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Well, this was unexpected. I don’t mean that Thor: Ragnarok was good or successful, at this point a Marvel movie being pretty good and making money is extremely par for the course. I mean just HOW good and HOW successful Thor: Ragnarok actually was, effectively bringing this franchise back from the edge almost. The Thor films have had a very odd trajectory, back in 2011 Thor was a breath of fresh air, a “Shakespeare in Space” adventure movie that was easily the most family friendly of the Phase 1 Marvel films.
Since then, however, Thor lost a lot of its potential when the 2nd entry, The Dark World, suffered director problems and got creamed by Hunger Games: Catching Fire and then Guardians of the Galaxy became the new cosmic kid on the block & Ant-Man took over the family-friendly mantel.
But now with Ragnarok Marvel’s finally got a Thor film with a renewed mass appeal that finally figures out how to use Chris Hemsworth right AND delivered on the large-scale action and mythos the character always promised. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Thor 4 doesn’t seem like such a crazy possibility, especially with how transient the mantle of Thor is. So with that said here are 7 possibilities for Thor 4.
ASGARD ON EARTH
So, at the end of Thor: Ragnarok Thor and the Asgardians were left sort of cosmically adrift after Asgard itself got burned down by the fire giant Surtur. Thor states they’re headed for Earth and even though I fully expect their refugee fleet to get torpedoed by Thanos in Infinity War, I wouldn’t be surprised if we still entered Phase 4 with a bunch of Asgardians now forced to live on our pale blue dot.
This is actually a fairly common occurrence in the comics and has happened twice. First was when Thor became king of the Gods in the late ‘90s/Early 2000s and placed Asgard over New York City then again in the mid-2000s after the final Ragnarok destroyed Asgard proper and is incarnated in the small town of Broxton, Oklahoma.
Both of these ideas have pros and cons and, given Marvel’s track record, I’d expect the end result to be a mash-up of both of them. The New York setting is already present with Thor as King of the Gods and it served as a really cool foundation for an entire new cult of Asgard sweeping through the US, even setting up a fight between Thor and Iron Man with Tony building a special Thor Buster suit.
Conversely, the Broxton setting has been a part of the Thor mythos basically since it was introduced over 10 years ago so it’s fairly well established by now. It also featured a lot of the Asgardians returning in human form which could let Marvel bring back folks like the Warriors Three who they killed off in Ragnarok or even recast characters like Loki as this was the era when Loki assumed a woman’s form.
The big downside is that Broxton would be a pretty similar setting to the first Thor and it feels a lot like the franchise has really struggled to get out from under Earth’s weight and really spread its wings. What’s more, it’s not like the other 9 realms were destroyed as well so there are plenty of other places for the Asgardians to settle if they don’t go this route.
LADY THOR
I’m using the term ‘Lady Thor’ here because I really don’t think we’ll be seeing Jane Foster Thor in the MCU any time soon. As much as I did enjoy Jane Foster in the first 2 films she obviously wasn’t tracking and I can’t really blame them for quietly shuffling her off-screen, especially with Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie picking up the slack.
Speaking of whom, Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie would be a really solid choice as a new Thor if they want to cut Hemsworth’s role down to a cameo or maybe have him die off altogether. Valkyrie’s tangential relationship to Asgard would make her a solid choice for keeping the story focused on new realms and new worlds while wielding the hammer and it’s clear she’s a very popular new character.
Failing that, Jaimie Alexander’s Sif was very pointedly NOT shown among the Asgardians who got slaughtered in Thor: Ragnarok so there’s every possibility Marvel could get her back for the role of Thor in a new film, especially if they could keep Thompson and Hiddleston around for continuity. Failing all of that, there’s no rule that says a new woman Thor has to be a pre-existing hero, there’s just a rule that says she’s proved immensely popular, probably more so than most of Marvel’s other diversity heroes, and they’d be a fool not to explore this option.
THUNDER STRIKE
So this is definitely more of a hypothetical option but one I’d kind of love if they played it out. During the ‘90s, the glorious ‘90s, Marvel went through a weird and experimental period with Thor where he became kind of a biker dude. The details are deeply unrewarding and frankly you can get everything there is to get about Thunder Strike from just looking at him: he’s a vaguely Thor-ish costume paired with a leather vest and ponytail. This was the era when Ghost Rider was huger than huge so it made some sense for Marvel to put one of their other predominate magic characters into the motorcycle world and see what happens.
Nowadays Thunder Strike is honestly one of the more endearingly bizarre ‘90s oddities, too strange to live but too unique to die. I’m not sure if that could translate into a whole movie but if the Asgardians do end up on Earth it could be a fun place to take things, especially as we creep towards 10 years since the first Thor film. Doing a 4th entry that scales things back and has the God of Thunder cruising around the South West on a motorcycle would be a serious left turn but also a pretty refreshing one given how often these sequels feel the need to go bigger and more elaborate.
BETA RAY BILL
As you’re probably picking up by now the Thor mythos is exceedingly weird. One of the great parts of that weirdness is one Beta Ray Bill, a big horse looking alien dude who once held the mantle of Thor. Cooked up in 1983 by Thor legend Walter Simonson, Bill is basically alien Captain America.
His people’s home was destroyed by Galactus leaving them in a refugee state, much like the Asgardians post-Ragnarok, so they chose to augment one of their greatest warriors into a super soldier, which also had the bizarre side effect of giving him a horse face. He encountered Thor in his travels and ended up accidentally wielding Thor’s hammer, proving worthy of its power and title. After a brief adventure Bill received his own hammer called Stormbreaker and has been a friend and ally to Thor ever since.
Now, technically, Beta Ray Bill actually had a very tiny suggested cameo in Thor: Ragnarok as his face was featured as one of the champion statues in the Grandmaster’s arena on Sakaar. So we know he’s out there and his history as a defender of refugees with lost planets would be a nice fit for the Asgardian’s current situation if they don’t end up going to Earth.
Obviously, the hardest part of doing Beta Ray Bill would be the CGI- I don’t think the MCU is at a point where they could realistically have an ALL CGI character carry a film as the lead. Bill is especially problematic because his face is also so inhuman, which makes it a lot harder to read his emotions. Still, he’d be a cool addition to Team Thor going forward.
MANGOG
So far the Thor films have had a bit of an odd time scraping together major Thor storylines to draw from for inspiration. A lot of that has to do with the fact Thor was kind of a B-C lister for most of his life. Thor’s mythos was buoyed largely by 2 great runs: one by creator Jack Kirby in the ‘60s and ‘70s and one by the already mentioned Walter Simonson in the ‘80s.
Simonson’s run has largely informed the films so far, it’s where characters like Malekith or Surtur come from, which has left the Kirby stuff curiously out in the cold. A big part of that is how much his run involved Earth-based adventures but there is one big Kirby story you could easily adapt to the big screen: the MANGOG.
Eons ago for reasons lost to pre-history, Odin was forced to enact a brutal punishment on a violent race. His punishment was to combine the entire species, a billion plus beings, into one entity- the Mangog, which he then imprisoned. Eventually, Mangog was freed by Ulik, the Troll, another Kirby character we haven’t seen anywhere in the films and set out to destroy Asgard.
The Mangog saga was one of the landmark mega-storylines of ‘60s Marvel, honestly right up there with the Coming of Galactus and the Night of the Sentinels. With Odin’s death and Asgard’s destruction in Thor: Ragnarok, it’d be easy to have the Mangog emerge as a threat of the past returning out of the mists of time. Overall it’d just be nice to see the Kirby era Thor stuff given more focus than just from the design side of things.
HERCULES
So I tend to keep a pretty tight list of Marvel rumors and mysteries that the MCU has slowly accumulated over its near 10 years of existence, stuff like the “real” Mandarin that was established in the ‘Hail to the King’ short. One of the more interesting ones is that there was going to be a line in Age of Ultron where Thor explains that the Asgardians are the only beings of classical myth that happen to exist, specifically debunking the Olympian gods, but the line was nixed by Marvel higher-ups.
Ever since learning about this I’ve held the suspicion that Marvel would very much like to bring Hercules and his attendant pantheon into the MCU, especially now that Hemsworth’s contract is quickly expiring and they’d probably like something to fill the Thor shaped hole in the MCU.
I’m not exactly sure Hercules could hold down a solo film, even though I love the character he hasn’t really had a ton of success on the independent circuit, but it’d be great seeing him truck around with Valkyrie and the other Thor attaches. Actually, there was a time when the Skrulls were invading the Earth that their Gods sought to wipe out the Earthly pantheons and Hercules lead a team of divine heroes to stop them, a group called the God Squad- that would be a story worth adapting for a fourth Thor film, especially as it’d re-contextualize the entire Thor mythos into being more of a Mythic Fantasy set-up if it acknowledges there are other Gods and not just “powerful aliens.” Also, Hercules would be Marvel's first theatrical queer hero so big plus there.
GALACTUS
So if you’re a long time follower of this blog you’ll have been now noticed a pattern to these listicles of mine, which is that I like to include one or two really out there entries more about playing out the hypothetical than a serious prediction. One of those one Hercules, this is the other, again based on the swirling rumors of the Disney/Fox buy out but also the rumors that Disney has had the Fantastic Four rights back already hence green lighting Marvel’s X-Men TV shows. I have no idea how any of that is going to play out but we’ve got till at least the 2020s till we see a Thor 4 so it’s entirely possible by that time this could be a legitimate reality.
In any event, Thor vs. Galactus is actually a long and proud tradition for his mythos, it’s one of the other major sagas Kirby pioneered during his time on the book. Since then the two have clashed a number of times and really it just makes sense. Galactus is a great natural threat and Silver Surfer feels like a natural enemy for the God of Thunder.
What’s more, the big G is the kind of larger than life threat you’d need a full on God Squad to defeat so it could indeed warrant bringing together folks like Hercules, whose home might one day be threatened, and Beta Ray Bill, whose home was destroyed by Galactus, in a “last stand” type defense of Asgard’s new fledgling existence. Like I said, real unlikely but it feels like if they could scrape it together this would be the perfect set-up to raise the stakes after Hela and Surtur and set the stage for some Thor spin-offs.
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