Why did Loki have to die? I may be somewhat hypocritical, since I have no problem with Romanoff and Stark dying, and they're also great characters. And I have no idea why their deaths felt right, but Loki's somehow didn't.
shareLoki died in order to further develop Thanos as the new baddie, and to give closure to the narrative arc from The Avengers in which Loki served at the behalf of Thanos and ultimately failed.
shareI was really annoyed by his death too and that it happened at the very beginning of the movie, he’s a favorite character and they didn’t handle it well. I’ll be interested to see how they handle it in the Disney Chanel’s show about Loki but future Thor movies will not be enjoyable for me without him.
shareDoesn't Loki always die? Even in the Thor movies he did.
He also wasn't dead during the last Thor movie
Because they had to undo quickly 3 relatively important points of the immediately previous movie:
Ragnarok: Asgard is not a place, it's the people! And we saved the people so we saved Asgard, yay!
Infinity War: Kills half of the Asgardians in the first 10 minutes
Ragnarok: Thor has found a new way to tap into his power, now he's truly the God of Thunder and doesn't even need his hammer!
Infinity War: Purees Thor off-screen in the first 10 minutes. Then makes a really big deal of him needing his hammer back.
Ragnarok: Hah guess what, Loki was not actually dead! And his relationship with Thor is important, look at them eventually getting along!
Infinity War: Kills Loki in the first 10 minutes.
*eye roll*
(not sure it was precisely 10 minutes or more)