When the villain in a movie is nicknamed
"The God Butcher," it's safe to assume that not everyone is going to make it out alive.
So who gets it in "Thor: Love and Thunder"? Keep watching to find out.
"Oh god. We're gonna die."
Taika Waititi is a master at blending absurd comedy with emotional storytelling,
especially when it comes to kids and their parental figures. "Thor: Love and Thunder"
eventually fits that mold, but it starts off on a note that's completely humorless, unexpectedly
dark, and almost too tragic to be believed in what was advertised as a zany MCU movie.
Gorr and his daughter — whose name we don't know — are seeking shelter from destructive
sandstorms and looking for even so much as a drop of water. Despite Gorr's prayers,
their planet has become uninhabitable and their civilization has been lost.
The girl doodles on rocks while Gorr prays to his god, Rapu.
Some time passes — we don't know how much — and Gorr holds his child in his arms as she's dying
of thirst. She tells him that she's tired before she passes away in front of his eyes.
He buries her on his home planet and decorates her grave with rocks.
Though the audience surely went in anticipating that they'd be rooting against Gorr,
this scene is played with such devastating realism, you can't help but mourn for the little
girl and sympathize with her father, who becomes the God Butcher because of this seismic loss.
"All gods will die."
It's a sad irony that Gorr spots an oasis only after his dear daughter's death. As he
stumbles over to the tree-lined watering hole, he can't quite tell if what lies before him is real
or an illusion. He collapses into the water, then notices something rustling behind all the
greenery. It's Rapu, played by Waititi's "What We Do in the Shadows" co-star, Jonathan Brugh,
the god to whom Gorr had been praying, decked out in gold with an ostentatious headpiece.
Gorr assumes Rapu is welcoming him into the afterlife. He shows Rapu the pendant
he wears around his neck to mark himself as one of his followers.
But Rapu isn't there to save anybody. He's chilling with the flower gods and has long been
entirely indifferent to Gorr's people's suffering.
Rapu's main concern is the existence of the Necrosword, a weapon that can kill gods (at
a price) and that conveniently now rests near Gorr's right hand. When Gorr tells Rapu that his
kingdom has fallen, the god shrugs it off and says there will always be new souls to worship him.
He breaks the bad news to his last remaining devotee: there is no eternal reward. That enrages
an already spiritually-broken Gorr, who rips the religious pendant from his neck and is suddenly
able to wield the levitating Necrosword. He uses it to stab a taken-aback Rapu in the throat,
and it's implied he decapitates him to finish the job.
After he becomes aware of Gorr the God Butcher, Thor discovers distress signals from all across
the universe. In one, he sees Lady Sif, gravely injured. Thor and Korg make haste to try and
rescue his fellow Asgardian warrior, but when they arrive, they're not so pleasantly greeted by the
mountain-sized corpse of a frost-covered creature. Korg asks who or what it is, and a clearly shaken
Thor replies that this is Falligar… one of the nicest gods anybody could ever hope to meet.
Falligar appeared in the promotional material for "Thor:
Love and Thunder" and it intrigued comic book fans, as it's a pretty precise recreation of a
panel from "Thor: God of Thunder" Vol. 1 #3. Though the film doesn't get into much detail
about Falligar or his relationship with Thor at all, both use him in much the same way.
On the page, Falligar is an old friend of Thor's who rules over the Galactic Frontier and enjoys
sparring, even against black holes. After some years apart from each other,
Thor learns that Falligar is dead at the hand of Gorr the God Butcher.
Thor's line to Korg suggests they had a similar friendship in the MCU, and here too, he meets his
end because of Gorr's vow to wipe out all the gods. Though his enormous, lifeless body makes
for a breathtaking shot, it's a shame we didn't get to see this peculiar, majestic god in action.
Thor and Mighty Thor team up to successfully destroy the Necrosword, but they don't do it
quick enough to stop Gorr the God Butcher from using Stormbreaker to open the gate
to Eternity. As Gorr walks through the circular door into Eternity's realm and stands before the
powerful living cosmic entity, represented as a galactic silhouette, Thor tells him that he's won.
Meanwhile Jane, who used her last ounce of strength as Mighty Thor
to wield Mjolnir against the Necrosword, falls to the watery ground as a cancer
patient once again. She and Thor have a final conversation that moves him and changes his plan.
Gorr comes to realize that, with his one wish to Eternity,
he could bring back his daughter rather than exterminate the gods. However,
the Necrosword corrupted his own body so much, he knows that — like Jane — he's about to die, too.
Even though he won't be around to see the ramifications of his choice,
he decides to give his daughter another chance at life rather than fulfill his
vow of vengeance. Jane promises that she won't be alone, and Gorr lives just long enough to
say goodbye to his resurrected child and to ask Thor to promise to protect her.
In the scene that follows, we see Thor has adopted her and is raising her to be an Asgardian warrior,
like him, and that Gorr redeemed himself in Thor's eyes by choosing love instead of hate.
Early on in "Thor: Love and Thunder," we learn that Jane's been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer
and it isn't responding to treatment. While in her office, she flips through an old book of Norse
mythology and notices the word Mjolnir. Feeling called to her former boyfriend's former weapon,
she travels to New Asgard incognito and tries to summon the hammer.
We learn from a montage of their relationship that Thor once ordered Mjolnir to protect Jane,
his true love. This produced powerful magic that bound the hammer to Jane, and for a while,
Jane and the audience think that magic is healing her as it gives her superhuman strength.
"Let's bring the rainbow!"
But when she lands back in the hospital, worse for the wear every time she suits up as Mighty Thor,
she figures out what's really going on. Mjolnir is actually using up her remaining life force. Once
Jane comes clean to Thor about her condition, he begs her not to pick up the hammer again
and tells her that he loves her. He hopes that they can find a cure and still have a chance at
a life together once he returns from facing Gorr alone. Jane understands his request,
but she knows there's likely no cure. She joins her love for one last classic
Thor adventure, and with her dying breaths, tells him that she's content that she lived an
extraordinary, albeit short, life for a human. They end their relationship on sad but good
terms as she vanishes. The end credits scene reveals that, since she died a
Viking on the battlefield, she's welcomed into Valhalla by none other than Heimdall.
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