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The following contains spoilers for Thor: Love and Thunder (2022).
Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) opens with a heartbreaking scene: the film’s antagonist Gorr (Christian Bale), desperately trying to take care of his daughter on their barren home planet, praying to his god Rapu, the Bringer of Light, that her suffering may end. She dies in his arms, leaving Gorr distraught until he comes across Rapu’s oasis. Unfortunately, Rapu demeans him, calling him foolish for ever believing in an eternal reward. In his grief, the Necrosword calls to Gorr and he takes it, becoming Gorr, the God-Butcher, killing Rapu and vowing that all gods must die. In no plain words, Love and Thunder makes its narrative about a crisis of faith for its antagonist.
Juxtaposed with Gorr are Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the Mighty Thor/Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who themselves are the very gods that Gorr is trying to butcher. It’s not shocking that in the midst of this story about a crisis of faith is one about terminal illness; six months prior to the events of Love and Thunder, Foster discovers that she is at stage four of an unnamed cancer. When it seems that treatments will not heal her, Jane hears the call of Thor’s former hammer, Mjölnir, which transforms her into the Mighty Thor. Beneath the guise of a hair metal, cross-universe road trip is a film that leads its audience to a number of surprising conclusions about how the boundaries of faith are formed.
Thor: Love And Thunder (2022; Taika Waititi)
Director Taika Waititi had a tall order to fulfill with his latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). His first MCU film, Thor: Ragnarok (2017), was an immediate critical and fan success — credited with single-handedly showing what the MCU could do differently in terms of tone, style, and character. Thor’s previous solo and team up films were bland and pseudo-Shakesperean until Waititi’s trademark style gave the flagship avengers a chance to be goofy despite its heavy story about colonialism and refugees. The instant success of Ragnarok meant Waititi was asked to return for the fourth Thor solo movie as its director.
Thus, Thor: Love and Thunder was created — albeit to a more mixed reception than Ragnarok’s lightning-in-a-bottle success (pun intended).
After its shattering opening scene with Gorr, Thor, and the Guardians of the Galaxy team up for a battle, Korg narrates to the audience that Thor has since given up on love and is dedicated to only being a fighter. Their ship receives numerous distress calls from across the galaxy about gods being killed by a being wielding the Necrosword, which Thor and the Guardians decide to answer. Thor rescues Lady Sif and brings her back to New Asgard, where their new king Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) is itching for an adventure. That adventure comes calling when Foster decides to travel to New Asgard and answer Mjölnir’s call, where she becomes the Mighty Thor and immediately gets thrown headfirst into battle against Gorr, who’s come to steal Thor’s Bifrost-summoning ax Stormbreaker.
When Asgard’s children are kidnapped, Thor and Foster decide to put past their romantic differences and go ask Zeus for help in raising an army of gods against Gorr with Valkyrie and Korg. They travel to Omnipotent City, the MCU’s pleasure planet for gods, but have their request rejected by Zeus, who thinks Gorr will never reach the fabled “Eternity.” The team instead steals Zeus’ thunderbolt, hoping that it will help them prevent Gorr from reaching Eternity and wishing for the death of all gods. On the journey to Gorr’s Shadow Realm, Foster and Thor have an emotional heart-to-heart about their former relationship and make up, where she reveals her cancer diagnosis to him. They lose their fight against Gorr and learn that he needs Stormbreaker to summon the Bifrost to Eternity.
Valkyrie and Foster are left badly injured after the battle, and Foster learns that each time she uses Mjölnir to become the Mighty Thor it prevents her chemo treatments from healing her. But determined to join Thor one last time, Foster follows Thor to Eternity and helps him destroy the Necrosword– though it brings her close to death. Gorr manages to reach Eternity, and in the last bid at reaching him, Thor and Foster ask Gorr to choose love and bring his daughter back instead of killing the gods. He relents, and dies in his daughter Love’s arms, making Thor promise to watch over her. Foster dies in Thor’s arms and finds herself in Valhalla, where she’s welcomed by Heimdall.
Loss Of Faith (And God-Butchering)
It is apparent from Gorr’s first scene in Love and Thunder that his religious trauma pushed him towards villainy. With faith and belief in God being remarkably personal and all-consuming throughout history both in and out of fiction, it’s justifiable that it’d be the same for Gorr. Even when Gorr’s planet was destroyed, along with almost all of its inhabitants — and when his daughter, Love, met an untimely death — he still prayed to Rapu for salvation. For him, all the struggling in the universe would be worth it for Rapu’s eternal reward of a painless afterlife — similar to what the Christian faith promises its believers, too. Gorr is obviously heartbroken and traumatized by his entire faith system crashing down before his eyes, even though he had what most believers don’t ever get: a face-to-face meeting with his god.
In his religious trauma and crisis of faith, Gorr is susceptible to the Necrosword’s infernal request to help it kill all gods. The Necrosword is implied to infect its wielders and corrupt them, much like the Darkhold in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Raimi 2022). Because of his disillusionment with Rapu’s promise, and tangetiablly, the ability of any god to fulfill their promises to their believers, Gorr picks up the Necrosword to get his revenge. Through Gorr, Waititi paints a picture of how destructive forces of anger and revenge are the enemy of faith and love – one that follows him until his final scene. For the MCU to give such a vulnerable and human story to its villain, where the loss of a child leads to a breakdown of faith and anger at God, is not just shocking but makes Gorr one of the franchise’s most rounded, captivating villains if not characters.
The Omnipotent City sequence only proves Gorr’s point that the gods are self-centered and hedonistic. Zeus and the gods live in their flashy city, care only about the annual orgy, and laugh at Thor for wanting to raise an army against Gorr’s reign of terror. Thor has a momentary crisis during his audience with Zeus, whom he earlier describes to Foster as his own hero and idol. What this sequence also does for Love and Thunder is to prove that the gods are every bit as shameful and cowardly as Gorr believes they are, therein validating his vow. Thor’s momentary loss of faith after his meeting with Zeus isn’t all-consuming like Gorr’s, though.
If anything, it reminds him of his own godly duties to the Asgardians and to the galaxy. In the final act, Thor also allows the children to fight for their own freedom, temporarily imbuing them with the power of Thor. He consistently goes above and beyond to help rescue his subjects, the way a god should.
Representing Terminal Illness In Love and Thunder
But Love and Thunder is not just Gorr’s story; it’s Foster’s, too. Korg narrates that Thor once asked Mijölnir to protect Foster no matter what or where, so when Foster’s cancer recovery begins to look bleak, the weapon calls to her, and she answers. Desperate for anything that will bring her some kind of healing in the absence of any human medicine, she picks up Mjölnir and becomes the Mighty Thor. Although Waititi misunderstands how a scientific, no-nonsense woman like Foster would respond to a cancer diagnosis by giving her a nihilistic, Gen-Z response (she cracks a joke about “stage four of how many?” which feels very out of character for her), she’s clearly upset and angry about her terminal illness. A better approach, especially given her mother’s passing from cancer, would have been an “if I don’t joke about the irony of my illness, it will consume me” attitude to mask her frustration.
The MCU is no stranger to putting disability on the screen. Much like Ava Starr from Ant-Man and the Wasp (Reed 2018), Foster’s character in Love and Thunder shows audiences how terminal illness fits into the hero’s life. Foster has it especially rough since picking up Mjölnir exacerbates her cancer. In her final hours, she has faced with the difficult decision between staying a human living with a terminal illness with a slight chance of living and becoming the Mighty Thor, which is actively killing her.
It is a complex disability narrative that has not been explored in the MCU or otherwise before. Although many illnesses and disability narratives showcase their characters as deserving of pity, Foster pushes back against this idea and tells Thor not to feel sad for her. She wants to navigate her life on her own terms by being the Mighty Thor until her dying breath. While Thor wants her to stay in New Asgard and receive treatment to fight her cancer and stay alive, she refuses because she wants to choose her own destiny and make her own path; it’s very much a “who would I be if I stayed?” moment when she decides to join Thor in the third act battle.
For Foster, now that she’s answered this call and this duty to be the Mighty Thor, it’s all that matters to her. And Foster never loses faith. She has strong resolve until the very end, and the implication that she goes to Valhalla when she dies, not on the battlefield but after she’s succumbed to her cancer, is remarkably uplifting. It’s juxtaposed with Gorr dying in Love’s arms, finally at peace from his life of suffering. To parallel Foster’s story of self-empowerment in becoming the Mighty Thor with Gorr’s story of self-destruction in becoming the God-Butcher ultimately suggests that having faith and believing in something that directs you towards goodness as opposed to evil is what saves you.
For Foster, her belief that the Mighty Thor was meant to protect innocent people sustains her and makes her throw away any sense of self-preservation, therein subverting Gorr’s perception of gods as self-centered and idle. As a dying god, the Mighty Thor/Foster take on a duty of self-sacrifice in the face of total destruction. Foster even credits picking up Mjölnir as a “second life” that brought her meaning, fulfillment, and empowerment beyond her wildest dreams. In a way, without her illness, she’d never have become the Mighty Thor.
Her transformation amid Gorr’s crisis of faith was necessary to show him that not every god was as evil and self-centered as Rapu or Zeus. In Love and Thunder, Foster and Thor are not idle gods: they fight for their people, and they even fight to save Gorr from himself. While Gorr represents how religious trauma can affect the psyche and make the individual destructive to themselves and others, the Mighty Thor/Foster represents how faith and devotion can be empowering in the final days of someone living with a terminal illness.
Thunderous Conclusions
Love and Thunder may appear as a cash-grab-superhero space comedy on the coattails of Ragnarok. But underneath the rainbow-colored visuals and hair metal, there are serious questions about the nature of faith, religious trauma, and terminal illness. While it may be a Thor solo film, it is Gorr and Foster’s respective emotional journeys through faith and illness that are the foundation of the movie.
Gorr’s religious trauma and crisis of faith make his character immediately relatable and sympathetic, even if his god is vastly different than the ones worshipped in the non-fictional world. Foster’s experience with a terminal illness is not just wonderful disability representation — it doesn’t present being a hero as mutually exclusive from being able-bodied — but is a useful parallel for Gorr’s lapsed faith since she’s an entirely devoted god who never loses faith in her cause to protect.
What could have been just another MCU project in a film and television landscape heavily populated by superheroes became a deep exploration of the boundaries of faith and living with a terminal illness.