How did Zeus come to rule a whole universe of various divine pantheons?
How advanced has human technology become after all these crises and infinity wars?
And where was Sif for the last 10 years?
These are the biggest unanswered questions in "Thor: Love and Thunder."
Thor's iconic weapon Mjolnir has always been something of a mystery.
Was it ever truly sentient?
How did it work, beyond the cop-out answer of "magic?"
"Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor."
How could it actually gauge a wielder's worthiness, and does it psychically sense Thor's intentions
when thrown?
Similarly, everyone's favorite monosyllabic tree person, Groot, has always been a bit
of an enigma.
How can he regrow from a single twig?
Does that mean that his consciousness is stored in every little sliver of his wood?
If you cut him in half, do you end up with two Groots?
What even is Groot?
"I am Groot!"
Right, well, that one might be answered already.
Regardless, the reason we bring up these two mysteries together is that, as of "Infinity
War," the two sets of questions now all apply to one item: Stormbreaker, the magic ax made
from the arm of Groot.
Stormbreaker has always been a bit of an unknown in the MCU, given that it seems to have all
the powers of Mjolnir without the benefit of any of Odin's spells.
And "Thor: Love and Thunder" ramps up the weapon's power and mysterious nature tenfold.
In the movie, the weapon demonstrates obvious sentience, and even a personality, by acting
petulant toward Thor when the God of Thunder attempts to summon his old pal Mjolnir.
There may be an answer, one subtly revealed early in the film: When Thor plants Stormbreaker
in the dirt, it grows roots.
Just like Groot was reborn from a tiny, burnt little twig, it seems Stormbreaker may be
attempting to regrow itself from its handle as well.
In the Marvel comics, the origin of All-Black the Necrosword, the deadly weapon wielded
by Gorr the God Butcher, is thoroughly explained.
Over the course of multiple comic series, the long history of the Necrosword, its true
nature as a living Symbiote, and its creator — the dark god Knull — have been fully
fleshed out.
But throughout the weapon's MCU debut in "Thor: Love and Thunder," the weapon is never explained
satisfactorily.
It is evident from the fact that every god seems aware of and afraid of the Necrosword
that the weapon's history is long and storied, but no portion of that story is ever revealed.
When we first see the sword, it lays motionless next to the body of its former wielder, an
unnamed, dead god.
Beyond that, we never learn much about the sword, aside from its habit of slowly poisoning
and maddening its wielder.
As of a post-credits scene in "Spider-Man: No Way Home," at least, the Venom symbiote
does indeed exist in the MCU proper, so it's possible that a more explicit connection to
symbiotes will be revealed in the future.
Okay, yes, the real-world answer to the question of Sif's whereabouts since the events of "Thor:
The Dark World" has an easy enough answer: The actor that portrays Sif, Jaime Alexander,
was busy filming her hit NBC crime-drama series "Blindspot."
But every Hollywood production is limited by availability, budget, and an endless amount
of other constraints, and those films, especially if they're in a connected universe like the
MCU, need an in-canon explanation as well.
Lady Sif was absent from the big screen for nine years, and according to "Thor: Love and
Thunder," the Asgardian warrior was... out there.
Somewhere.
Fighting something.
For some reason.
When we catch up with Sif via an interstellar distress signal in "Thor: Love and Thunder,"
she's in the midst of combat, fighting alongside some unnamed alien gods against Gorr, and
losing badly.
However, that small bit of information is where the statements end and the questions
begin.
Where was Sif all this time?
Was she not on Asgard when it fell?
If not, why?
Why didn't she return to New Asgard to help her people rebuild their civilization?
Who were the gods she fought with, and how did she know about Gorr well in advance of
Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy?
In the MCU, for some reason, it seems that Earth's gods are much more important to the
cosmos and its many goings-on than any other planet's.
Just like Sif's absence, there is a simple real-world explanation for this Earth bias:
The people who make and watch the movies are all from Earth.
And while that certainly explains why we watch movies about Thor instead of movies about
some random god from another random rock in space, "Thor: Love and Thunder" added a couple
of remarkable details to the MCU that make Earth's central status a bit more baffling.
Firstly, Omnipotence City, the meeting place of all the universe's, or at least galaxy's,
many pantheons, is ruled over by Zeus, of the Earth-based Greek pantheon.
Given that NASA estimates our galaxy to contain over 100 billion planets, the odds that a
god from Earth would be in charge are, well, about one in 100 billion.
Secondly, the film's second half centers around Gorr's attempts to reach the abstract cosmic
entity known as Eternity, and for some reason, the Bifrost is the one key to getting there.
For some reason, Earth's Norse Pantheon — and specifically its God of Thunder — contains
the sole means of access to Eternity.
Surely one of the other 100 billion planets has a more suitable pantheon and more suitable
god for getting to Eternity.
Earth's gods aren't the only beings whose status in the cosmic order is in question
as of "Thor: Love and Thunder" — its regular humans' status is, too.
When daily life in New Asgard is finally revealed in greater detail, we see that it employs
its own police force, which is equipped with armor and weapons that look purposefully half-human
and half-Asgardian.
That suggests an intermingling of technology, just as their flying tour boats do.
Given the fact that at least some humans now have access to Asgardian technology in this
story, and since the entire plot of "Black Panther" revolves around the hyper-advanced
country finally sharing its technology with the rest of the world as well, we can only
assume that the humans of the MCU are now centuries more advanced than we are.
And there's another major asset that the MCU humans have that we don't: Dr. Jane Foster.
When explaining her book and the research behind it, Foster reveals that she has essentially
solved the physics behind Einstein-Rosen Bridges, aka wormholes.
Given that many physicists believe that wormholes are based on laws from both General Relativity
and Quantum Mechanics, Foster's findings heavily imply that she has at least partially cracked
the Theory of Everything/Grand Unifying Theory.
Even being conservative, Foster's theoretical advances, paired with newly-accessible Wakandan
and Asgardian tech, means that the humans of Earth 616 have a bright future close at
hand.
In both the Marvel comics and the MCU, the awesome, nigh-infinite power of Odin is named
the Odinforce.
It is one of the strongest and most versatile energy sources in the universe, making Odin
more fearsome and formidable than nearly any other god, and even as much as some cosmic
entities like Galactus.
The Odinforce is what allows Odin to empower his spear Gungnir, the Destroyer, and even
Thor's trusty Mjolnir, so it is clearly a force to be reckoned with.
That's why its absence from the MCU after Odin's death is not only noticeable but raises
the question: Wait, where did it go?
In the comics, the Odinforce is passed down from king to king — Bor wielded the Borforce
and then passed it to Odin as the Odinforce, and he, in turn, passed it to Thor as the
Thorforce.
But the MCU never explains nor shows this, and that leads to two all-important questions.
First, did Thor ever inherit that tremendous power?
And if not, might instead the power have passed to Asgard's king, Valkyrie?
In the past, the line of kings has always been genetic as well as political, but ever
since the end of "Avengers: Endgame," when Thor made Valkyrie king, the two lines are
separate, and so the MCU may very well have its own Thorforce, Valkyrieforce, both, or
neither.
If there is one question that the Marvel movies of Phase 4 have repeatedly raised, it is:
To what extent are humanity, power, and destiny all related?
In "Spider-Man: No Way Home," we saw a human, Dr. Strange, tear apart the fabric of the
multiverse.
In "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," we saw both Strange and another human, the
Scarlet Witch, do the same on an even larger scale.
Then, in "Thor: Love and Thunder," we see another human, Jane Foster, wield the weapon
of a god, become a god herself, and fight toe-to-toe with gods — as did her antagonist,
Gorr.
And with the increasing number of uber-powerful beings populating the MCU that are not gods,
like the Watcher and the Celestials, the question of what exactly a god is has become more vexing
than ever.
A particularly puzzling detail about the MCU's divine beings is that their continued existence
and power don't seem to be connected to the one thing you would expect to be guaranteed:
worship.
When a desperate, broken Gorr comes across his own god and explains that all of his worshippers
are dead, the god admits that he is happy to see them go — he doesn't need them, nor
does he care about their existence.
"All gods will die"
The gods of the MCU are clearly not determined by worship or by power — otherwise, the
reality-rewriting Scarlet Witch would be one of their greatest.
So far, we've covered the fact that MCU's humans are stronger than ever, both in the
growing number of super-powered beings in their ranks and in the hyper-advanced technology
they either have or will soon have.
We've also covered the fact that the MCU's gods seem to merely be a loose assortment
of powerful beings that aren't powerful enough to be considered abstract entities like Eternity
or the Watcher.
The obvious question, then, is what exactly does the cosmic hierarchy of the MCU look
like?
Two Celestials attended Zeus's meeting of the gods, even though they aren't gods themselves.
Every god and their uncle seems aware of Eternity, and so presumably, also its twin, Infinity.
Do universal constants and abstract beings cohabitate freely with gods?
We know gods do with people, so that implies a surprisingly open and tolerant universal
community.
Do the other universal constants that we haven't met, like Galactus and the Phoenix, act in
a similarly casual manner?
And we've met two Elders of the Universe so far — the Collector and the Grandmaster
— so are they gods, abstract beings, or something else?
It's surprising that a universe so jam-packed with near-omnipotent super-beings of varying
backgrounds hasn't destroyed itself yet.
One of the biggest reveals in "Thor: Love and Thunder" is that Valhalla, the fabled
resting place for deceased Asgardian gods, is real.
Upon her death, Foster is welcomed there by Heimdall, who looks happy, healthy, and serene.
So if Heimdall is in Valhalla, is Odin there, too?
What about other fallen Asgardian warriors?
And if Foster is welcome there because she proved herself worthy and wielded Mjolnir
in defense of Asgard, then surely everyone's favorite Mjolnir wielder, Captain America,
could end up there as well?
Perhaps more important than any of these questions is the matter of Valhalla's accessibility.
For one thing, the very job definition of a Valkyrie is to freely travel between Valhalla
and the other realms, so can King Valkyrie just pop in to visit Foster and Heimdall?
Can she relay messages between them and the living?
Can she bring them back?
Alongside Valhalla, the MCU has already confirmed the existence of two other afterlives — the
Ancestral Plane of the Wakandan people and the Duat of the Egyptian people.
Unless Marvel plans to make the exceedingly bold claim that those three religions are
the only three that got it right, then in general, we now know that afterlives exist
— and seemingly, all of them.
"The dead will drag you down into the Duat, where you will remain forever, frozen in sand."
As we mentioned, Steve Rogers wielded Mjolnir, so will he be given a choice between Valhalla
and a Christian Heaven?
Tony Stark saved half the sentient life in the galaxy but died, apparently, as a non-believer.
Will he spend an eternity of punishment in some version of Hell?
As tricky as it would be to stick the landing on this existential conundrum, an answer from
Marvel would be a major relief when it comes to the fate of some fan-favorite characters.
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