Pondering Existence in Thor: Love and Thunder – Top

Heavy spoilers for Thor: Love and Thunder to follow.

The reception to Thor: Love and Thunder has been divisive, to say the least. Currently it stands at 68% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is pretty lackluster for a Marvel film. With the exception of Eternals, most of Phase 4 has been well-received, even if the movies aren’t exactly the heavy hitters we were expecting. The tone of the movie is clearly the biggest problem, with Taika Waititi choosing to douse everything with a camp, comedic tone, which then made the heavier sections of the movie feel a tad out of place. It needed a greater sense of balance that we saw in Thor: Ragnarok.

Be that as it may, with this movie, it becomes clear what Phase 4 is all about: love and loss. I wrote about this before in my analysis of Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, but Thor: Love and Thunder takes it a step further by bringing God into the picture. The beginning of the movie fleshes out how Gorr the Butcher became the villain he is. As he falls at the feet of his god, expecting eternal reward for his loyalty, he is ridiculed instead. At this point, after the loss of his daughter, all he had left was his faith, the belief that his suffering and losses would not be for naught.

But it is.

His god doesn’t care for him, nor his suffering. And we see a repeat of this later on, with Zeus and Omnipotence City. Gorr leans into the abyss and embraces the darkness, corrupted by the lure of the necrosword, pursuing a path of blood and revenge. His endgame is to reach Eternity by any means necessary, and wish into existence the termination of all gods.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once declared that “God is Dead,” commenting on the shift of humanity towards rationality and physical laws, where divine providence was no longer needed to offer a sense of moral order. This isn’t to say that the idea of God disappeared entirely. Religious institutions still exist, people still have faith in a higher power. And in their commitment to this faith, there are attempts to rationalise suffering and loss. All we need to do is look to Christ to observe this central conceit, after all, his suffering saved us from our sins. Yet, even as we innately understand the purpose of suffering and the part it plays in our relationship with God, accepting it is a whole different ballgame. We are not impervious in the face of loss, and we see this acutely in WandaVision, and here in Thor: Love and Thunder.

Gorr had to withstand the loss of his daughter, and when he reached the god he had devoutly followed, he was shown scorn instead of love. If his god had been kinder and more empathetic, Gorr’s path would have been drastically different. Both Gorr and Wanda allowed their grief and despair to have an unshakeable grip on them, which made them susceptible to corruption by external magical items. Much like the pair, Thor himself has faced tremendous loss. His entire family is dead, his home destroyed, and the only woman he ever loved he pushed away. And now, they are reunited only for him to be faced with losing her all over again.

How is Thor able to keep his bearings, to suffer and grieve yet remain untouched by the abyss? He still had people he loved to keep him rooted to his goodness, while Wanda and Gorr were left to their own devices. We can believe in our gods, but we live our lives for love. This is where Ikaris from Eternals lost his way. He committed himself to the mission given to him by Arishem instead of the woman he loves, choosing to murder someone he loved in order to uphold the decisions of a celestial being. This is because he perceives that as his purpose, the reason for his existence, betraying all the people he loves in the process.

For Thor, he is able to push past his hatred for Gorr and raise Gorr’s daughter Love as his own. And in his last moments, Gorr decides to choose love over hate, resurrecting his daughter instead of killing all the gods. As for Jane, she too chose love, deciding to charge into battle knowing her body might not survive it, but doing it so that she could help Thor.

For all its faults, I couldn’t help but love Thor: Love and Thunder. To finally see Thor discover a measure of peace in a lifetime of fighting was immeasurably satisfying. Maybe it’s because I hope to find my own sense of peace too. Someday, perhaps.

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