Thor’s journey from sullen princeling to selfless hero and down to beer-swilling layabout (then once again to hero) has perhaps been the most radical of any main player in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s also the ultimate rebuff to the naysayers who declare that superhero movies are lazy money-making vehicles that simply repeat the same storylines over and over again. It has certainly given Chris Hemsworth a gargantuan sandpit to play in, especially since director Taika Waititi spotted the obvious comic potential and began to play up his lovable buffoon persona in 2017’s brilliant Thor: Ragnarok.
That journey is a big reason why the forthcoming Thor: Love and Thunder (also directed by Waititi) is such a tantalising prospect: we just don’t know where the film-maker is going to take the superhero next. No longer king of Asgard, a title he relinquished to Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie at the end of Avengers: Endgame, Hemsworth’s Thor is theoretically free to hop through space in the company of the Guardians of the Galaxy for as long as it takes him to find his place in the cosmos.
