My sweet child! Thor: Love and Thunder shows that there is life after Ragnarok and all is well in Love and Thor. And this time, Odinson and Stormbreaker are accompanied by a Dr. Directed by Taika Waititi, the God of Thunder’s fourth solo film pits both Thors against a Gorr, who literally has the working title of “God Butcher.” What can go wrong? So let’s break it all down – how Thor: Love and Thunder ends, what’s the deal with those end scenes and mid-credits, and all the Easter eggs we found… And when you’re done here, read our Thor: Love and Thunder review Thunder! A visual history of Thor
Thor: Love and Thunder Ending Explained
Here’s the plot of the movie in a nutshell: Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) returns as the Mighty Thor thanks to Mjolnir, who is also back in action. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) gets his groove back, sheds all that Endgame weight, and loses the Asgardians of the Galaxy so they can close out their trilogy. Gore the God Slayer kidnaps a bunch of kids from New Asgard to lure Thor and Stormbreaker into a trap, so Thor, Mighty Thor, and King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) team up to get the kids back. This leads them to the Easter-egg-filled City of Omnipotence, where Thor slams Zeus’ (Russell Crowe) thunderbolt into his chest. The Thors arrive in the Shadow Realm to fight Gorr, but not before he reaches eternity who grants his wishes and brings his dead daughter back to life (before dying himself). Jane also dies, sacrificing herself to stop Gore. Thor adopts Gor’s orphan and travels with her superheroine across the universe as the titular Love and Thunder. The ending (except for the post-credits – scroll down for those!). So to dig into this ending a little more closely, Gorr needs Thor’s trusty Stormbreaker ax and bifrost capabilities to open a door to Eternity. That’s why he kidnapped the children – to lure the Thors to him. When Thor and Mighty Thor arrive to rescue the children, Thor tells them to prepare to fight. As they pick up random trash lying around – or hold their pets – he endows them with his own powers “for a limited time only”. A bunch of god-mode kids then proceed to beat the crap out of Gorr’s horde of nightmarish, Lovecraftian shadow creatures, to the tune of the better part of “November Rain.” Jane, who has been suffering from cancer lately, practically sacrifices herself to save the children. Earlier in the film, she tells Thor that every time she becomes Mighty Thor, it takes away more of her power as Jane Foster. Jane still chooses to use Mjolnir in the final battle, despite knowing it will kill her…and it does. As Mighty Thor, he manages to use Mjolnir to crush Gorr’s death sword, which seemingly undermines his powers. But despite all that, he does reach Eternity and therefore can make a wish. The Thors follow him as he goes through the portal to meet Eternity, but Jane’s cancer has caught up with her and she dies in Thor’s arms. Thor convinces Gorr not to use his desire for revenge as originally planned, but to choose love instead. Coincidentally, Love was apparently the name (or nickname) of his dead daughter and so Gorr chooses to resurrect her instead of killing all the gods everywhere as he originally planned. Dying after doing this, Gore hugs and kisses his baby girl before leaving. And so it’s a bittersweet ending. Jane is gone (we see she’s immortalized as Mighty Thor, aka Dr. Jane Foster, in statue form in New Asgard), but Thor basically has a daughter now, and they’re doing the superhero thing around the galaxy.
Does Thor: Love and Thunder have a post-credits scene?
Yes, Thor: Love and Thunder has a post-credits and mid-credits scene. Marvel’s Hercules: An Incredible Journey From Myth to Avenger We have Heracles in the mid-credits scene. He opens up on Zeus, nursing a lightning-sized hole in his sternum, and whines about what literally happened to the City of Omnipotence. It’s clear he’s talking to someone – you know how these things wait until the last shot in the scene reveals what we want to see. Here, it’s the live-action Hercules, played by Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent). We only get one shot of him, but it’s clear that Zeus is upset about having his chest pierced by his own weapon and sends his boy Heracles – mentioned earlier in the film – to exact some divine vengeance on the God of Thunder . Hercules first appeared in Marvel Comics in The Avengers #10 in 1964, where he was called upon by the villainous Immortus to mix it up with Thor. Except this wasn’t really Hercules. It’s a long story, but check out ours Hercules in love and lightning explainer for all the details. Here’s a question: Is Loki in Valhalla too? “ As for the scene after the concerts, we find Jane Foster’s spirit reawakening in Valhalla. Valhalla is the afterlife of the Norse gods and there is a lot of talk about it in this film. As Jane appears, none other than Idris Elba’s Heimdall (who died back in Avengers: Endgame) is there to greet her. And that’s basically it. The credits roll, a card on the screen says that Thor will return, and that’s the end of the movie. The Valhalla scene is a moving book about Jane’s story as she dies heroically, sacrificing herself to save the children. Jane certainly died a hero, but the Valhalla scene explains that yes, she’s as dead as Heimdall, but at least her death isn’t really the end of her story. Because that’s not how death works in the MCU anymore, it seems… Jane and Heimdall’s appearance in Valhalla is likely a simple goodbye to both characters, but if Gorr was able to resurrect his daughter by reaching Eternity, it might not be out of the question for Thor to eventually do the same. Realistically, though, this was probably just an excuse to give Jane a proper send-off in a better movie than Thor: The Dark World. But here’s a question: Is Loki in Valhalla too? Not 2012’s Loki, who’s currently mucking around with TVA variants, but rather Loki Prime, who died in Avengers: Infinity War. He died in battle, which this movie tells us is a requirement to enter Valhalla. And that’s after helping Thor save the Asgardians at Ragnarok. His final acts were brave, and based on the ground rules of Valhalla laid out there in Love and Thunder, we think he’s in there too.
What’s next for Thor (and Chris Hemsworth) in the Marvel movies?
Whenever a new MCU movie or Disney+ show comes along, we always have to try to extrapolate where things will go next, and when it comes to Thor… well, the door is still wide open. Thor’s story is still perfectly viable for more movies. At the end of Avengers: Endgame, he went into space for adventures with the Asgardians of the Galaxy. He sort of ends this movie the same way, except instead of a ship full of holes, he’s goofing around with Love, Gore’s resurrected daughter. So maybe the duo will go on all kinds of fun space adventures and the next Thor movie could actually be a literal Love and Thunder movie. Keep in mind that at this point the Avengers don’t really exist. Tony is dead, Cap is old, and Nat is dead too. But at some point an existential threat has to happen that needs a group of gifted individuals to work together, and Thor seems like a likely candidate to join the fun. Right now, with all the threats the MCU has put on the table since Endgame, the most likely candidate for this existential threat has to be Kang the Conqueror. Introduced in Loki, Kang is also set to appear in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in 2023. And since Kang was one of the original villains of the comic book Avengers, if a new version of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is reassembled to face this dude, Thor will almost certainly be involved. But ultimately, all we know for sure right now is what it said on screen at the end of Love and Thunder: Thor will be back.
Thor: Love and Thunder Easter Eggs
Let’s look at all the Easter Eggs we found in the movie:
There were many in Omnipotence City, but we’ll start with the big ones. Several Celestials appear throughout the film, most notably in the City of Omnipotence and where Gor builds the gate to Eternity… but still no mention of the Celestial’s massive head and hand sticking out of Earth since the release of Eternals. Ra, its most powerful member Egyptian pantheon (or Ennead as Moon Knight calls it), is also part of the Omnipotence City gang. The Necrosword choosing Gorr is a bit different in the comics where All-Black the Necrosword is actually a symbiote – yes, a Venom-type symbiote. Knull, the eldritch god and creator of all symbiotes, also created All-Black. The weapon is especially strong against sulfur. The main manipulators of the comic are: Knull, Gorr the God Butcher, and yes… All-Father Thor (though he later destroys it).
Marvel Cinematic Universe: Every upcoming movie and TV show
When Thor imbues the children of the New Asgards with his power, it spreads among them in the shape of Yggdrasil, the sacred tree central to Norse mythology and several Thor legends. There are several statues at the portal to the Eternity Room, including the three-headed Living Tribunal from the Loki series, Uatu the Watcher, who was a major player in What If…?, and what appears to be Lady Death – the comic book character – The Thanos did his whole “wipe out half the universe” thing. Jane Foster refers to Interstellar, explaining the wormhole theory from it with a piece of paper and a pencil. He also thought the movie was clear and simple to understand, so…
