Avengers: Doomsday Could Finally Do Right By Thor
The God of Thunder is making the best out of a bungled storyline.
Chris Hemsworth’s Thor may be the most tragically misunderstood character in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. At the very least, he’s the most inconsistent: he suffers the most from Marvel’s episodic approach, with each writer and director delivering a different idea of his character. Kenneth Branagh introduced Thor as an upstart prince who spoke in Shakespearean verse; those who followed used him as either comic relief or a punching bag, saddling him with one tragedy after the next in lieu of true character development.
For every attempt to introduce some true pathos — like his grappling with grief and failure in Avengers: Infinity War — it’s swiftly undermined by another bizarre, surface-level pivot. He loses one of his eyes in a battle with his half-sister, Hela (Cate Blanchett); he gets that eye back two movies later. He goes on a whole odyssey to create a new weapon after his mythical hammer, Mjolnir, is smashed to pieces, but Mjolnir returns before long, too. He falls into a depression after losing the fight with Thanos (Josh Brolin) and becomes “Fat Thor,” only to reclaim his superhero build in his next solo film. Marvel still has to answer for its crimes against Jane Foster, but that’s an issue for another day. The point is, nothing ever seems to matter for the God of Thunder... but his next appearance could finally make up for all that inconsistency.
That Thor: Love and Thunder was poised to be Thor’s swan song in the MCU felt like a mercy, even if it did fail on most levels. Its idea of an ending for Thor was satisfying in a way, even if it did saddle the character with another major new change: fatherhood. Love and Thunder implies that Thor is finally at peace, caring for Love (India Rose Hemsworth), the daughter of Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale). But with a new threat emerging in Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.) — who might look a lot like Thor’s late Avengers teammate, Tony Stark — that peace is threatened.
Fortunately, Avengers: Doomsday won’t treat his relationship with Love like an afterthought. In the latest trailer for the upcoming film (the second of four planned to tease a major team-up), it’s the reason that Thor suits up again. Rather than a rousing, tongue-in-cheek tone like that in the Love and Thunder trailers, Thor’s return here is subdued and serious. He’s praying to his late father, Odin, for good fortune in the battle to come. All he cares about is returning to Love, and to their new, peaceful life together — “a life untouched by the storm.”
Doomsday won’t make Thor the butt of the joke again.
If all goes to plan for Thor, Doomsday could be his true finale in the MCU. Love and Thunder couldn’t fully commit to the idea of his retirement — it showed him and Love diving headlong into danger together — but the Russo brothers, returning to direct both Doomsday and Secret Wars, have made that Thor’s ultimate goal. Their Thor wants this fight against Doom to be his last, but crucially, he also wants to survive it. He wants to return home, to teach Love “not battle, but stillness.” He’s even reclaimed his pseudo-Shakespearean way of speaking, signalling what could be a true return to Thor’s original tone.
For the first time in a long time, the sum of Thor’s choices seems to matter again. Doomsday can’t fix every inconsistency with his character, but at the very least, it can commit to the path previous films set out for him, rather than make a joke out of it. After 15 years of wasted or bungled development, Thor could finally reach his full potential — and not a moment too soon.
