Thor's Fate In Avengers: Endgame Revealed?!
The long-awaited finale for the MCU’s first story will be here in little over a month. Not much time left to wait now. The end of this plotline brings with it the end of certain characters stories. We’re going to be taking a look at Thor and what exactly the movie will have planned for his character. He’s one of the original Avengers who doesn’t look like he’s going to kick the bucket in this upcoming installment. Thor’s journey seems to be leading him on a different path. He’ll finish his first ten-year MCU story fulling the role that he was fighting for in the first of his movies; he’ll become the first king of New Asgard.
Thor
In the original Thor, Thor was confident to a fault. Not only was he arrogant, but he was also a glory hound and an unnecessary risk taker. He tried to start a full scale over three random invaders invading and immediately dying in vaults of Asgard. All he was thinking about at the time was how non relatilation made him seem weak. He didn’t look at the situation the way he should have as an upcoming king, and this lead to his inevitable invasion of a another realm. Even when one of his friends ended up with a near mortal wound, Thor wanted to continue fighting simply because he was fun.
The whole point is that Odin finally realized that his son was not only too brazen for his own good, but for the good of those around him. Something unbefitting of a king. This was a lesson Thor had to learn if Odin was ever going to let him take the throne, and by the end of the movie Thor did. He took his first step to sitting on the throne, even going so far as to tell Odin that he didn’t want it by the end because he himself believed that he still had a lot to learn. This first movie of Thor’s set him up as someone who needed to learn what exactly was necessary of him to become a good leader, and he took his first steps towards that by the end. Didn’t accomplish it, but his journey started.
Thor was never a hero who was meant for a sacrificial death, but one meant to watch others die around him. He states as much in Infinity War. The prevailing reasoning behind this has to do with his character. Thor was always someone willing to die in battle for the honor and glory of it, but this notion shifted to dying for other people by the time time he learned his lessons in the original Thor. Because of this, Thor’s character has been developing in a way that prevents him from dying as a means to save others. The reason for this is simple: dramatic irony. As someone who was once war hungry, watching others die in his place acts as a reminder to Thor not to fall back into his old ways, and it solidifies the lesson Odin had for him in the first movie: “A wise king must never seek out war, but must always be ready for it.”
The Avengers
Thor’s journey continues to development in the Avengers when he first meets up with his future team, beings of equal moral character who also share responsibilities with weight as heavy as his own. While he may not get off to the best of starts with these characters, things change when Thor’s dramatic irony rears its head. Phil Coulson dies in front of him while trying to stop Loki. Phil’s death is just another instance of Thor having to watch someone die for something greater than themselves. Sure Phil comes back but Thor could never know that, and that’s not really the point in the end anyway.
Fast forward a collective number of minutes later and the world security council decides to nuke New York with the pretense of sparing the rest of the world the threat of an alien apocalypse. In order to stop this event from happening, Tony, takes it upon himself to stop the nuke. This is the most selfish member of the Avengers team deciding to take it upon himself to sacrifice for the greater good. Once again, Thor has to more or less watch this. Sure, in the end, Tony doesn’t die by the act, but the fact that he didn’t is a miracle in and of itself.
The whole of the Avengers movie, at least in its most dramatic sequences, serves as a way to play up Thor’s “curse” when you center it around his character. He’s just not meant to be the one that dies.
Thor: The Dark World
When Thor returns for his second movie, he places himself even further from the throne. He doesn’t do this because he feels he needs to learn anything but rather because he simply doesn’t want it anymore. He’s fallen in love with a mortal and just being the prince of Asgard has kept him busy enough so that he can’t see her. He’s learning there are certain sacrifices that need to be made for the throne that he doesn’t quite care to burden himself with at the moment. It helps that Odin is still alive and kicking to keep things running while he debates his fate. By the end of the film Thor comes to the conclusion that he really he does not want the throne anymore. He’s fond of Earth and has found someone he loves.
This is a direct contrast to what Thor wanted when we first met his character back his original movie. Thor wanted nothing more than to be king of Asgard, but his experiences have changed his way of thinking, and that’s good. The Thor universe is following the idea that a good good king would be someone who doesn’t want the throne because they understand the responsibility and limitations of power, rather than someone who wants the throne because they’d rather have no responsibilities at all. Thor and Loki represent these ideals respectively. By the end of Thor: The Dark World, Thor is a perfect candidate to take on the throne of Asgard. Thus we now head into:
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Now that Thor’s staying on earth most of the time, it’s become pretty routine for him and the rest of the Avengers to go save the world. It’s here in this movie that Captain America is officially stated to be the leader of the Avengers team by Tony Stark. This shows just how much Thor has changed. He’s not clamoring to be the leader of the group through claims that he’s the strongest and most battle experienced Avenger and therefore deserves the title. He‘s quite alright with taking a back seat in this situation. Sure, he takes pride in being the strongest and mightiest, but he’s not letting that cause any unnecessary conflict between him and his new allies, which is something the Thor we got in the original first movie wouldn’t have hesitated to do. He’s showing off how far he’s come as a potential king. He has humility.
When Wanda manages to get inside his head and show him his greatest fears, we learn that Thor’s greatest fear is being the king that leads his people into war. He fears being the type of king he would have turned out to be had he taken the throne from Odin back in his original movie. Thor’s nightmarish vision acts as another way to show off what path he’s on, and where he’ll end up by his journey end. He’s thinking about the people of Asgard now, and not just for himself, another lesson that Odin wanted him to learn.
Thor: Ragnarok
In the end of the Thor trilogy, we have Ragnarok. In Thor: Ragnarok, everything Thor has learned over the course of the MCU films is put to the test. The prophecy of Ragnarok has just revealed itself and it’s saying that all of Asgard will be destroyed. Upon learning this, Thor sets off to do everything in his power to put a stop to it, and instead of really learning a lesson in this film, Thor teaches the lessons to other people. Most notable, he teaches this lesson to Loki, someone who’s failed to learn in every movie he’s appeared in up until this point.
He teaches Loki that life is about growth and change, something he’s had to learn over the course of his MCU journey. Through, Loki, Thor proves that he’s learned every lesson Odin needed him to in order to take the throne. Of course, Thor also learns that the hammer doesn’t make the god when he achieves his full abilities without it, but that’s more on the personal side of things. In the end, Thor destroys his homeworld by unleashing Ragnarok, but he saved the people, which was the prominent goal. He then official takes the title of king of Asgard, and it's not because he wanted to, but because he had too.
Avengers: Infinity War
But just when everything is going swimmingly… Infinity War happens. Infinity War works to stripe away everything Thor has left and leave him with seeming nothing. Thanos attacks his ship and murders a good chunk of Thor’s people (apparently, not all of the Asgardians were on the ship Thor was so some of them made it out). This is Thor’s fear coming to pass. He’s king for all of two seconds and half his people are murdered. To make matters even worse. Thanos also kills Thor’s best friend in Heimdall and murders his brother Loki -- again, all within two seconds of Thor becoming king.
After the fact, we get Thor explaining his curse to Rocket about how fate insists on his existence despite him meeting a number of life-ending scenarios. Thanos is just another in long line to him. But he admits that if he does happen to be particular wrong in this case that he doesn’t have much else to lose anyway so what does it matter. Thor is at his lowest point. The asgardian people people are also at their lowest point. Their planet is gone, and more than half of their people have been wiped out, first by Hela, and now by Thanos. Now, more than ever, Thor is going to have to pull himself together and show the grit necessary to be a the king his people need, despite his own desperate situation, which leads us to:
Avengers: Endgame
Thor’s story is not one of heroic self-sacrifice, but rather one of learning what it takes to be a real leader. He can’t complete his story if he happens to be killed during the events of Endgame, and that would be because he hasn’t had his time to be what his story has forged him into: a king. Thor’s people have no home and the rest of the royal family is now official deceased. He’s all they have left. In the comics, there’s a time when the asgardians settle on earth in a place called “New Asgard.” From the way everything has played out in Thor’s story so far, this seems like the endgame scenario that the MCU is aiming for with Thor. They’re aiming to fully integrate him with the Earth.
Thor of course will be a big help in fighting Thanos, and he and Thanos have a lot of things they need to hash out due to the Mad Titan’s actions. But with all that being said, it’s less likely Thor will die at the hands Thanos, and more likely that he’ll have to face his curse again. He’s probably going to be the one who has to watch either Tony or Steve die. At the moment, Thor thinks he has nothing left to lose, but he’s pretty fond of these two earthlings. It wouldn’t exactly be painless to see either one of them killed in front of him.
