Thor: The Dark World Writers Admit That The Film Has A Confusing Backstory

Back in March, when Avengers: Endgame hype was approaching fever-pitch, I wrote a story about the two MCU films you need to refresh yourself on before you see the movie. The story was based on a quote by Anthony Russo, who named Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War as the ones to watch. But I thought I’d have a little fun and claim that one of the pics you absolutely had to check out was Thor: The Dark World.

I figured that this film, generally considered bottom-of-the-barrel when it comes to MCU outings, was never going to be mentioned again in the franchise. So imagine my surprise when my joke prediction came true, with Avengers: Endgame traveling back to the events of the movie to retrieve the Aether.

Now, with the Endgame commentary track available on the digital release, we hear from writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely on how they decided to revisit the Thor sequel and the consequences that stemmed from its tangled story.

McFeely explains in the commentary that:

“It was when hitting upon this idea that the second act would be going back to the movies of the MCU and seeing them from new points of view. The idea that we could sort of talk about them and sort of comment on them was kind of delightful… This is a good example, Thor: The Dark World has kind of a confusing backstory, that involves dark elves, and an every 5,000-year astronomical event.”

Markus also chipped in, pointing out the film’s confusing in that it contains “a stone that is not a stone,” with McFeely agreeing, saying they wanted to hang a lantern on the odd events.

Then there’s what will happen to this MCU timeline after Thor and Rocket returned to their own. After all, it’s now missing an Infinity Stone (for a while at least) and, perhaps more importantly for its Thor, ‘our’ Thor took his Mjolnir.

McFeely explained:

“I think we’re leaning on, when you just take a baseball mitt, you didn’t ruin that kid’s life. When you took Mjolnir, we accept that that movie happened. Because time is irrefutable.”

“You can make any number of what-ifs. The Dark Elves would have arrived, intending to get the Aether. It’s what they came for and it was no longer there,” added Markus.

Figuring out what happened in these alternate universes is fascinating, and I hope that’s just what the recently announced What If… animated series explores when it debuts on Disney Plus.