Thor: Ragnarok Star Details Deleted Scene That Completed Character’s Arc

While Thor: Ragnarok was all about the Son of Odin, many of the supporting characters stole the show for Marvel fans. One such character was Skurge, who was played by Karl Urban. Skurge began the film as a bit of comic relief before joining the villainous Hela and acting as her right hand man. By the end of Ragnarok, however, Skurge came around and turned on Hela, helping Thor and the other Asgardians. There was actually one scene that showed more of Skurge’s change of heart, but it was ultimately cut from the final film.

Urban recently sat down with GQ to talk about his most well-known roles and Thor: Ragnarok was unsurprisingly mentioned. The actor opened up about a scene in which Skurge was physically ill over helping Hela, which Urban says helped explain his turn more fully.

“There was actually a scene that didn’t make the final cut. Because the character has a really wonderful arc,” Urban said in the video. “That first of all, out of self-preservation, he aligns himself with Hela. Because he could see that if he doesn’t he’s going to be killed. But then, through the course of the film, he gets more and more sickened by what he’s required to do in order to hold that decision up, to work for her. And there’s a scene where he chops the head off this young girl in a town square because Hela asks him to. And then post that scene, there’s a scene which didn’t make the final cut, is he absolutely sickened to the core. We find him in some corner. And he’s actually being physically sick by what he’s done. And that was really sort of the genesis for this turn that he takes, and the guilt that he feels about what he’s done, and how he’s going to, at the right point in time, make it right. And that’s always fun, when you have a character that you can take him in one direction, and then have a pivot.”

During the same video, Urban talked about his experience working with Taika Waititi, saying that the spontaneity made the entire production more enjoyable.

“And the thing that I loved about working with Taika is that the take wasn’t sacrilegious,” Urban explained. “You’d be in the middle of a take, doing the dialogue, and he would come and go, ‘Hey, why don’t you try and say this or that? Why don’t you come pick up that or do that?’ And it was really kind of liberating in a way, because there was nothing precious about it. And it just became a lot more free-flowing and a lot more improvisational.”

Thor: Ragnarok is available to stream on Disney+.