The following article talks about big plot points in Avengers: Endgame. Continue at your own peril.
Now onto the good stuff. Endgame saw a lot of character growth for so many characters, but one that stood out to me was Thor.
Endgame really concludes his character arc from Thor: Ragnarok, and we see him go through some serious crap. Of course, we saw a huge shift for Thor in Avengers: Infinity War after he loses his brother Loki, Heimdall, many of his people, and then fails to stop Thanos.
This understandably leads him to blame himself and we eventually see him become very depressed and fat. How did we get here from where we saw him in Ragnarok, though? Chris Hemsworth has said he loved the version of the God of Thunder that he created in that film alongside director Taika Waititi.
Well, it turns out that it all started when Anthony and Joe Russo ran into Waititi on their way to the bathroom. This gave them the chance to talk about the way things were going on Ragnarok and where Thor was going. The brothers then explained to THR that they used this discussion to inform some of their choices for the last two Avengers films. Joe said:
“Probably running into Taiki [Waititi] when he was talking about Thor: Ragnarok and understanding what a radical direction he was going in. That certainly informed some choices we made with Hemsworth on Infinity War. We had already crafted our own version of that character and then we found a way to integrate the level of humor that he was going to be playing with, but pulled it into the psychological realism that we like to filter everything through.”
As was already mentioned, Hemsworth became proud of Thor’s new direction which is why the brothers were asked how he felt about these changes. Anthony responded:
“He was on board. We talked to him early on about it. That was born from us just thinking about, on an individual level, how each of the Avengers were moving forward from the moment at the end of Infinity War. How they were dealing with the pain of having lost to Thanos and the pain of losing everyone? We just started building. This came out of really intense sessions with the writers, Markus and McFeely. We just started circling this character, who was really blaming himself. If you look at the loss Thor suffers in Infinity War, it’s staggering. From the beginning of the film, when Thanos attacks his ship, kills Loki and Heimdal and much of his people. And all the way through to his failure to stop Thanos. We started thinking about how that would weigh on him and what that would do to him. We started circling this idea of depression and throwing that out in a way that we thought was really surprising and interesting.”
I personally love Thor’s character arc from Infinity War and Endgame. It’s beautiful, and I’m interested to see how it will lend itself to Thor’s future as it seems he has joined up with the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Did you love Thor’s story as much as I did?