Could Hela Return After ‘Thor: Ragnarok’?

Following the release of Thor: Ragnarok this weekend, it seems that Hela will go down as one of fan’s favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe villain. Is she destined to be another one and done antagonist, or could the Marvel Comics universe offer clues suggesting her return?

Thor: Ragnarok Spoilers follow.

In Thor: Ragnarok, in order to stop Hela, Thor has Loki place Surtur’s crown in the Eternal Flame so that the ruler of Musphelheim could be reborn as large as a mountain, then destroy Asgard, thus ending the threat of Hela. Though Hela put up a fight, she couldn’t stop the Ragnarok prophecy from coming true and seemed to have perished when Asgard was destroyed.

However, the prophecy of Ragnarok has been fulfilled in the Marvel Comics universe as well, wiping out every Asgardian in Asgard. They got better.

In the Marvel Comics universe, Ragnarok is a cycle of birth and death that the Asgardians had been trapped in. The Asgardians were gone for some time after Ragnarok, but Thor eventually reemerged. He rebuilt Asgard in a small town in Oklahoma and restored his Asgardian brethren by finding their spirits within mortals. One of the Asgardians he restored, through the trickery of Loki, was Hela.

That leaves two possibilities for Hela’s return in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She could simply have somehow survived the destruction of Asgard, though how powerful she would be without the source of that power is unknown. The other is that Thor could restore the Asgardians in the MCU in much the same we as he did the Asgardians in the comics, which would allow for the return of not only Hela but the Warriors Three and possibly even Odin and Frigga.

Marvel Studios not only has the means to bring Hela back but a possible motive. In the currently ongoing run of Thor comics, Hela has entered a romantic relationship with another major villain, one is about to make a real splash in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Mad Titan Thanos.

Thanos is known to be fixated on death. Not just the concept of death, but romantically with the embodiment of death, also known as Mistress Death. Thanos’s actions in the classic Marvel Infinity Gauntlet event were motivated by Thanos’s desire to impress Mistress Death.

However, Mistress Death hasn’t been introduced into the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet. What if Thanos and Hela’s relationship in the Marvel Comics universe is setting the stage for Hela, the Asgardian goddess of death, to take the place of Mistress Death in Avengers: Infinity War or its sequel?

This is, of course, just speculation and theory for now, but a potentially exciting theory to be sure.

Thor: Ragnarok currently has an 84.52 ComicBook.com Composite score, the sixth highest composite score of any comic book movie.

Thor: Ragnarok also has a 4.08 out of 5 ComicBook.com User Rating, making it the fourth highest rated comic book movie among ComicBook.com users. Let us know what you thought of Thor: Ragnarok by giving the film your own ComicBook.com User Rating below.

Thor: Ragnarok is now playing in theaters. Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Black Panther on February 16, 2018, Avengers: Infinity War on May 4, 2018, Ant-Man and the Wasp on July 6, 2018, Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming on July 5, 2019, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2020.