Thor: Into the Thor-Verse? There may be two Thors in Thor: Love and Thunder, but director Taika Waititi isn’t hammering out the Multiverse in his sequel to Thor: Ragnarok. The Marvel Cinematic Universe expanded to become the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse with recent installments Loki, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, featuring multiversal Variant versions of Loki (Tom Hiddleston), a trio of Spider-Men (Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire), and the counterparts of Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). But in Love and Thunder, the one and only Thor (Chris Hemsworth) meets the other Thor of his own reality: ex-girlfriend Jane Foster, wielding Mjolnir as the Mighty Thor (Natalie Portman).
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“We’ve got nothing like [the Multiverse] in this film,” Waititi said in the recent issue of Total Film Magazine. “This is the singular-verse.”
Instead of exploring the Multiverse, Waititi wanted to explore another infinite concept: love.
“I feel like this one feels more original and unique, and stands apart from a lot of other Marvel films because of that element of love, and leaning into that idea of what love means for all these characters,” Waititi explained. “You never go to those superhero movies to see a movie about love. It’s a preposterous answer. No fan wants to see that. But as I said with the last film [Ragnarok], they don’t know what they want until they get it.”
Related Story: Taika Waititi Says Thor: Love and Thunder Is “About Love, With Superheroes and Outer Space”
Like her comic book counterpart, Jane Foster becomes the Mighty Thor when she’s empowered to lift the enchanted hammer Mjolnir and possess the Asgardian power of Thor Odinson. Even as the new goddess of thunder, Portman portrays the same mortal Jane of Midgard from 2011’s Thor and 2013’s Thor: The Dark World — not a superhero Variant from another universe.
In Thor: Love and Thunder, Thor embarks on a journey unlike anything he’s ever faced — a quest for inner peace. However, his retirement gets interrupted by Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), a galactic killer who seeks the extinction of the gods.
To combat the threat, Thor enlists the help of King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi), and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster, who — to his surprise — inexplicably wields his magical hammer. Together, they set out on a harrowing cosmic adventure to uncover the mystery of the God Butcher’s vengeance.
Starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Taika Waititi, Russell Crowe as Zeus, Jaimie Alexander as Sif, and Chris Pratt, Karen Gillan, Dave Bautista, Pom Klementieff, Sean Gunn, Vin Diesel, and Bradley Cooper as the Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel Studios’ Thor: Love and Thunder opens only in theaters July 8.
