The enduring mystique of DB Cooper, from documentaries to the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Marvel fans who witnessed the debut of the new time travel series “Loki” were treated to a piece of revisionist history: the unmasking of the god of mischief himself as none other than DB Cooper. That’s right – our country’s most notorious air pirate is now part of the MCU.

In the series premiere of the new Disney + show, which follows the antics of God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston) after escaping to an alternate timeline during the chaotic “Endgame” time heist of the Avengers, Loki becomes a fun little highlight role of . shown his greatest hits in his life by Mobius (Owen Wilson), an agent for a mysterious and all-powerful entity called the Time Variance Authority (TVA). In this flashback, Loki repeats one of his pranks inspired by his brother Thor (Chris Hemsworth), which incidentally involves hijacking a plane for a massive ransom, parachuting it, and magically bringing it back to Asgard via Bifrost to become.

“You were DB Cooper!” exclaims Möbius in disbelief. Loki seems to shake it off: “I was young and I lost a bet against Thor,” he replies very casually before asking, “Where was the TVA when I got involved in these men’s affairs?”

Loki’s little “prank” exactly mirrors the real mystery of a man named DB Cooper, whom the Disney + series finally seems to “solve”. And while that is likely not to be the case, there is no evidence that DB Cooper was not the Asgardian god.

The real DB Cooper

According to DB Cooper legend, on November 24, 1971, a man known by the pseudonym Dan Cooper showed a flight attendant a note on a plane that was already in the air from Seattle to Portland stating that he was had a bomb. After the flight attendant, a woman named Florence Schaffner, checked his briefcase and confirmed that the man actually had a bomb, she showed the note to Captain William A. Scott. The note called for four parachutes and a $ 200,000 ransom. He reportedly asked for not one but four parachutes to create suspicions that he might force a hostage or hostages to jump with him and to ensure that he was not provided with deliberately sabotaged equipment.

Scott landed the plane back in Seattle to allow all passengers to disembark while only four members of the flight crew, including the captain and Cooper, remained on board. Cooper ordered the pilot to fly the plane towards Mexico City and a few hours later, somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Cooper used his given parachute and got out of the tail of the plane with the $ 200,000 in tow. The pilot eventually landed the plane in Reno without Cooper.

The FBI subsequently investigated the mysterious case, which they named NORJACK, from 1971 until the case closed just five years ago in 2016. Some believed Cooper died when a child discovered a package of $ 20 bills near Vancouver, Washington, in February. which matched the serial numbers on the ransom Cooper had received. However, the remains of the man who the media later dubbed DB Cooper were never found.

By 1976, the FBI had identified more than 800 potential suspects, all of whom were eventually released. Additionally, “the FBI looked but couldn’t find anyone who went missing that weekend,” which led some to believe that whoever Cooper was, upon getting off, managed to quietly get back to his daily life. Others – namely the FBI – were more skeptical.

“No experienced skydiver would have jumped in the pitch black night, in the rain, with a wind of 280 km / h in loafers and a trench coat. It was just too risky. He also missed the fact that his reserve parachute was only for training.” and was sewn up, something a skilled skydiver would have checked, “wrote Special Agent Larry Carr, who led the investigative team on Cooper’s case from 2006 to its resolution in 2016, in a report.

The continuing appeal of DB Cooper

While younger viewers of the show may not have recognized the sunglasses with the character – leading to frantic Googling of “Who is DB Cooper?” – Those familiar with the Skyjacker can add “Loki” to the ongoing way in which pop culture tried almost half a century later to grapple with the unsolved mystery.

Regardless of what happened to the real DB Cooper, its story lived on in popular imagination. Even before “Loki”, Cooper worked for years in storylines in shows such as “Prison Break”, “Journeymen”, “Renegade”, “30 Rock”, “Drunk History” and others. Its story was the subject of the 1981 film “The Pursuit of DB Cooper” and the 2020 documentary “The Mystery of DB Cooper”.

While the mystery of the man’s identity is part of the story’s enduring appeal, the symbolism of Cooper’s robbery instantly made him a hero. He had committed an impeccable crime that took courage, did not physically injure victims, took money from a large company during an economic recession – and he got away with it. In many ways, this is the very “little dude, stick it out” mentality that drives many popular pirated software.

We may never know what really happened to DB Cooper, but the shapeshifting Lokis prank only adds to the story’s ongoing romance with the kidnapper, a man who is a void, and allows us to fantasize about the perfect crime and identify with it.

New episodes of “Loki” appear on Disney + Wednesdays.