Christian Bale is returning to the superhero genre, but this time he’s hopping from DC to Marvel. The Batman star has long been known to be attached to Thor: Love and Thunder, but last week, the studio finally revealed who he’ll be playing.
The British actor has boarded Taika Waititi’s movie as the villain of the piece, Gorr the God Butcher. And as you can tell from the character’s name alone, Bale’s role should be the perfect antagonist for the God of Thunder. That might be why Marvel reportedly has bigger plans for Gorr than just this one film.
We Got This Covered has heard from our sources – the same ones who told us that Thor 4 would feature the Guardians and tackle Jane Foster’s cancer storyline long before either of those things were confirmed – that Bale will return to the MCU after Love and Thunder. We don’t know exactly where he’ll pop up next just yet, but you shouldn’t expect Gorr to be a one-and-done villain.
Of course, Bale is the second Batman actor that Marvel has hired to play one of their bad guys, following Michael Keaton’s role as Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming. He’s also due to reprise his character in Morbius and probably more after that, too. Maybe Keaton’s Vulture could even bump into Bale’s Gorr at some point, giving us a multi-Dark Knight crossover. Hey, if it doesn’t happen in the MCU, then it could occur in DC’s The Flash, which Bale may also be showing up in.
In the comics, Gorr’s a merciless killer who travels the universe hunting down gods. Once a happy family man, his loved ones died despite his prayers, which broke his faith and he decided to take out his grief on every deity that had ignored his pleas. In LaT, this quest will lead him to Thor Odinson, and likely Natalie Portman’s Mighty Thor as well.
Thor: Love and Thunder is due to enter production very soon ahead of its arrival in theaters in spring 2022.
