get out of his brother’s shadow to outdo his perfect sibling at last.

In the Loki show, this version of Loki is not the one we originally see throughout the Thor and Avengers films, who lived and died and lived and died again. He is what they call a "Variant" – namely a chronal anomaly, an anachronism, or what the Distinguished Competition at DC’s The Flash TV series call a “Time Remnant” – a character out of time, born into a timeline that shouldn’t have existed and from which he has escaped. He’s a version of Loki pre-Thor: Ragnarok, and pre-Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. In short, this is Loki before he got to become a more sympathetic character and had begun to try to be a hero.

In one of the earliest scenes in the series, Owen Wilson’s outstanding character, the Time Variance Authority’s Agent Mobius, tells the Variant Loki that up until the moment where he stole the Tesseract (in Avengers: Endgame), Loki had always lived his life within his set path. Loki responds by saying, “I live within whatever path I choose!”, to which Mobius replies, “Sure you do.” (For those playing at home, this is in Loki - Episode 1: Glorious Purpose).

Mobius goes on to show Loki the path which he should have lived on – the life and death of the original Loki in the film series. Mobius taunts Loki with the line, “It’s funny, for someone born to rule, you sure do lose a lot. You might even say it’s in your nature.” Mobius pushes Loki to reflect on how much he seems to like hurting people. He asks Loki to remind him what he is the god of, saying: “Of what, again? Mischief, right? I don’t see anything very mischievous about this.”

Mobius shows the Variant how the real Loki was supposed to make a decision that ultimately led to his mother’s death. When Loki denies that this ever happened, Mobius replies, “It is true! That’s the proper flow of time and it happens again and again and again, because it’s supposed to, because it has to!”

Mobius goes on to say, “You weren’t born to be king, Loki. You were born to cause pain and suffering and death. That’s how it is, that’s how it was, that’s how it will be. All so that others can achieve their best versions of themselves”. Mobius shows Loki the Avengers, prompting Loki to consider his role in bringing this team together in opposition to him – becoming who they were meant to be, because Loki was there to prompt them to greatness.

"All so that others can achieve their best versions of themselves."

Later, Loki sees how his father was to tell both sons how much he loved them before he died, how Thor and Loki found common ground and forgiveness for each other (both scenes from Thor: Ragnarok) and finally how Loki, in a moment of redemption, was supposed to sacrifice himself to attempt to save his brother Thor and half the people of the universe from the Mad Titan Thanos (Avengers: Infinity War).

The whole scene serves to break the Loki Variant out of the arrogant, cruel mask that he has wrapped around himself, and to prompt him to find the hero within. Loki tells Mobius, “I don’t enjoy hurting people. I don’t enjoy it. I do it because I have to – because I’ve had to… Because it’s part of the illusion. It’s the cruel elaborate trick, conjured by the weak to inspire fear”, to which Mobius concludes that it’s, “A desperate play for control.” Loki says that he sees himself as a villain, but Mobius replies that he does not see it like that. He sees Loki as being able to be anything that he can set his mind to be – even a hero.

And so begins this version of Loki’s Hero’s Journey. While he moves through the series as the trickster we have all come to expect, he does try to help, to do better, to serve justice more than himself.

And, what, you might ask, does any of that have to do with the inimitable Wolfgang Puck?

Well, strap in and I will tell you.

I re-watched the latest episode of Loki tonight and when it finished, I clicked on the link next to it on my Disney+ feed. It looked an awful lot like this:

- From the Disney+ New Release menu

I don’t know if that is what it looks like to everyone, or whether this has just popped up for me, given my eclectic search history on the platform, but there it was.

And it was there that I watched the story of the young Wolfgang Puck. Raised in a house ruled over by his abusive step-father, Wolfgang was forced to hear from a very young age that in the eyes of others he would never be good enough, that he would never succeed and that he would never amount to anything. He started an apprenticeship in a kitchen at a very young age and was promptly fired. While he reflected on what this meant, he was faced with a decision. Were they right? Would he, in fact, never amount to anything? Or could he refuse to buy into the narrative that others set for him?

He simply refused. He showed up at work the next day and refused to leave. The owner moved him to a different kitchen and the young Wolfgang realised the power of the lesson that he had learned. The easier road had been to accept what others had said and to give up. He had chosen instead to refuse and it has – overall – worked for him.

Throughout his life, this philosophy appears to have dogged him. He was spurred on by that haunting feeling that, in some ways, they were all right – that he really was not good enough. But he took that insidious, hurtful knife and turned it into his own weapon. He became the best at what he did. When he met other people who downplayed his talent, and who took the credit for themselves, he pushed through and showed them all that he was worthy.

Wolfgang is recognised as the first of the celebrity chefs, the first to popularise the European styles of food preparation in America for common consumption, the first to bring the love of food back to the people and the first famed for bringing the kitchen out of the shadows and into the open, both in the restaurant itself and in the media-crazed culture outside of it.

- Pic from: Forbes

And throughout this documentary, one thing jumped out very clearly to me – that without the impetus from a horribly abusive and demeaning step-father, it is unlikely that the young Wolfgang would have ever found the drive to escape, to defy expectations and to truly be everything he could be. The documentary is very clear on the sacrifices that this has cost him along the way – such as two failed marriages and an absence from the lives of his young family due to the ridiculous hours he had to work to sustain his thriving businesses.

Sacrifice.

Yes, it is a tale of sacrifice, all in all. I felt that very strongly. I felt the older Wolfgang’s regret at the things he had given up to reach the place that he is now in; something he was trying very hard to make amends for today, by being present in the lives of his family now.

It’s a familiar tale common to those of us who excel to be the best in their chosen field. There’s a tenacity, a drive, that pushes them past the opinions of their detractors, past the opportunities to take the easier path and to bow out when challenged. I look at it and admire what it takes to be the best.

I also look at the sacrifices and regret nothing in my own journey. Yes, I have taken that easy path before, I have accepted defeat and I have given up. I’ll never be that person at “the top of the game”. And do you know what? I am one-hundred percent okay with that. I have not had to sacrifice my family time, I have never pushed another person past their breaking point to force them to be better than they might have been without me. I have never been a Loki, a cruel step-father, a tyrant, in the lives of those around me. And I have never been the victim of one of them either.

But I marvel at those who do endure those things and still refuse to be cowed, those who get back up over and over again – like their Marvel counterparts in Captain America and Captain Marvel, who get repeatedly knocked down and yet rise up against the odds every time to say, “I can do this all day”. Or like Doctor Strange who acknowledges that he can never win, and says instead, “But I can lose again. And again, and again, and again, forever,” until that tenacity becomes a victory in and of itself.

And that I can do.

These inspirational stories, both real and imagined, help us to face hardship, pain and failure and to force ourselves forward, to make ourselves and the world around us a better place.

I hope Wolfgang can look back at his own versions of Loki in his life - those harsh, hurtful menaces who employed that same “cruel elaborate trick, conjured by the weak to inspire fear” against him - and see that for all their attempts to break him, all they achieved was to make him stronger in the end. They made him strive to prove them wrong and in that, like Loki was for the Avengers, their role in his life forced him to become the best version of himself.

So, as Stan Lee might’ve ended, that is:

‘Nuff said…

NOTE: The pictures and videos used here have been sourced from different internet sites, always linked to under the picture. In the case of comic panels, the original issue numbers and creators are listed, as well as the company that owns them. All rights remain with the original creators and have been used here for entertainment and educational purposes only.