While there's plenty of humor, there are plenty of dark moments in Magnus Chase.
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The Sword of Summer
- Magnus taking on Surt because he couldn't stand the idea of his friends getting hurt. It costs him his life, but he gets revived in Valhalla.
- Annabeth. Annabeth didn’t know that he was missing for 2 years, and when she does, she goes to look for him immediately, only to find out he’s dead. And when she DOES see him, she can’t help him.
- Magnus’s fear of wolves is almost on a trigger level. Even seeing wolves scares him, and he has to face the worst wolf in the world.
- Magnus’s funeral. He is wearing blue, a color he hates, and in a church, when he’s an atheist. The real tearjerker: Magnus and his mom vowed to cremate each other, because they hate funerals like that. But Magnus never finds his mom’s ashes and Magnus can never be cremated by her.
- The obituary says that Magnus is survived by two uncles and a cousin, but they don’t even acknowledge his aunt and his two other cousins, Matthew and Bobby.
- Sam is aware of how the public perceives her, and even endured bullying at one of her former schools because of her religion.
- She's not even surprised that the people of Valhalla and even her fellow Valkyries don't trust her, but for the fact that she's a daughter of Loki, and not because of her religion.
- Even worse, her Islamic neighbors called her a bastard.
- Blitzen’s situation with his mother, Freya. It is very clear that Freya sees Blitzen as a mistake, and the sole reason he gets her jewelry is because she doesn’t want another kid. Blitzen is so ashamed of his background that he doesn’t even let Magnus know about his parentage and hates even going to Vanaheim.
- The desperation of Blitzen and the mossglow is sad. He knows he will probably die and even Hearthstone agrees. Magnus is incredibly guilty and can only pace around the room, thinking it’s his fault for dragging Blitzen into this after everything that he’s done for him.
- The reason why Blitzen doesn't want anything to do with Fenris? His father died checking to see if the wolf's chains were still holding.
- When Magnus revives Hearthstone, he can feel his inner turmoil and pain, wondering how he doesn’t scream all the time. He feels that he doesn’t have the Will to live. Then, when he wakes up, he calls Magnus his brother.
- Later in the book, Hearthstone's full backstory is revealed, and it is just all kinds of heartbreaking: his parents were unwilling to deal with Hearth's deafness due to the hardcore-perfectionist society light elves lived in, but then Hearth's brother died and things got even worse as they spent the rest of his life telling him the wrong brother had died. Somebody give this elf a hug...
- Otis’s depression is comedic, but it is actually saddening. He is killed every day to be eaten by Thor, which is pretty difficult. And literally no one cares about him, except for maybe Marvin.
- Magnus accepting that he won’t see his mom again.
- Sam's fear that every time she uses her shape-shifting ability Loki would gain more control over her.
- Despite her animosity towards Magnus and his group, Gunilla holds off Surt and his forces in order to give Magnus and his friends time to bind Fenris back in his chains. This leads to her and her comrades dying as a result.
- Halfborn almost dying.
- Randolph betrays Magnus because Loki promised to bring his wife and daughters back.
The Hammer of Thor
- Hearthstone tells Magnus that he had seen a vision of Blitzen's future, and if the dwarf were to join them on their quest, his fate would lead to him being mortally wounded. Magnus is obviously against this, but Blitzen tells him that if it was his fate, there was no way of avoiding it.
- Alex's fear that after he died, he would have been stuck in one gender for the rest of his days until Ragnarok. As someone who values their freedom of expression above all else, you can't really blame him.
- When Sam show's everyone Alex's heroic deed. He gets mauled by wolves in order to protect a homeless person who the wolves were targeting because he could see them and as Magnus wonders why Alex couldn't shift into something bigger than the wolves to beat them he is slowly overpowered and then killed. It was only until after Alex die did the homeless man finally gain enough courage to grab the knife and plunge it into the wolf before fleeing.
- Even worse, Alex was misgendered her entire life, and goes to Valhalla finding people calling her an Argr (a transphobic term for unmanly)and being transphobic in general. The thanes don’t even understand her and are outwardly by confused, and then tell her that she was great, even if she was an argr. Alex is angry by the end and doesn’t even care that everyone is cheering for her.
- No one trusted her initially for being a child of Loki, and everyone, even people who are Alex’s floormates, thinks that she is a spy for Loki. Valkyries guard her at her table and Magnus wonders if no one died so they wouldn’t have to be near her.
- Magnus hardly blames the man who refused to fight back because he understood that people like him who could see things normal mortals do would do everything in their power to deny that whatever they were seeing existed.
- Mr. Alderman forces Hearthstone to pay for killing his brother even though it wasn't really Hearth's fault, leading Hearth to be in a debt he would never be able to repay.
- Besides abusing his son, he even forces Hearth to write on a board instead of signing, even though he can read sign language. He just takes every moment he can to blame Hearth for everything that has gone wrong in his life.
- Amir nearly going mad from being exposed to the reality that the Norse myths are actually true, is heartbreaking to read, especially when Sam wanted to keep this part of her life hidden from him for various reasons.
- As Magnus heals Alex, he sees into her memories and realizes how painful her life had been when she was alive.
- Loki commanding Sam to die and then focuses his attention onto Alex and orders her to stop breathing.
- While Alex claims later that she wasn't under Loki's control and was acting to buy time, the fear Magnus sees in her eyes is enough to comfort her.
- Magnus is forced to watch his uncle Randolph die as Loki finally breaks free from his chains.
- Sigyn. She is perhaps the biggest Woobie in Norse Mythology, if not flat out all mythology. Sigyn holds a goblet over Loki's head to keep the poison from the serpent that drips venom onto Loki's face - and is forced to regularly dispose of the cup everytime it's full so it doesn't hurt her husband. By the way, her husband is also bound with the entrails of his sons - his sons with HER. What's extra Woobieish with her? She wasn't sentenced to do this by the other gods... she does this by CHOICE. Knowing this, before Riordan's portrayal, you're already in for a Tear Jerker, but Riordan manages to make her even more of one...
- In this particular universe? Loki had been able to project himself... and he has used this opportunity not to atone for his sins but by causing more mischief and by cheating on her. And what's more, Loki proceeds to insult her all the time and treats her very horribly. The grief of this has caused her to become essentially an Empty Shell, and despite all of this, she still follows him.
The Ship of the Dead
- Mr. Alderman has become so depraved by the ring's influence that he had turned into a form that reflected how ugly he was inside, a dragon. Magnus says that even after killing him, his body seemed content to stay a dragon and not return to his original elven form.
- Magnus is even horrified to see that the only part of Mr. Alderman that he could recognize was the former elf's hair.
- Hearthstone uses the rune he had left at the well in order to summon the spirit of his brother Andiron to convince Mr. Alderman to let go of the ring. Hearth's father rages at this and calls his son a traitor for disrespecting the memory of his little brother.
- Despite all of the abuse his father gave, it seemed like Hearth really wanted to give him a second chance, which even his brother admits wasn't worth his time.
- Andiron signing to Hearthstone that he made a wish on the well to be like Hearth, because he always kind and strong.
- Magnus seeing more of Alex's memories and one is of her father disowning her and throwing her out of the house. One of the reasons is because she refused to take over the family pottery business out of respect for her grandfather's lessons, and because her father said Alex couldn't act "normal". Many who are afraid to come out have probably either experienced this rejection, or fear it.
- The experience is even worse because Alex was bloody and bruised, while her father is screaming at her. Alex tells him: “I am normal, father.”, which is the worst insult she could think of. Alex’s father tells her that she won’t be getting any more money, and it would be going to his so called “real children”. And Magnus watches the whole thing in his dream, unable to protect her.
- Mallory had died trying to disarm a bomb in a school bus that she had set herself, and is angry when her mother Frigg foresaw her death and gave her knives that were useless to stop the explosion.
- Frigg even apologizes for never seeing Mallory and how she wished she could have known her father the way she did. Before he began to drink. Mallory quietly fumes at this.
- The whetstone's use, to be used against giant slaves, tricking them into killing each other for the stone in order for them to be free of their job.
- When Magnus and Alex are walking through Niflheim, Magnus looks at Alex, saying her cough sounds like a smoker’s cough and thinking that she should eat, and that she’s wasting away.
- As Magnus passes a cave entrance to Helheim, he hears Randolph, his wife, daughters, and also his mother encouraging him to join them. It's not clear if they were real or a trick by Hel.
- Alex hears her grandfather and a friend named Adrian who had committed suicide. Magnus notes by her tone that the way she called Adrian a "friend" was "loading the word with all sorts of possible meanings".
- Sigyn, still the same Empty Shell and The Voiceless she was in the previous book, once again is still in not much of a better condition... but even she turns on Loki, just staring at Magnus as if letting him know he has her support. Even she abandons Loki... and it takes Magnus reminding her before the gods even consider maybe going a little easier on her.
- When Magnus is celebrating his defeating of Loki at Vigridr, everyone is happy, but all Magnus can think about is that Alex and everyone else will die there.
- When Magnus finally contacts Annabeth to let her know he's okay, she sounds like she's crying on the other line and when he asks her what's wrong she says she'll tell him later.
- As revealed in The Burning Maze, which took place concurrently to Ship of the Dead, her reaction is due to having just heard about Jason's death.
- Magnus and the others using Randolph's mansion as a homeless shelter, knowing full well what it was like to be in their shoes.
