When Marvel revealed that Thor 4 was officially part of the MCU’s Phase 4 at Comic-Con, it wasn’t exactly the biggest shock seeing as the news had already been reported on a few days before. What was a huge shock, though, was that Natalie Portman will be returning as Jane Foster for Thor: Love and Thunder and not only will she be back, but the film will see her become the Mighty Thor herself.
Of course, fans were completely floored by the reveal as the actress has been gone from the franchise since 2013’s Thor: The Dark World (save for a brief voiceover role and archival footage in Avengers: Endgame). Was it difficult for Marvel to convince Portman to return, though?
Apparently not, as Kevin Feige revealed that the reason the actress decided to head back to the MCU was because of writer/director Taika Waititi. It seems he made a pretty big impression on her, too, as we’re now hearing that Portman will be sticking around the franchise for a while yet.
The details of her involvement in Love and Thunder and any MCU movies beyond that are still a bit unclear, but sources close to We Got This Covered – the same sources who revealed the Endgame re-release post-credits scene well before it hit theaters, and who confirmed Pattinson as Batman – have told us that Jane Foster’s Thor will go on to join the New Avengers line-up. That obviously won’t happen for a while yet, but at the moment at least, the plan is to have her on the team.
This makes sense, too, as we know Marvel’s planning a New Avengers movie for around 2022/2023 and with Chris Hemsworth’s Thor likely to be out of the franchise by then, why not have Portman’s take on the character replace him? Besides, she’d certainly fit in nicely alongside the rest of the group, which is said to include heroes like Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel and even Blade.
In any case, it’ll obviously be a long while before we learn more about this particular development, but for now, we can look forward to seeing Thor: Love and Thunder when it arrives on November 9th, 2021.
