Thor Odinson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
reignbringer) wrote2024-03-07 07:55 pm
reignbringer) wrote2024-03-07 07:55 pm
[ info ]
Thor
son of odin
Summary
the basics
Personality
the good the bad the ugly
Appearance
first impressions
Abilities
what they can do
Background
where they came from
OOC Info
permissions and contact info
Thor
son of odin
Personality;
＋
brave · friendly · protective · loyal · gentle · humble
＝
charming · proud · collectivistic · honest
－
impatient · self-righteous · stubborn · brooding · hotheaded
🔥
ptsd · depression
In Brief
As the favored son and crown prince, Thor has lived something of a charmed life for the last thousand years. He grew up absolutely steeped in both privilege and power, with the certainty that a grand destiny and many glorious victories lay before him, and all of this is reflected in his bearing and his manner. Thor would be a towering presence even if he weren't 6'4" and ridiculously muscular. Handsome, charming, a natural leader, and beloved by his people, Thor had never met a challenge he could not overcome, and for so long the most consequence he'd seen for any action was affectionate exasperation from his friends and family. A king in all but name, he looked to the future with boundless confidence and optimism.
But the last few years have changed all of that.
Now, Thor has experienced some of his father's deepest disappointment; he has been stripped of his powers and banished to Earth to learn humility, he has been forced to fight his adoptive brother and kill his secret half-sister. He has dealt with the death of both his parents. He has been captured by superior forces and made into, essentially, a clown for their entertainment. He has lost so much — so much more than he ever even knew he had to lose.
Older and wiser for a decade spent among mortals than the thousand years before it, he has gone from a boy excited to be king to a man so aware of the burdens of ruling that he longer wants to be king at all. His ambitions these days are much more measured: to protect anyone he can. To be, as he once told Odin, a good man rather than a great king.
But the last few years have changed all of that.
Now, Thor has experienced some of his father's deepest disappointment; he has been stripped of his powers and banished to Earth to learn humility, he has been forced to fight his adoptive brother and kill his secret half-sister. He has dealt with the death of both his parents. He has been captured by superior forces and made into, essentially, a clown for their entertainment. He has lost so much — so much more than he ever even knew he had to lose.
Older and wiser for a decade spent among mortals than the thousand years before it, he has gone from a boy excited to be king to a man so aware of the burdens of ruling that he longer wants to be king at all. His ambitions these days are much more measured: to protect anyone he can. To be, as he once told Odin, a good man rather than a great king.
Thor
son of odin
Appearance;
"Lorem ipsum varius fermentum quisque dictumst imperdiet hendrerit fringilla convallis dui viverra, neque aliquam vel elit non praesent hac urna varius conubia arcu, aenean porta eleifend maecenas et fringilla porttitor molestie bibendum etiam. Arcu nullam feugiat elementum class dictumst felis pharetra, pretium imperdiet rhoncus pulvinar ultrices magna etiam, curabitur vulputate cursus leo eleifend mollis. Tincidunt eros fringilla auctor fringilla nam senectus vestibulum pellentesque rutrum, placerat a porttitor semper facilisis justo dictumst nisi, in tempor ipsum sodales tempor pulvinar vulputate tempor.
Purus aliquet taciti donec viverra at duis scelerisque diam, lobortis suspendisse auctor augue dui tempus non, tempus lobortis condimentum rutrum tempus taciti litora. Hac maecenas libero arcu dolor praesent vivamus pulvinar consectetur placerat primis mi taciti semper sit at, non semper primis cubilia fringilla ante interdum tempus id torquent sodales elit dapibus. Interdum adipiscing aptent inceptos cubilia turpis sodales eget etiam nulla, congue vestibulum dui fermentum vivamus lorem nisi ad turpis etiam, lacus netus volutpat elementum facilisis purus ac dictumst.
Lorem ipsum varius fermentum quisque dictumst imperdiet hendrerit fringilla convallis dui viverra, neque aliquam vel elit non praesent hac urna varius conubia arcu, aenean porta eleifend maecenas et fringilla porttitor molestie bibendum etiam. Arcu nullam feugiat elementum class dictumst felis pharetra, pretium imperdiet rhoncus pulvinar ultrices magna etiam, curabitur vulputate cursus leo eleifend mollis. Tincidunt eros fringilla auctor fringilla nam senectus vestibulum pellentesque rutrum, placerat a porttitor semper facilisis justo dictumst nisi, in tempor ipsum sodales tempor pulvinar vulputate tempor."
Thor
son of odin
Abilities;
aesir
Thor is Aesir, of Asgard; by default, supernaturally strong and durable, as well as so long-lived that they refer to most other races as "mortals". It's all a matter of scale: They can stab one another, and a more powerful creature like the Hulk can shake them around like rag dolls, but ordinary and even extraordinary humans should probably expect to do very, very little damage.
god of thunder
In addition to having seemingly full control over the weather (delicate and precise enough to keep it from raining on specific people, and intuitive enough to not notice he's doing it), Ragnarok showed that the storm is always within Thor. He can be the source of lightning, firing bolts of lightning from his fingertips.
mjolnir
A mystical, semi-sentient warhammer forged in the heart of a dying star. Once, Thor and Odin (and Odin's father Bor, and in the MCU Thor's half-sister Hela) were the only ones who could lif it, but thanks to an enchantment Odin placed on it prior to the first THOR movie, it can now be lifted only by the worthy. When activated in this manner, Mjolnir appears to provide wielders with a costume and transformation sequence of sorts.
Headcanon: Might this be why Hela destroyed her old weapon rather than seizing it from Thor? She could stop it with her own powerful magic, but could tell she would no longer be able to truly wield it...?
Headcanon: Might this be why Hela destroyed her old weapon rather than seizing it from Thor? She could stop it with her own powerful magic, but could tell she would no longer be able to truly wield it...?
magic
Thor would probably insist he doesn't have much talent for magic, if any at all — which would make him the odd one out in his family. His control over the storm suggests otherwise, but...
Headcanon: Frigga did make an attempt to teach magic to Thor when he was very young, but — unlike so many other things in his life — the finer workings didn't come easily for him, and he was an impatient child. He's not proud of that, and even less so of the way he knows deep down that it contributed to his dismissiveness of Loki's skill. (Importantly, he would never have said a sour word if he'd had any idea that his opinion of Loki's magic was truly important to his brother; sometimes it's hard to find the line between friendly teasing and bullying.)
Headcanon: Frigga did make an attempt to teach magic to Thor when he was very young, but — unlike so many other things in his life — the finer workings didn't come easily for him, and he was an impatient child. He's not proud of that, and even less so of the way he knows deep down that it contributed to his dismissiveness of Loki's skill. (Importantly, he would never have said a sour word if he'd had any idea that his opinion of Loki's magic was truly important to his brother; sometimes it's hard to find the line between friendly teasing and bullying.)
Thor
son of odin
Background;
In THOR
As THOR opens, the titular hero is immediately hit by a car — and, the audience soon learns, this was probably the least terrible part of his day.
Oh, it all started out innocently enough — after a thousand years of mostly patient waiting, the day of Thor's coronation had finally arrived. All of Asgard would celebrate as he took his rightful place on her throne, with the blessing of his father, Odin. Frigga, his mother, is proud of him; Loki, hispersonal Iago younger brother, is proud of him — and that, in spite of having been passed over for the crown himself! And his friends, the Lady Sif and the Warriors Three — well, they, of course, are also proud.
To cheers and the clamorous applause of his people, Thor takes his place on bended knee before his father, ready to swear himself to the protection of not only Asgard but the other Nine Realms under its banner. His voice rings out in the great hall as he makes his vows, basking in the admiration of friends, family, and countrymen; waiting for those few small, simple words that would transform him from a prince to a king.
It should have been the best day of Thor's life. And it would have been, if not for the small band of vile, evil Frost Giants that just had to choose this moment — this exact moment! — to break into Asgard's Vault and try to steal the Casket of Ancient Winters, completely ruining the moment. His moment!
Odin goes immediately to the Vault, and is assuaged when he sees that the Vault's automated enchanted guardian, the Destroyer, has made quick work of the intruders. Thor is somewhat less so, and the two of them get into a heated argument: was this an act of war, or the actions of but a few, doomed to fail? Is the truce with Jotunheim, realm of the Frost Giants, still intact? Is it enough to shore up their defenses, or should they launch an immediate counterassault, grinding Jotunheim into dust for daring to think they could reclaim the Casket they used to raze Midgard, in the last proper war Asgard fought before going all soft and useless and laughable?
The last argument being Thor's, just before he puffs up his chest and states that as King of Asgard, he would—
"But you're not king," Odin interrupts him, and Thor stops, stunned.
Loki would have you believe that Thor had never been denied anything in his life, before this moment. While not entirely fair, it is true that he had never before had anything ripped away so cruelly, at the last possible moment — nor so publicly. And it is also true that Thor does not deal with his frustration in the most mature way, choosing to very literally flip a table.
Though Loki comes to offer him sympathy and ostensibly help soothe his wounded pride, he also unintentionally (or so it seems) gives Thor an idea: go to Jotunheim, home of the Frost Giants, and confront Laufey, their king.
"We would only be looking for answers," Thor reasons with his brother and his horrified friends. Certainly not looking for an excuse to start a war that might give a young would-be king amble opportunities to prove himself. Certainly not. And besides, Thor appeals to them, are they not more than a match for whatever Jotunheim can dish out? Do they not trust their good and dear friend Thor, who has always supported them in their endeavors and led them to various forms of glory in the past?
Unfortunately for Thor, his charms win out, and both his brother and his friends agree to follow him into enemy territory, where they quickly find themselves surrounded and severely outnumbered by Laufey and his warriors.
Of course Thor loses none of his bravado, demanding to know how they were able to slip into the palace undetected, since as everyone knows it is impossible to escape the notice of Asgard's preternatural watchman, Heimdall — and taking umbrage when Laufey replies obliquely that the House of Odin is filled with traitors.
Loki swoops in and attempts to smooth things over, reminding Thor that the odds are not exactly in their favor here (and getting a "Know your place, Brother!" as his thank-you) and graciously accepting when Laufey tells them that, even though their actions here provoke war, he is as weary of it as Odin and will let them leave.
For a moment, his work seems well-done. Thor, Sif, the Warriors Three, and Loki all turn to leave. But one of Laufey's people cannot resist a final parting shot at Thor's back:
"Run home, little princess."
Thor stops in his tracks. Smirks. And then unleashes bloody, brutal retribution.
The odds have not noticeably changed, so it doesn't take too long for the fight to get seriously out of hand, but Thor hardly seems to notice. He himself is more than a match for his foes, and the cries of his friends as they sustain increasingly deadly wounds go unheeded. Even when the ground they all stand upon crumbles, even when Laufey unleashes the Jotunheim equivalent of a dragon on their party, Thor is still thoroughly enjoying himself.
Even Odin's sudden arrival on the scene does nothing to dampen his spirits. "Come, Father! We'll finish them together!" he bellows, exultant, completely unprepared for Odin's impatient hiss to be silent — and even less prepared to hear his brave assault on the enemy dismissed as "the actions of a boy", while Odin makes every effort to preserver the peace between Asgard and Jotunheim.
Laufey will have none of it, however, and when they return to Asgard it is with the promise of one war in the very near future — and another raging between father and son.
Odin tells Thor that his actions almost got his friends and his brother killed, and that he has exposed Asgard to the horrors of war. He calls him a vain, greedy, cruel boy. But it is not until Thor bellows back at him, clearly unrepentant, not given even a moment's pause by what he has unleashed, that Odin sees something more than mere words will have to be done with his child.
He strips Thor of his power, his birthright, his very Aesir nature, and casts him out of Asgard. When Thor wakes, he will be a mortal man, stranded in the middle of New Mexico. And then he will be hit by a car.
But Odin has one final parting gift for his wayward son: an enchantment on his faithful hammer, Mjolnir, that will restore all of Thor's power to him1 if he can prove himself worthy enough to once again wield it.
The rest of the movie tells the story of Thor's struggle to become worthy again.
He meets a few helpful and friendly mortals — Jane Foster, who was driving the car; Darcy Lewis, who first took him as potentially dangerous and tased him into unconsciousness; and Erik Selvig, who is conveniently from the right part of the world to recognize names like "Thor" and "Mjolnir" from Norse myth — and from them learns manners and etiquette. One of them (Jane), he even falls in love with.
But though Thor is immediately appreciative of their assistance and willing to adapt to their strange customs (such as not destroying dishes to express your appreciation for the food), it isn't until he learns Mjolnir's location and goes to retrieve it that humility is found.
With Jane's help, and in return for promising to help her get some of her stolen research back from the ominous government agency SHIELD, Thor is able to find the hammer... crawling with armed and trained SHIELD agents.
At first, Thor is exactly the same man we remember from the opening: thrilled by the challenge his enemies present, happy to plow his way through them like the force of nature he thinks he soon will be again... But then he reaches Mjolnir, lays his hands on the hammer's hilt —
— and finds it completely unresponsive to his touch.
It was one thing to know that he had angered his father, and until this moment Thor had, perhaps, still believed himself in the right — but to be refused by Mjolnir's enchantment, when it had always been his to command, was like a fatal blow.
By the time Agent Phil Coulson arrives to interrogate Thor, he is a man broken, the full weight of rejection only falling more heavily when Loki, using illusions, projects himself in for a brief visit.
"Can I... can I come home?" he asks, almost in a whisper, and only falls deeper into self-pity when Loki quietly lies about the state of affairs back home, leaving Thor to think that his father died from grief and that his mother never wants to see him again.
Fortunately, not long after Loki's exit, one of Thor's new mortal friends arrives on the scene to tell a few more lies — but this time in the interests of securing Thor's release from SHIELD's custody. Though Coulson and the other SHIELD agents are not actually convinced by Selvig's fast talking, they decide to let him go anyway, in the hopes that he might lead them to some actual answers if they keep an eye on him — and on the way out, Thor is able to snatch up one of Jane's notebooks, thereby fulfilling at least a little of his promise to her.
Since he also promised her answers to the mysteries of the universe, and because he just likes talking to her, Thor spends the following night telling her of Yggdrasil, and how its branches bring together far distant stars. His affections for her are deepening, and clearly mutual, so with her company and with Selvig and Darcy's friendship, he begins to think that perhaps living out the rest of his now-mortal life here on Earth wouldn't be so bad.In a few deleted scenes, Thor cleans up after his new friends and ingratiates himself to a few of the other people in the (only) nearby town, settling in further.
Only to have the peace of his new, simpler, smaller life abruptly shattered when Sif and the Warriors Three arrive to visit, having committed treason to come rescue him.
Thor is happy to see them, of course, but also tells them gently that he can't possibly go back with them. Not when his mother's forbidden his return and his father is dead because of him...
But those were, as mentioned previously, lies, and now Thor learns (some of) the truth: that his father still lives, but has fallen into an Odinsleep, a kind of mystical coma that he goes into fairly regularly in order to recharge his godly batteries2. Frigga, meanwhile, is not at all angry, and would certainly welcome Thor home.
Loki, seeing all of this from Odin's throne3, knows the jig is about to be officially up — and sends the Destroyer to kill Thor and his friends before they can return and ruin his somewhat dangerous and definitely a shade hysterical plan to lure Laufey into Asgard, slay him in front of his parents, and then destroy all of Jotunheim by leaving the Bifrost4 open. But then, he did just find out he was adopted, so perhaps a little bit of attempted genocide is to be expected.
Back on Earth, Sif and the Warriors Three (but especially Sif) make an admirable assault on the Destroyer, while Thor and the other mortals do the work of evacuating the town to the best of their abilities — but the Destroyer eventually proves too much for minor characters, and Thor rushes to their sides. To Sif, who was ready to die a warrior's death and have stories told of this day, he implores to "Live, and tell those stories yourself," before turning his attention on the Destroyer.
This once fearless, some would say reckless, warrior knows that his only chance now is to appeal to Loki directly — with words.
Assuring his friends that he has a plan, Thor approaches the Destroyer, and attempts to talk to Loki through it. "Brother... for whatever I have done to wrong you, I am truly sorry," he says, and then offers his own life, if Loki will only spare the innocents.
For a beat, the Destroyer hesitates — then strikes Thor down, mortally wounding him, and accidentally providing him the chance to finally prove himself worthy.
In a rush of color and light, Mjolnir whizzes to Thor's hand, and Thor rises from the dead, his armor and cape and godhood fully restored.
Making quick work of the Destroyer, Thor says goodbye to Jane, his new friends, and Coulson, who arrived with his men just in time to fire useless bullets at the Destroyer earlier, agreeing that he has not told them everything but promising (this to Jane, especially) to come back.
When he arrives in Asgard, Loki's plan is partially complete: Laufey is dead, and Frigga certainly is proud of him for a few seconds, before Thor tells her of Loki's treachery. All that remains is to destroy Jotunheim, and Loki knocks Thor through a wall before rushing off to complete that final task.
The two of them meet at the Bifrost and begin the movie's final battle. Thor, still unaware of Loki's adoption and especially unaware that he is, in fact, Laufey's son, cannot begin to understand Loki's rage and pain or the true meaning behind his words when he snarls, "I'm not your brother. I never was!" All Thor knows is that Loki lied to him and tried to kill him and now wants to rid the multiverse of every last Frost Giant.
Loki observes that Thor would probably have thought this was a great idea a couple of days ago, and demands to know what changed him so much. Latching onto the idea that it was Jane, he angrily declares that he'll "have to pay her a visit" himself, and Thor, who has so far refused to fight his brother, launches himself at Loki in earnest.
They fight, and Thor successfully pins Loki down with Mjolnir's weight, but then realizes that he's too late to shut off the Bifrost. It's been open for too long. The only way to stop it from razing Jotunheim to dust is destroying the bridge itself. Which, as Loki is quick to point out, will mean never being able to return to Earth. But Thor does not hesitate. He is willing to lose the woman he loves in order to save the lives of his enemies.
The bridge shatters under Mjolnir's blows, and both Thor and Loki fall from it — only to be caught by Odin, roused from his Odinsleep just in time.
Now it is Loki's turn to appeal to his father: "I could have done it, Father! For you! For all of us!"
But Odin is still not as impressed by bloody conquests as his sons would have him be, and when Loki sees it, he responds by letting go.
THOR ends with the Bifrost broken, Loki seemingly lost to the sea of stars, Thor in mourning, and Jane hard at work on Earth to find her own way between realms.
Oh, it all started out innocently enough — after a thousand years of mostly patient waiting, the day of Thor's coronation had finally arrived. All of Asgard would celebrate as he took his rightful place on her throne, with the blessing of his father, Odin. Frigga, his mother, is proud of him; Loki, his
To cheers and the clamorous applause of his people, Thor takes his place on bended knee before his father, ready to swear himself to the protection of not only Asgard but the other Nine Realms under its banner. His voice rings out in the great hall as he makes his vows, basking in the admiration of friends, family, and countrymen; waiting for those few small, simple words that would transform him from a prince to a king.
It should have been the best day of Thor's life. And it would have been, if not for the small band of vile, evil Frost Giants that just had to choose this moment — this exact moment! — to break into Asgard's Vault and try to steal the Casket of Ancient Winters, completely ruining the moment. His moment!
Odin goes immediately to the Vault, and is assuaged when he sees that the Vault's automated enchanted guardian, the Destroyer, has made quick work of the intruders. Thor is somewhat less so, and the two of them get into a heated argument: was this an act of war, or the actions of but a few, doomed to fail? Is the truce with Jotunheim, realm of the Frost Giants, still intact? Is it enough to shore up their defenses, or should they launch an immediate counterassault, grinding Jotunheim into dust for daring to think they could reclaim the Casket they used to raze Midgard, in the last proper war Asgard fought before going all soft and useless and laughable?
The last argument being Thor's, just before he puffs up his chest and states that as King of Asgard, he would—
"But you're not king," Odin interrupts him, and Thor stops, stunned.
Loki would have you believe that Thor had never been denied anything in his life, before this moment. While not entirely fair, it is true that he had never before had anything ripped away so cruelly, at the last possible moment — nor so publicly. And it is also true that Thor does not deal with his frustration in the most mature way, choosing to very literally flip a table.
Though Loki comes to offer him sympathy and ostensibly help soothe his wounded pride, he also unintentionally (or so it seems) gives Thor an idea: go to Jotunheim, home of the Frost Giants, and confront Laufey, their king.
"We would only be looking for answers," Thor reasons with his brother and his horrified friends. Certainly not looking for an excuse to start a war that might give a young would-be king amble opportunities to prove himself. Certainly not. And besides, Thor appeals to them, are they not more than a match for whatever Jotunheim can dish out? Do they not trust their good and dear friend Thor, who has always supported them in their endeavors and led them to various forms of glory in the past?
Unfortunately for Thor, his charms win out, and both his brother and his friends agree to follow him into enemy territory, where they quickly find themselves surrounded and severely outnumbered by Laufey and his warriors.
Of course Thor loses none of his bravado, demanding to know how they were able to slip into the palace undetected, since as everyone knows it is impossible to escape the notice of Asgard's preternatural watchman, Heimdall — and taking umbrage when Laufey replies obliquely that the House of Odin is filled with traitors.
Loki swoops in and attempts to smooth things over, reminding Thor that the odds are not exactly in their favor here (and getting a "Know your place, Brother!" as his thank-you) and graciously accepting when Laufey tells them that, even though their actions here provoke war, he is as weary of it as Odin and will let them leave.
For a moment, his work seems well-done. Thor, Sif, the Warriors Three, and Loki all turn to leave. But one of Laufey's people cannot resist a final parting shot at Thor's back:
"Run home, little princess."
Thor stops in his tracks. Smirks. And then unleashes bloody, brutal retribution.
The odds have not noticeably changed, so it doesn't take too long for the fight to get seriously out of hand, but Thor hardly seems to notice. He himself is more than a match for his foes, and the cries of his friends as they sustain increasingly deadly wounds go unheeded. Even when the ground they all stand upon crumbles, even when Laufey unleashes the Jotunheim equivalent of a dragon on their party, Thor is still thoroughly enjoying himself.
Even Odin's sudden arrival on the scene does nothing to dampen his spirits. "Come, Father! We'll finish them together!" he bellows, exultant, completely unprepared for Odin's impatient hiss to be silent — and even less prepared to hear his brave assault on the enemy dismissed as "the actions of a boy", while Odin makes every effort to preserver the peace between Asgard and Jotunheim.
Laufey will have none of it, however, and when they return to Asgard it is with the promise of one war in the very near future — and another raging between father and son.
Odin tells Thor that his actions almost got his friends and his brother killed, and that he has exposed Asgard to the horrors of war. He calls him a vain, greedy, cruel boy. But it is not until Thor bellows back at him, clearly unrepentant, not given even a moment's pause by what he has unleashed, that Odin sees something more than mere words will have to be done with his child.
He strips Thor of his power, his birthright, his very Aesir nature, and casts him out of Asgard. When Thor wakes, he will be a mortal man, stranded in the middle of New Mexico. And then he will be hit by a car.
But Odin has one final parting gift for his wayward son: an enchantment on his faithful hammer, Mjolnir, that will restore all of Thor's power to him1 if he can prove himself worthy enough to once again wield it.
The rest of the movie tells the story of Thor's struggle to become worthy again.
He meets a few helpful and friendly mortals — Jane Foster, who was driving the car; Darcy Lewis, who first took him as potentially dangerous and tased him into unconsciousness; and Erik Selvig, who is conveniently from the right part of the world to recognize names like "Thor" and "Mjolnir" from Norse myth — and from them learns manners and etiquette. One of them (Jane), he even falls in love with.
But though Thor is immediately appreciative of their assistance and willing to adapt to their strange customs (such as not destroying dishes to express your appreciation for the food), it isn't until he learns Mjolnir's location and goes to retrieve it that humility is found.
With Jane's help, and in return for promising to help her get some of her stolen research back from the ominous government agency SHIELD, Thor is able to find the hammer... crawling with armed and trained SHIELD agents.
At first, Thor is exactly the same man we remember from the opening: thrilled by the challenge his enemies present, happy to plow his way through them like the force of nature he thinks he soon will be again... But then he reaches Mjolnir, lays his hands on the hammer's hilt —
— and finds it completely unresponsive to his touch.
It was one thing to know that he had angered his father, and until this moment Thor had, perhaps, still believed himself in the right — but to be refused by Mjolnir's enchantment, when it had always been his to command, was like a fatal blow.
By the time Agent Phil Coulson arrives to interrogate Thor, he is a man broken, the full weight of rejection only falling more heavily when Loki, using illusions, projects himself in for a brief visit.
"Can I... can I come home?" he asks, almost in a whisper, and only falls deeper into self-pity when Loki quietly lies about the state of affairs back home, leaving Thor to think that his father died from grief and that his mother never wants to see him again.
Fortunately, not long after Loki's exit, one of Thor's new mortal friends arrives on the scene to tell a few more lies — but this time in the interests of securing Thor's release from SHIELD's custody. Though Coulson and the other SHIELD agents are not actually convinced by Selvig's fast talking, they decide to let him go anyway, in the hopes that he might lead them to some actual answers if they keep an eye on him — and on the way out, Thor is able to snatch up one of Jane's notebooks, thereby fulfilling at least a little of his promise to her.
Since he also promised her answers to the mysteries of the universe, and because he just likes talking to her, Thor spends the following night telling her of Yggdrasil, and how its branches bring together far distant stars. His affections for her are deepening, and clearly mutual, so with her company and with Selvig and Darcy's friendship, he begins to think that perhaps living out the rest of his now-mortal life here on Earth wouldn't be so bad.
Only to have the peace of his new, simpler, smaller life abruptly shattered when Sif and the Warriors Three arrive to visit, having committed treason to come rescue him.
Thor is happy to see them, of course, but also tells them gently that he can't possibly go back with them. Not when his mother's forbidden his return and his father is dead because of him...
But those were, as mentioned previously, lies, and now Thor learns (some of) the truth: that his father still lives, but has fallen into an Odinsleep, a kind of mystical coma that he goes into fairly regularly in order to recharge his godly batteries2. Frigga, meanwhile, is not at all angry, and would certainly welcome Thor home.
Loki, seeing all of this from Odin's throne3, knows the jig is about to be officially up — and sends the Destroyer to kill Thor and his friends before they can return and ruin his somewhat dangerous and definitely a shade hysterical plan to lure Laufey into Asgard, slay him in front of his parents, and then destroy all of Jotunheim by leaving the Bifrost4 open. But then, he did just find out he was adopted, so perhaps a little bit of attempted genocide is to be expected.
Back on Earth, Sif and the Warriors Three (but especially Sif) make an admirable assault on the Destroyer, while Thor and the other mortals do the work of evacuating the town to the best of their abilities — but the Destroyer eventually proves too much for minor characters, and Thor rushes to their sides. To Sif, who was ready to die a warrior's death and have stories told of this day, he implores to "Live, and tell those stories yourself," before turning his attention on the Destroyer.
This once fearless, some would say reckless, warrior knows that his only chance now is to appeal to Loki directly — with words.
Assuring his friends that he has a plan, Thor approaches the Destroyer, and attempts to talk to Loki through it. "Brother... for whatever I have done to wrong you, I am truly sorry," he says, and then offers his own life, if Loki will only spare the innocents.
For a beat, the Destroyer hesitates — then strikes Thor down, mortally wounding him, and accidentally providing him the chance to finally prove himself worthy.
In a rush of color and light, Mjolnir whizzes to Thor's hand, and Thor rises from the dead, his armor and cape and godhood fully restored.
Making quick work of the Destroyer, Thor says goodbye to Jane, his new friends, and Coulson, who arrived with his men just in time to fire useless bullets at the Destroyer earlier, agreeing that he has not told them everything but promising (this to Jane, especially) to come back.
When he arrives in Asgard, Loki's plan is partially complete: Laufey is dead, and Frigga certainly is proud of him for a few seconds, before Thor tells her of Loki's treachery. All that remains is to destroy Jotunheim, and Loki knocks Thor through a wall before rushing off to complete that final task.
The two of them meet at the Bifrost and begin the movie's final battle. Thor, still unaware of Loki's adoption and especially unaware that he is, in fact, Laufey's son, cannot begin to understand Loki's rage and pain or the true meaning behind his words when he snarls, "I'm not your brother. I never was!" All Thor knows is that Loki lied to him and tried to kill him and now wants to rid the multiverse of every last Frost Giant.
Loki observes that Thor would probably have thought this was a great idea a couple of days ago, and demands to know what changed him so much. Latching onto the idea that it was Jane, he angrily declares that he'll "have to pay her a visit" himself, and Thor, who has so far refused to fight his brother, launches himself at Loki in earnest.
They fight, and Thor successfully pins Loki down with Mjolnir's weight, but then realizes that he's too late to shut off the Bifrost. It's been open for too long. The only way to stop it from razing Jotunheim to dust is destroying the bridge itself. Which, as Loki is quick to point out, will mean never being able to return to Earth. But Thor does not hesitate. He is willing to lose the woman he loves in order to save the lives of his enemies.
The bridge shatters under Mjolnir's blows, and both Thor and Loki fall from it — only to be caught by Odin, roused from his Odinsleep just in time.
Now it is Loki's turn to appeal to his father: "I could have done it, Father! For you! For all of us!"
But Odin is still not as impressed by bloody conquests as his sons would have him be, and when Loki sees it, he responds by letting go.
THOR ends with the Bifrost broken, Loki seemingly lost to the sea of stars, Thor in mourning, and Jane hard at work on Earth to find her own way between realms.
In THE AVENGERS
Between THOR and THE AVENGERS, a year passes. The Bifrost has not yet been repaired, Jane's efforts have not borne fruit, and Thor, Frigga, and Odin have all thought Loki dead...
...so imagine their surprise when he suddenly appears back on Earth, bearing a scepter and in search of the Tesseract, an artifact left by Asgard on Earth long ago.
By Loki's assertion and the tie-in comics, Odin expanded a great deal of energy to send Thor to Earth through "dark energy", which the comics nebulously implied would exact a heavy toll. Either way, it takes Thor three days to arrive on the scene, after SHIELD has already recruited Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Bruce Banner to help them recover the Tesseract and stop Loki, who has wasted no time in casually murdering 80 people.
When Thor does finally reach Earth, he finds Loki has been apprehended by SHIELD. Wasting no more time, he seeks out and lands on their small plane mid-flight, grabs Loki by the throat, and then exits the aircraft without a word to anyone else.
"Where is the Tesseract?" he demands of Loki as soon as they land, to which Loki replies snidely, "I missed you, too," but Thor is not about to let him off the hook that easily. This is not a game. The Tesseract is dangerous, Loki's bid to take over Earth is doomed to disaster, and Thor already suspects there must be more going on here than meets the eye... It's no time for an episode of Jerry Springer.
Still, their reunion is tense, full of barbs from Loki and raw admissions from Thor, who now knows, as Loki puts it, the truth of his brother's parentage — but considers him no less family, albeit family gone badly astray.
And Thor can tell he is making progress: he has gotten Loki to admit to at least part of his plan, which involves unleashing a borrowed alien army, referred to as the Chitauri, and his determined rejection of Loki's actions but acceptance of Loki seems to be working... until the untimely interruption of Tony Stark, who has come to retrieve SHIELD's prisoner.
Thor, future king of one of the most powerful worlds in the multiverse, meet Tony Stark, who has never addressed anyone with even a modicum of the respect due their station. Tony Stark, meet Mjolnir.
Once their skirmish has taken out half the surrounding forest and Thor's face has resurfaced the nearby cliff, Steve Rogers tries to break things up — but in the process he makes the mistake of suggesting that Thor, who is already in a terrible mood, put down his weapon. Fortunately, the resulting shockwave from Mjolnir striking the vibranium of Steve's shield levels the remaining trees, knocks everyone off their feet, and successfully defuses Thor's temper5.
With a clearer head, he sees the wisdom in letting SHIELD take custody of Loki and working with the people of Earth to find the Tesseract and thwart whatever scheme Loki has put into motion, and we next see him on board the helicarrier, in counsel with Steve, Tony, Bruce Banner, SHIELD Agent Natasha Romanoff, and SHIELD Director Nick Fury, where he awkwardly straddles the line between defending his brother from their harsher remarks and acknowledging that said brother has done some truly terrible things.
After Bruce and Tony leave the bridge to go do Science (specifically, to locate the Tesseract by tracing its gamma radiation signature), Thor stays behind to brood on his part in Loki's actions; when Coulson tries to tell him that he changed everything by coming to Earth, his response is that things were better as they were. "We pretend on Asgard that we're more advanced, but we come here battling like bilchsteim," which he explains is a huge, ugly beast that tramples everything in its path.
Loki's rage followed him to Earth, and in that way Thor knows he is to blame for everything Loki does there. Knowing that Jane has been relocated somewhere safe by thoughtful SHIELD agents does little to reassure him, especially since Selvig, now one of Loki's brainwashed minions, was not so lucky.
"In my youth, I courted war," he laments, but then Fury arrives, interrupting this reverie on how much worse Thor is than anyone in human history to ask him, only somewhat euphemistically, whether he's willing to torture his brother for information.
Thor reacts to this with indignation and disbelief, because apparently Asgardians really are better in at least one regard, and unfortunately for Team Find the Tesseract he and Fury are not the only team members experiencing friction.
At this very moment, Tony is hacking into SHIELD's systems because he's suspicious by nature and Steve is breaking into the helicarrier's cargo bay because he's not suspicious by nature but does recognize that Tony's suspicions in this particular case have merit. Natasha, the only one with her eyes still fully on the prize, is working over Loki in a different form of advanced interrogation, but by the time she realizes that unleashing the Hulk is Loki's gameplan, it's too late to do anything constructive about it6 except for call in Thor as damage control.
And so they all wind up in the lab: Tony, Bruce, Steve, Fury, Natasha, and Thor. The first three confront Fury with what they've learned — that SHIELD is not only interested in the Tesseract as a clean energy source, but also to make weapons, just like (oh-so-coincidentally) HYDRA. Fury defends SHIELD's actions and attributes them to Thor's presence on Earth: the puny mortals have to do something to combat the fact that they're hopelessly, hilariously outgunned by the rest of the universe. Natasha tries to talk Bruce down, to little success with everyone around them running hot, and Thor has to deal with being handed yet another disappointment by the race of people he had previously thought of only as good and kind.
With tensions already running high, it's the perfect time for Loki's minions to attack, and the lab's explosion, just as Tony and Bruce's program had successfully located the Tessearct, scatters the movie's would-be heroes.
Thor finds himself in a cargo bay, and sets about tracking down the Hulk so that he can do what no one else on the helicarrier is capable of. Their fight is short but, for Thor, still enjoyable; when the Hulk draws blood, Thor knows he's found one mortal opponent he can go all out with, and, though he doesn't entirely give up trying to reason with the man inside the beast, he does call Mjolnir to make quicker work of said beast.
After the Hulk exits the helicarrier stage left aback a fighter jet, Thor's next task is substantially less pleasurable, and he reaches the holding cell where Loki is being kept just in time to see his brother escaping. In his rush to tackle what turns out to be an illusion, Thor winds up trapped in the cell himself.
"Are you ever not going to fall for that?" the real Loki asks snidely.
Mjolnir's response is eloquent, slamming into the tempered glass of the cell, cracking it, which unnerves Loki — and sending an ominous quake through the cell, which unnerves Thor. The two of them look at each other, Thor piecing things together: the cell, meant to contain Banner's monstrous other half, is obviously designed to jettison if the glass breaks.
Loki smirks. "The humans think us immortal," he says, moving to a control panel. "Shall we test that?"
But before he can say or do anything else, he's interrupted — by Coulson, who has just arrived with an enormous, apparently newly-developed gun. He orders Loki to stand down, and for a moment Loki actually does. Thor breathes easy for an instant.
But it's only another illusion, and the real Loki reappears in a flash behind Coulson, promptly stabbing him through the chest with his scepter.
Thor cries out, almost as though he were the one being gutted like a fish, slamming his fist again into the glass of the cell and heedless as it once again trembles. Though not as close to him as his other mortal friends, Coulson was still an ally, a man he had come to respect. A man who was now dying for the egregious crime of trying to help him.
Seemingly remorseless, Loki turns to look at his brother one last time, and moves back to the button.
All Thor can do is watch, and hope. He should be able to trust that his brother would never really do it; should, but can't. He knows it's a very real possibility, but wants to believe that something — some small sliver of affection — will stay Loki's hand.
Loki pushes the button, and Thor falls.
It's a very long fall from the helicarrier, fortunately, and as he's knocked from side to side like a tennis ball in a washing machine Thor has just enough time to escape, which he does by launching himself at one of the glass panels with as much force as he can muster in the cell's very limited space.
However, this small success does not undo the enormity of his failures so far in his mission, and as Thor reaches out to retrieve Mjolnir his hand falls short. It's timefor a mandatory second-act slump to brood a little more, no doubt on his recent unworthiness and how his brother just tried to kill him for the second or third time in the last year.
So Thor stays where he is, in a field, while on the helicarrier above him Coulson breathes his dramatic last, some sense is very literally knocked back into Clint Barton, and Loki beats a hasty retreat. He will also miss out on the ruining of Coulson's vintage collector's cards, and Tony Stark's brilliant deduction that Loki is almost as much of a narcissist as he is — which leads most of the team to Stark Tower. Instead, Thor will have to find his own way there, presumablythrough a small plot hole because his godly senses were tingling seeing the portal open, since he arrives shortly thereafter to find Loki overseeing his own personal war.
Thor orders Loki to shut down the Tesseract or else he'll destroy it, because those are obviously the only two options where magical gateways are concerned, but of course Loki refuses and the two square off against each other. Still, Thor doesn't give up completely; even after being dropped out of the helicarrier, he still tries to talk Loki down between blows, this time with an argument not dissimilar to one Tony tried earlier without success. Does he really think this madness will end with him on a throne?
Loki weakens for a moment, telling Thor with seeming distress that it's too late to stop this now, and Thor seizes the opportunity gladly to reassure him — only to get a knife in the gut for his trouble. His hope and faith now twice betrayed, Thor seizes his brother and throws him to the ground, but Loki rolls away off the edge of the Stark Tower toensure we get a few more fight scenes before the credits escape.
The heroes regroup on the streets below, and Thor, along with Tony, defers to Steve's leadership. Working together with the newly-arrived Bruce, they evacuate the city and take down a large number of the Chitauri foot soldiers — but not enough of them to prevent SHIELD's shadowy overseers from deciding that nuking New York City is the only way to contain the threat, which eventually leads to Tony proving wrong everyone who doubted his ability to be a self-sacrificing hero by riding a nuke through the portal to take out the mothership.
With the portal safely closed, the group converges on Loki, who is still recovering from a wicked beating the Hulk gave him earlier, to finally apprehend him, and then Thor takes him, and the Tesseract, back to Asgard. But not before a quick pitstop to try this thing humans call "shawarma".
...so imagine their surprise when he suddenly appears back on Earth, bearing a scepter and in search of the Tesseract, an artifact left by Asgard on Earth long ago.
By Loki's assertion and the tie-in comics, Odin expanded a great deal of energy to send Thor to Earth through "dark energy", which the comics nebulously implied would exact a heavy toll. Either way, it takes Thor three days to arrive on the scene, after SHIELD has already recruited Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Bruce Banner to help them recover the Tesseract and stop Loki, who has wasted no time in casually murdering 80 people.
When Thor does finally reach Earth, he finds Loki has been apprehended by SHIELD. Wasting no more time, he seeks out and lands on their small plane mid-flight, grabs Loki by the throat, and then exits the aircraft without a word to anyone else.
"Where is the Tesseract?" he demands of Loki as soon as they land, to which Loki replies snidely, "I missed you, too," but Thor is not about to let him off the hook that easily. This is not a game. The Tesseract is dangerous, Loki's bid to take over Earth is doomed to disaster, and Thor already suspects there must be more going on here than meets the eye... It's no time for an episode of Jerry Springer.
Still, their reunion is tense, full of barbs from Loki and raw admissions from Thor, who now knows, as Loki puts it, the truth of his brother's parentage — but considers him no less family, albeit family gone badly astray.
And Thor can tell he is making progress: he has gotten Loki to admit to at least part of his plan, which involves unleashing a borrowed alien army, referred to as the Chitauri, and his determined rejection of Loki's actions but acceptance of Loki seems to be working... until the untimely interruption of Tony Stark, who has come to retrieve SHIELD's prisoner.
Thor, future king of one of the most powerful worlds in the multiverse, meet Tony Stark, who has never addressed anyone with even a modicum of the respect due their station. Tony Stark, meet Mjolnir.
Once their skirmish has taken out half the surrounding forest and Thor's face has resurfaced the nearby cliff, Steve Rogers tries to break things up — but in the process he makes the mistake of suggesting that Thor, who is already in a terrible mood, put down his weapon. Fortunately, the resulting shockwave from Mjolnir striking the vibranium of Steve's shield levels the remaining trees, knocks everyone off their feet, and successfully defuses Thor's temper5.
With a clearer head, he sees the wisdom in letting SHIELD take custody of Loki and working with the people of Earth to find the Tesseract and thwart whatever scheme Loki has put into motion, and we next see him on board the helicarrier, in counsel with Steve, Tony, Bruce Banner, SHIELD Agent Natasha Romanoff, and SHIELD Director Nick Fury, where he awkwardly straddles the line between defending his brother from their harsher remarks and acknowledging that said brother has done some truly terrible things.
After Bruce and Tony leave the bridge to go do Science (specifically, to locate the Tesseract by tracing its gamma radiation signature), Thor stays behind to brood on his part in Loki's actions; when Coulson tries to tell him that he changed everything by coming to Earth, his response is that things were better as they were. "We pretend on Asgard that we're more advanced, but we come here battling like bilchsteim," which he explains is a huge, ugly beast that tramples everything in its path.
Loki's rage followed him to Earth, and in that way Thor knows he is to blame for everything Loki does there. Knowing that Jane has been relocated somewhere safe by thoughtful SHIELD agents does little to reassure him, especially since Selvig, now one of Loki's brainwashed minions, was not so lucky.
"In my youth, I courted war," he laments, but then Fury arrives, interrupting this reverie on how much worse Thor is than anyone in human history to ask him, only somewhat euphemistically, whether he's willing to torture his brother for information.
Thor reacts to this with indignation and disbelief, because apparently Asgardians really are better in at least one regard, and unfortunately for Team Find the Tesseract he and Fury are not the only team members experiencing friction.
At this very moment, Tony is hacking into SHIELD's systems because he's suspicious by nature and Steve is breaking into the helicarrier's cargo bay because he's not suspicious by nature but does recognize that Tony's suspicions in this particular case have merit. Natasha, the only one with her eyes still fully on the prize, is working over Loki in a different form of advanced interrogation, but by the time she realizes that unleashing the Hulk is Loki's gameplan, it's too late to do anything constructive about it6 except for call in Thor as damage control.
And so they all wind up in the lab: Tony, Bruce, Steve, Fury, Natasha, and Thor. The first three confront Fury with what they've learned — that SHIELD is not only interested in the Tesseract as a clean energy source, but also to make weapons, just like (oh-so-coincidentally) HYDRA. Fury defends SHIELD's actions and attributes them to Thor's presence on Earth: the puny mortals have to do something to combat the fact that they're hopelessly, hilariously outgunned by the rest of the universe. Natasha tries to talk Bruce down, to little success with everyone around them running hot, and Thor has to deal with being handed yet another disappointment by the race of people he had previously thought of only as good and kind.
With tensions already running high, it's the perfect time for Loki's minions to attack, and the lab's explosion, just as Tony and Bruce's program had successfully located the Tessearct, scatters the movie's would-be heroes.
Thor finds himself in a cargo bay, and sets about tracking down the Hulk so that he can do what no one else on the helicarrier is capable of. Their fight is short but, for Thor, still enjoyable; when the Hulk draws blood, Thor knows he's found one mortal opponent he can go all out with, and, though he doesn't entirely give up trying to reason with the man inside the beast, he does call Mjolnir to make quicker work of said beast.
After the Hulk exits the helicarrier stage left aback a fighter jet, Thor's next task is substantially less pleasurable, and he reaches the holding cell where Loki is being kept just in time to see his brother escaping. In his rush to tackle what turns out to be an illusion, Thor winds up trapped in the cell himself.
"Are you ever not going to fall for that?" the real Loki asks snidely.
Mjolnir's response is eloquent, slamming into the tempered glass of the cell, cracking it, which unnerves Loki — and sending an ominous quake through the cell, which unnerves Thor. The two of them look at each other, Thor piecing things together: the cell, meant to contain Banner's monstrous other half, is obviously designed to jettison if the glass breaks.
Loki smirks. "The humans think us immortal," he says, moving to a control panel. "Shall we test that?"
But before he can say or do anything else, he's interrupted — by Coulson, who has just arrived with an enormous, apparently newly-developed gun. He orders Loki to stand down, and for a moment Loki actually does. Thor breathes easy for an instant.
But it's only another illusion, and the real Loki reappears in a flash behind Coulson, promptly stabbing him through the chest with his scepter.
Thor cries out, almost as though he were the one being gutted like a fish, slamming his fist again into the glass of the cell and heedless as it once again trembles. Though not as close to him as his other mortal friends, Coulson was still an ally, a man he had come to respect. A man who was now dying for the egregious crime of trying to help him.
Seemingly remorseless, Loki turns to look at his brother one last time, and moves back to the button.
All Thor can do is watch, and hope. He should be able to trust that his brother would never really do it; should, but can't. He knows it's a very real possibility, but wants to believe that something — some small sliver of affection — will stay Loki's hand.
Loki pushes the button, and Thor falls.
It's a very long fall from the helicarrier, fortunately, and as he's knocked from side to side like a tennis ball in a washing machine Thor has just enough time to escape, which he does by launching himself at one of the glass panels with as much force as he can muster in the cell's very limited space.
However, this small success does not undo the enormity of his failures so far in his mission, and as Thor reaches out to retrieve Mjolnir his hand falls short. It's time
So Thor stays where he is, in a field, while on the helicarrier above him Coulson breathes his dramatic last, some sense is very literally knocked back into Clint Barton, and Loki beats a hasty retreat. He will also miss out on the ruining of Coulson's vintage collector's cards, and Tony Stark's brilliant deduction that Loki is almost as much of a narcissist as he is — which leads most of the team to Stark Tower. Instead, Thor will have to find his own way there, presumably
Thor orders Loki to shut down the Tesseract or else he'll destroy it, because those are obviously the only two options where magical gateways are concerned, but of course Loki refuses and the two square off against each other. Still, Thor doesn't give up completely; even after being dropped out of the helicarrier, he still tries to talk Loki down between blows, this time with an argument not dissimilar to one Tony tried earlier without success. Does he really think this madness will end with him on a throne?
Loki weakens for a moment, telling Thor with seeming distress that it's too late to stop this now, and Thor seizes the opportunity gladly to reassure him — only to get a knife in the gut for his trouble. His hope and faith now twice betrayed, Thor seizes his brother and throws him to the ground, but Loki rolls away off the edge of the Stark Tower to
The heroes regroup on the streets below, and Thor, along with Tony, defers to Steve's leadership. Working together with the newly-arrived Bruce, they evacuate the city and take down a large number of the Chitauri foot soldiers — but not enough of them to prevent SHIELD's shadowy overseers from deciding that nuking New York City is the only way to contain the threat, which eventually leads to Tony proving wrong everyone who doubted his ability to be a self-sacrificing hero by riding a nuke through the portal to take out the mothership.
With the portal safely closed, the group converges on Loki, who is still recovering from a wicked beating the Hulk gave him earlier, to finally apprehend him, and then Thor takes him, and the Tesseract, back to Asgard. But not before a quick pitstop to try this thing humans call "shawarma".
In THE DARK WORLD
Between THE AVENGERS and THOR: THE DARK WORLD, another year passes. Loki is sentenced to life in Asgard's dungeon, and Thor spends most of his time traveling from one world to another and, apparently, playing peacekeeper7.
The brothers have not spoken, but neither has Thor been back to Earth to visit Jane, and both family and friends comment on his distracted heart throughout the first few scenes of the movie. Are you still mooning over that silly Earth girl, Odin more or less says, in an excellent display of fathering skills. Why not try Sif on for size, since she's right here and actually of the same species? Father of the year, right here.
However much he would obviously like to see her, though, Thor might well have left Jane entirely alone — let her get on with her life, since he knows from consultations with Heimdall that she is finally starting to move on after two years of almost continuous search (and moping) — if she hadn't abruptly vanished from Heimdall's sight for several hours with no explanation.
Well, now he has an excuse, so Thor rushes to Earth to find her — and Jane, stung by his complete lack of letters or phone calls for two years, greets him with a slap to the face. When he tells her that he's been busy trying to make the multiverse safe for all the races in it, she grudgingly admits that that's a pretty good reason for disappearing.
Then Darcy rushes up to remind Thor that he is currently raining on everyone who isn't him or his girlfriend, and if he could stop that it would be neat. He does, and for a moment everything is well. Thor and Jane are pleased to see one another, and Jane seems fine despite her inexplicable winking out of existence...
...until a mild threat from a police officer causes Jane's entire body to ripple with a shockwave of power that blasts everyone back.
Thor, now seriously concerned, scoops her up and takes her back to Asgard for tests — much to the annoyance of Odin, until he sees another ripple with his own eyes and realizes that Jane must have come across and become infected by the Aether, yet another powerful and extremely dangerous artifact left on Earth by Asgardian hands a few thousand years ago.
Originally belonging to the Dark Elves, a race previously thought to have been wiped out by Odin's father Bor, the Aether will be fatal if left inside of Jane — but is also not something anyone in Asgard knows how to draw out of her, since it isn't their technology and is sorely lacking in a manual.
Also, its return to the multiverse at large is part of a big doomsday-y prophecy concerning the end of everything. So not great news, overall.
Because Thor missed the scene earlier in the movie where the supposedly-extinct Dark Elves awoke from suspended animation as soon as Jane took possession of the Aether, he and Jane have little recourse for the moment but to moon over each other as he leads her through Asgard and tells her about more about the Convergence, a phenomenon that only comes along every few thousand years when the branches of Yggdrasil align just so and the barriers between realms fray, resulting in portals that will make for a truly spectacular and somewhat hilarious final battle later on.
"I'll find a way to save you, Jane," he promises her; adding, when she protests, that his father "doesn't know everything".
But while Jane meets Thor's mother, the Dark Elves have made their move, depositing a Trojan horse among the marauders ravaging various realms so that Asgard winds up taking one of their best men prisoner. As soon as he's secure in Asgard's dungeon, this man — Algrim — takes out a piece of Dark Elf technology and uses it to become one of their fearsome Kursed warriors. Which then allows him to easily escape from his cell and make his way to Asgard's security system in order to soon disable it and let more of his people through.
When the "prisoners are escaping" alarm goes off, Thor's first thought is of his brother, doubtlessly causing mischief, so he hurries down to the dungeon and becomes immediately entangled with a large group of escaping riffraff.
It's a completely understandable response to the assault, but also, unfortunately, misguided, as it means leaving Frigga and Jane alone. Though Frigga fights admirably when Malekith, leader of the Dark Elves, comes for Jane, she is only one minor character and ultimately stands no chance against the movie's main villain.
Thor gets back just in time to shout, "No!" as Malekith and Algrim kill her, and that he manages to char Malekith's face with lightning, causing the two to turn tail and flee without Jane, is of small comfort.
We see an Asgardian funeral, with Frigga's body on a pyre, bound for Valhalla, and then the next scene shows that Odin without her is not in good shape. No longer a man in favor of peace, he now wants to wait for Malekith to come back and then fight to the last Asgardian breath.
Thor, recognizing that his father is blinded by grief, makes plans of his own in secret: to take Jane from Asgard to Svartalfheim, giving Malekith the opportunity to extract the Aether from her as only he knows how, and then in that moment when it is exposed destroying it. But since Odin will not be swayed and has shut down all means of off-world travel, this plan requires consorting with the only person in Asgard who knows how to slip from the city without using either the Bifrost or the Tesseract.
The Warriors Three and Sif all protest this plan, but Thor pushes past their dissent. "He will betray you," Fandral points out, and Thor agrees, "He will try," but still goes to Loki for help.
What he finds, after he tells Loki to drop the illusion, is his brother shattered by Frigga's death.
He promises Loki the opportunity to share in his vengeance on their mother's killer, but warns him that in their past confrontations he has fought with the hope that his brother was still "in there, somewhere". That hope has been thoroughly dashed, and if Loki betrays him again Thor will kill him. Loki is not in the least dissuaded, by this or either of the other two threats against his life that soon follow from Sif and Volstagg, so the two head off.
Thor's plan comes together swiftly: Sif retrieves Jane while Heimdall distracts Odin, and then Sif and Volstagg and Fandral all take turns holding off squadrons of Asgard's elite guards while Thor, Loki, and Jane escape.
Repeatedly throughout the sequence, Loki observes that none of this is at all like Thor's usual: it's subtle, cunning, sneaky. Wouldn't he rather just punch his way out? But Thor ignores his barbs, and presses on, eventually succeeding in leaving Asgard behind.
With Loki's assistance, the three reach Svartalfheim. Jane is sickened by the Aether to the point of being nearly comatose, which allows Thor and Loki to bicker over her unconscious body without difficulty. Thor, leveraging Frigga against Loki for the second time, points out that she wouldn't want them to fight, and backs down himself, reiterating at the same time that he cannot trust his brother — but wishes he could.
The scene cuts away, but when we find the three of them again, Thor takes off Loki's handcuffs — and is immediately betrayed by him, as Loki stabs him once again in the gut and then kicks him down a hill towards Malekith. When Thor reaches for Mjolnir, Loki moves quickly, cutting off his hand at the wrist, and so Thor doubles over, roaring in pain.
Jane rushes to his side, still disoriented by the Aether, and Loki grabs her, throwing her at Malekith's feet. "I am Loki of Jotunheim," he greets the Elf, "and I bring you a gift."
Malekith and Algrim exchange words, but Loki's earlier stint in the dungeon works in his favor; Algrim knows he is an enemy of Asgard, and tells Malekith as much, so Malekith accepts this offering and promises Loki a good seat from which to watch Asgard burn. He moves to extract the Aether from Jane's body —
— and Thor shouts, "Now, Loki!" because it has all been a trick, and in truth he is completely unharmed, able to call Mjolnir to him and to bring down lightning on the Aether... but not, unfortunately, able to destroy it.
Malekith absorbs the Aether, then makes to leave, and a brief but deadly battle ensues with Loki repeatedly risking his life and then, finally, getting himself killed in an attempt to save Thor from Algrim.
As he dies dramatically in Thor's arms, Thor calls him a fool for not sticking to the plan, and Loki agrees that he's a fool. Then Thor promises to tell their father of his actions, but Loki replies that he didn't do this for Odin — and dies.
Leaving him there, apparently, Thor and Jane take shelter from a dust storm in a cave. Algrim is dead, and many other Dark Elves as well, but Malekith managed to escape and seems to be headed for Earth, his plan to use the Convergence to blot all the light out from the multiverse simultaneously and return it to everlasting darkness8.
Jane blames herself for finding the Aether, but Thor counters that Malekith would only have gotten to it that much sooner, because he disagrees with the Wikipedia page and thinks it's the Convergence, not the Aether, that brought the Dark Elves out of suspended animation. Still, they're both in poor spirits, because as things stand right now they have no way to leave Svartalfheim and no way of stopping Malekith...
...or so they think, until the unmistakable and terrible ring tone Darcy put on Jane's phone starts going off, revealing that the cave they chose to hide in is, conveniently, one of those places where the barrier between worlds is very thin. After a brief timeout to sulk about the fact that Jane had exactly one date in the two years of his absence, Thor recovers and he and Jane search the cave, eventually finding a way through that brings them out in London.
Now for that final battle mentioned earlier.
Malekith has arrived on Earth, and he and Thor face off, knocking each other repeatedly through the many, many portals on Earth and flying comically up, down, and sideways as they grapple. In the meantime, Erik Selvig, who has not had the greatest two years, assists Jane and Darcy and Darcy's new intern Ian in using some devices he created to measure the Convergence to activate portals.
The idea behind them was originally to help stabilize the event, but now they're going to be used in combat instead, and liberal application of them helpfully transports bands of Dark Elves off world, culminating in a clever scene where Thor hurtles them into Malekith's body like javelins, ripping him apart at the seams by sending parts of him to different realms, before finally dropping one of his own spacecraft on top of him.
In the end, the Aether is recovered, the Convergence ends, and the day is won — but Thor has learned some very important lessons, and he takes them to Odin.
The alignment has brought all the realms together, Odin tells him. They saw Thor fight for their freedom, risking his own life to save them. What can Asgard offer its new king in return?
"My life," Thor says after a moment, before explaining that he cannot be king of Asgard. He will protect it and every other realm with his last breath, but he cannot do it from a throne. The brutality and sacrifice required of a king are something he does not think he has in him — and does not want to ever have in him. "I would rather be a good man than a great king."
Odin more or less accuses Thor of saying this just because he wants to stay on Earth and play house with his mortal girlfriend, but Thor disagrees, saying that whether Odin gives him permission to make Jane his queen or not his answer is the same.
With a visibly heavy heart, Odin resigns himself to the sad fate of having two good sons and no heir, but tells Thor he's proud of him and lets him leave with a light heart.
If only Thor could see what the audience sees... but he cannot, and so he returns to Earth happily, to take Jane in his arms and kiss her as a free man.
The brothers have not spoken, but neither has Thor been back to Earth to visit Jane, and both family and friends comment on his distracted heart throughout the first few scenes of the movie. Are you still mooning over that silly Earth girl, Odin more or less says, in an excellent display of fathering skills. Why not try Sif on for size, since she's right here and actually of the same species? Father of the year, right here.
However much he would obviously like to see her, though, Thor might well have left Jane entirely alone — let her get on with her life, since he knows from consultations with Heimdall that she is finally starting to move on after two years of almost continuous search (and moping) — if she hadn't abruptly vanished from Heimdall's sight for several hours with no explanation.
Well, now he has an excuse, so Thor rushes to Earth to find her — and Jane, stung by his complete lack of letters or phone calls for two years, greets him with a slap to the face. When he tells her that he's been busy trying to make the multiverse safe for all the races in it, she grudgingly admits that that's a pretty good reason for disappearing.
Then Darcy rushes up to remind Thor that he is currently raining on everyone who isn't him or his girlfriend, and if he could stop that it would be neat. He does, and for a moment everything is well. Thor and Jane are pleased to see one another, and Jane seems fine despite her inexplicable winking out of existence...
...until a mild threat from a police officer causes Jane's entire body to ripple with a shockwave of power that blasts everyone back.
Thor, now seriously concerned, scoops her up and takes her back to Asgard for tests — much to the annoyance of Odin, until he sees another ripple with his own eyes and realizes that Jane must have come across and become infected by the Aether, yet another powerful and extremely dangerous artifact left on Earth by Asgardian hands a few thousand years ago.
Originally belonging to the Dark Elves, a race previously thought to have been wiped out by Odin's father Bor, the Aether will be fatal if left inside of Jane — but is also not something anyone in Asgard knows how to draw out of her, since it isn't their technology and is sorely lacking in a manual.
Also, its return to the multiverse at large is part of a big doomsday-y prophecy concerning the end of everything. So not great news, overall.
Because Thor missed the scene earlier in the movie where the supposedly-extinct Dark Elves awoke from suspended animation as soon as Jane took possession of the Aether, he and Jane have little recourse for the moment but to moon over each other as he leads her through Asgard and tells her about more about the Convergence, a phenomenon that only comes along every few thousand years when the branches of Yggdrasil align just so and the barriers between realms fray, resulting in portals that will make for a truly spectacular and somewhat hilarious final battle later on.
"I'll find a way to save you, Jane," he promises her; adding, when she protests, that his father "doesn't know everything".
But while Jane meets Thor's mother, the Dark Elves have made their move, depositing a Trojan horse among the marauders ravaging various realms so that Asgard winds up taking one of their best men prisoner. As soon as he's secure in Asgard's dungeon, this man — Algrim — takes out a piece of Dark Elf technology and uses it to become one of their fearsome Kursed warriors. Which then allows him to easily escape from his cell and make his way to Asgard's security system in order to soon disable it and let more of his people through.
When the "prisoners are escaping" alarm goes off, Thor's first thought is of his brother, doubtlessly causing mischief, so he hurries down to the dungeon and becomes immediately entangled with a large group of escaping riffraff.
It's a completely understandable response to the assault, but also, unfortunately, misguided, as it means leaving Frigga and Jane alone. Though Frigga fights admirably when Malekith, leader of the Dark Elves, comes for Jane, she is only one minor character and ultimately stands no chance against the movie's main villain.
Thor gets back just in time to shout, "No!" as Malekith and Algrim kill her, and that he manages to char Malekith's face with lightning, causing the two to turn tail and flee without Jane, is of small comfort.
We see an Asgardian funeral, with Frigga's body on a pyre, bound for Valhalla, and then the next scene shows that Odin without her is not in good shape. No longer a man in favor of peace, he now wants to wait for Malekith to come back and then fight to the last Asgardian breath.
Thor, recognizing that his father is blinded by grief, makes plans of his own in secret: to take Jane from Asgard to Svartalfheim, giving Malekith the opportunity to extract the Aether from her as only he knows how, and then in that moment when it is exposed destroying it. But since Odin will not be swayed and has shut down all means of off-world travel, this plan requires consorting with the only person in Asgard who knows how to slip from the city without using either the Bifrost or the Tesseract.
The Warriors Three and Sif all protest this plan, but Thor pushes past their dissent. "He will betray you," Fandral points out, and Thor agrees, "He will try," but still goes to Loki for help.
What he finds, after he tells Loki to drop the illusion, is his brother shattered by Frigga's death.
He promises Loki the opportunity to share in his vengeance on their mother's killer, but warns him that in their past confrontations he has fought with the hope that his brother was still "in there, somewhere". That hope has been thoroughly dashed, and if Loki betrays him again Thor will kill him. Loki is not in the least dissuaded, by this or either of the other two threats against his life that soon follow from Sif and Volstagg, so the two head off.
Thor's plan comes together swiftly: Sif retrieves Jane while Heimdall distracts Odin, and then Sif and Volstagg and Fandral all take turns holding off squadrons of Asgard's elite guards while Thor, Loki, and Jane escape.
Repeatedly throughout the sequence, Loki observes that none of this is at all like Thor's usual: it's subtle, cunning, sneaky. Wouldn't he rather just punch his way out? But Thor ignores his barbs, and presses on, eventually succeeding in leaving Asgard behind.
With Loki's assistance, the three reach Svartalfheim. Jane is sickened by the Aether to the point of being nearly comatose, which allows Thor and Loki to bicker over her unconscious body without difficulty. Thor, leveraging Frigga against Loki for the second time, points out that she wouldn't want them to fight, and backs down himself, reiterating at the same time that he cannot trust his brother — but wishes he could.
The scene cuts away, but when we find the three of them again, Thor takes off Loki's handcuffs — and is immediately betrayed by him, as Loki stabs him once again in the gut and then kicks him down a hill towards Malekith. When Thor reaches for Mjolnir, Loki moves quickly, cutting off his hand at the wrist, and so Thor doubles over, roaring in pain.
Jane rushes to his side, still disoriented by the Aether, and Loki grabs her, throwing her at Malekith's feet. "I am Loki of Jotunheim," he greets the Elf, "and I bring you a gift."
Malekith and Algrim exchange words, but Loki's earlier stint in the dungeon works in his favor; Algrim knows he is an enemy of Asgard, and tells Malekith as much, so Malekith accepts this offering and promises Loki a good seat from which to watch Asgard burn. He moves to extract the Aether from Jane's body —
— and Thor shouts, "Now, Loki!" because it has all been a trick, and in truth he is completely unharmed, able to call Mjolnir to him and to bring down lightning on the Aether... but not, unfortunately, able to destroy it.
Malekith absorbs the Aether, then makes to leave, and a brief but deadly battle ensues with Loki repeatedly risking his life and then, finally, getting himself killed in an attempt to save Thor from Algrim.
As he dies dramatically in Thor's arms, Thor calls him a fool for not sticking to the plan, and Loki agrees that he's a fool. Then Thor promises to tell their father of his actions, but Loki replies that he didn't do this for Odin — and dies.
Leaving him there, apparently, Thor and Jane take shelter from a dust storm in a cave. Algrim is dead, and many other Dark Elves as well, but Malekith managed to escape and seems to be headed for Earth, his plan to use the Convergence to blot all the light out from the multiverse simultaneously and return it to everlasting darkness8.
Jane blames herself for finding the Aether, but Thor counters that Malekith would only have gotten to it that much sooner, because he disagrees with the Wikipedia page and thinks it's the Convergence, not the Aether, that brought the Dark Elves out of suspended animation. Still, they're both in poor spirits, because as things stand right now they have no way to leave Svartalfheim and no way of stopping Malekith...
...or so they think, until the unmistakable and terrible ring tone Darcy put on Jane's phone starts going off, revealing that the cave they chose to hide in is, conveniently, one of those places where the barrier between worlds is very thin. After a brief timeout to sulk about the fact that Jane had exactly one date in the two years of his absence, Thor recovers and he and Jane search the cave, eventually finding a way through that brings them out in London.
Now for that final battle mentioned earlier.
Malekith has arrived on Earth, and he and Thor face off, knocking each other repeatedly through the many, many portals on Earth and flying comically up, down, and sideways as they grapple. In the meantime, Erik Selvig, who has not had the greatest two years, assists Jane and Darcy and Darcy's new intern Ian in using some devices he created to measure the Convergence to activate portals.
The idea behind them was originally to help stabilize the event, but now they're going to be used in combat instead, and liberal application of them helpfully transports bands of Dark Elves off world, culminating in a clever scene where Thor hurtles them into Malekith's body like javelins, ripping him apart at the seams by sending parts of him to different realms, before finally dropping one of his own spacecraft on top of him.
In the end, the Aether is recovered, the Convergence ends, and the day is won — but Thor has learned some very important lessons, and he takes them to Odin.
The alignment has brought all the realms together, Odin tells him. They saw Thor fight for their freedom, risking his own life to save them. What can Asgard offer its new king in return?
"My life," Thor says after a moment, before explaining that he cannot be king of Asgard. He will protect it and every other realm with his last breath, but he cannot do it from a throne. The brutality and sacrifice required of a king are something he does not think he has in him — and does not want to ever have in him. "I would rather be a good man than a great king."
Odin more or less accuses Thor of saying this just because he wants to stay on Earth and play house with his mortal girlfriend, but Thor disagrees, saying that whether Odin gives him permission to make Jane his queen or not his answer is the same.
With a visibly heavy heart, Odin resigns himself to the sad fate of having two good sons and no heir, but tells Thor he's proud of him and lets him leave with a light heart.
If only Thor could see what the audience sees... but he cannot, and so he returns to Earth happily, to take Jane in his arms and kiss her as a free man.
Footnotes
1 Or, technically, to restore Thor's power to anyone worthy enough to wield it. See Thor's abilities for more info.
2 More specifically, the Odinsleep is necessary to help him contain the awesome Odinforce, which — depending on the comic book inspiration — might be the result of having absorbed the power of his two brothers. When Thor becomes king, as he sometimes has in the comics, he inherits this force, now renamed Thorforce appropriately, and goes into his own semi-annual Thorsleep.
3 In myth as well as comic, Odin can see events unfolding elsewhere in the universe from his throne, apparently not entirely dissimilar to Heimdall's own preternatural senses.
4 This isn't really properly explained, but apparently the bridge Asgardians use to travel between worlds — the Bifrost (or, as Jane Foster would have it, Einstein-Rosen bridge slash wormhole) — is tremendously powerful. If it were left "on", pointing at a world like Jotunheim, it would burn the entire planet to ash and dust.
5 This plus the assault on Jotunheim that begins THOR lends a lot of credence, in my opinion, to the idea that MCU Thor carries the same berserker tendencies as comic book Thor. The heat of battle overtakes him, and he becomes oblivious to his surroundings and seemingly incapable of slowing down, stopping, or being reasoned with.
6 Though not explicitly stated in the movie, it is hinted at rather strongly through the camera treatment f the scene where everyone argues together around it that the scepter Loki wields in this movie has some kind of passive effect on the minds of those around it, stringing them out, sowing discord. I posit that Bruce's exposure to the scepter's energy by this point is already at critical levels, and the assault on the helicarrier by Clint's team was just the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.
7 It isn't really explained what happened between THOR and THOR: THE DARK WORLD to so drastically destabilize the peace, but I extrapolate that, even though Asgard wasn't playing any kind of active role in policing them, the other realms knew that it was just a Bifrost away. Once that threat was well and truly nullified, chaos erupted as various factions sought power. But this is only a theory, included here just so that you know I didn't forget to explain something important.
8 No, this doesn't get any further explanation. Dark Elves just hate sunlight, apparently. And everybody else, since most species kind of need sunlight in order to survive.
2 More specifically, the Odinsleep is necessary to help him contain the awesome Odinforce, which — depending on the comic book inspiration — might be the result of having absorbed the power of his two brothers. When Thor becomes king, as he sometimes has in the comics, he inherits this force, now renamed Thorforce appropriately, and goes into his own semi-annual Thorsleep.
3 In myth as well as comic, Odin can see events unfolding elsewhere in the universe from his throne, apparently not entirely dissimilar to Heimdall's own preternatural senses.
4 This isn't really properly explained, but apparently the bridge Asgardians use to travel between worlds — the Bifrost (or, as Jane Foster would have it, Einstein-Rosen bridge slash wormhole) — is tremendously powerful. If it were left "on", pointing at a world like Jotunheim, it would burn the entire planet to ash and dust.
5 This plus the assault on Jotunheim that begins THOR lends a lot of credence, in my opinion, to the idea that MCU Thor carries the same berserker tendencies as comic book Thor. The heat of battle overtakes him, and he becomes oblivious to his surroundings and seemingly incapable of slowing down, stopping, or being reasoned with.
6 Though not explicitly stated in the movie, it is hinted at rather strongly through the camera treatment f the scene where everyone argues together around it that the scepter Loki wields in this movie has some kind of passive effect on the minds of those around it, stringing them out, sowing discord. I posit that Bruce's exposure to the scepter's energy by this point is already at critical levels, and the assault on the helicarrier by Clint's team was just the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.
7 It isn't really explained what happened between THOR and THOR: THE DARK WORLD to so drastically destabilize the peace, but I extrapolate that, even though Asgard wasn't playing any kind of active role in policing them, the other realms knew that it was just a Bifrost away. Once that threat was well and truly nullified, chaos erupted as various factions sought power. But this is only a theory, included here just so that you know I didn't forget to explain something important.
8 No, this doesn't get any further explanation. Dark Elves just hate sunlight, apparently. And everybody else, since most species kind of need sunlight in order to survive.
PERMISSIONS
threadjack
fourthwall
touch
kiss
ship
mindread
control
fight
kill
manipulate
nsfw