Will There Be a ‘Thor 5?’

It’s good to be a Thor fan these days. Thor: Love and Thunder is now out in theaters, and director Taika Waititi has again taken the helm to give us a wild space romp. Not only that, but Love and Thunder treats us to not one, but two Thors, thanks to Natalie Portman re-joining the franchise as Jane Foster. It makes you want to cross your fingers and hope that Thor’s days in the MCU won’t end when Love and Thunder‘s credits roll. Will there be a Thor 5?

In Thor: Love and Thunder, Thor goes on a quest with the Guardians of the Galaxy to find out who he is without Mjolnir or the throne of Asgard. However, when Gorr the God Butcher, who wants to wipe out every god in the universe, kidnaps the children of New Asgard, Thor has to rally his friends and fight to save godkind. Korg, King Valkyrie, Jane as the Mjolnir-wielding Mighty Thor all join Thor in the fight.

Thor is the first MCU hero to get a fourth solo film, and it’s a good thing, too, since we only recently witnessed the full potential of the character. After the middling success and the dour tone of the first two Thor films, Chris Hemsworth considered moving on from the character. However, Taika Waititi revitalized the franchise when he came on to direct Thor: Ragnarok. Suddenly, Thor’s comedic potential came to the forefront of the series, and what might have been another stuffy fantasy turned into a rollicking sword and planet adventure.

Now that we know how ridiculously fun a Thor movie can be, it feels like a shame to end the series. So will we see more Thor?

Taika Waititi on the Future of Thor

Before the film came out, Waititi sat down for an interview with TotalFilm Magazine, where he shared his thoughts on where the franchise might go after Love and Thunder.

“It’s really fun, the idea that Thor [has] got Stormbreaker, that big axe, and now his hammer’s back and it’s in the hands of someone else. It’s no longer his hammer. It’s the idea that someone’s taking his place. I think a lot of fans are gonna potentially assume, ‘Oh, OK, this is the passing on of the torch’… I’m not privy to any plans Marvel has for the future, but I don’t think that’s the case.”

Via GamesRadar

A lot of Marvel Phase 4 projects have been passing the torch, with Kate Bishop becoming the new Hawkeye and Jennifer Walters potentially taking Bruce Banner’s place as the Hulk. However, Chris Hemsworth said in a recent Wired interview that he would “keep playing the character forever” if fans wanted him to.

In another interview with Fandango, Waititi said that although he (supposedly) doesn’t have any current plans to direct another Thor movie, he wouldn’t necessarily say no to the opportunity.

I haven’t thought about [Thor 4] as part of a new trilogy, because every time I make a film, I think, “I’m never doing that again,” because they’re just too hard. There’s any film and I’ve done it eight times now. Eight times I’ve said, “I think I’m just going to pack it in. I had a good run.” And then sure enough I get lured back in with a Yankee dollar.

Will Thor Return?

Many fans feared that Thor would die at the end of Love and Thunder, especially since Korg’s voiceover in the trailer kept referring to Thor in the past tense. As it turns out, the actual end of the movie is a bit more complicated.

Don’t read any further unless you’re okay with spoilers!

Like her counterpart in the comics, Jane is dying of cancer in Thor 4. Every time she wields Mjolnir and transforms into a goddess, her mortal body is drained of the strength it needs to fight off the cancer. Finally, Thor tells her to put the hammer aside and focus on getting better. But Jane would rather go out a goddess, and in the end, she sacrifices herself to help Thor win the fight against Gorr. Thor himself, though, survives the fight. Not only that, but he gains an adopted child when Gorr asks him to look after his daughter.

Any question of whether we’ll get more Thor is laid to rest at the end of the credits, when a title card reading “Thor will return” appears on the screen. Thor is definitely returning in some capacity.

But what will that return look like? Is Thor going to get a fifth solo outing, will he be appearing in future Avengers films, or both?

There are a lot of loose ends too tie up, so Thor’s story could go in a few different directions at this point. Marvel knows how badly fans want to see Thor reunited with Loki, who’s alive as a variant in another universe. Thanks to TVA’s filmstrip of the highlights of Loki’s life, Loki knows that he and Thor eventually reconciled. Plus, Loki is determined to be a hero and do the right thing, and he’s very eager to stop Kang from destroying the multiverse.

And speaking of the multiverse—in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, we learned that when people cross into different realities, reality itself destabilizes, leading to the collision and destruction of realities in events called incursions. The idea of incursions comes straight from Secret Wars, a story arc that was originally published in the 80’s and repeated in 2015. In the 2015 Secret Wars run in the comics, Marvel’s heroes had to come together to stop Earth-616’s universe from being destroyed in a collision with another reality, making for one of the most exciting events in recent Marvel history. If Marvel is indeed adapting Secret Wars to the MCU, then Thor will be essential to the team that fights to save reality.

So, will there be a Thor 5? We don’t know yet, but we do know that more Thor is on the way.

(image: Marvel)

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