Thor: Love and Thunder will see its titular character going through several big changes. Most prominent is his ex-girlfriend, Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster, receiving his powers, as teased during the film’s announcement way back in 2019. This was inspired by a well-received recent comics arc by Jason Aaron and, if the movie lifts the basic elements, will find Thor suffering a crisis of confidence and begin referring to himself as ‘Odinson.’
But judging from a quickly deleted video posted by Chris Hemsworth’s stunt double Bobby Holland Hanton, we’re still going to see the God of Thunder strutting his stuff. The TikTok clip (screenshots from which you can check out below) showed a stunt involving him leaping high into the air, smashing a box with Mjolnir and then landing in a classically superheroic pose.
It was a very short video, but tells us quite a few things about the movie. One is confirmation that Thor shed his Avengers: Endgame weight and returned to his Infinity War look. This isn’t exactly a surprise, though I’ll definitely miss the Bro Thor that Hemsworth played so well.
Somewhat more intriguing, however, is that we now know that the hero is ditching Stormbreaker in favour of good old Mjolnir. The MCU’s Mjolnir met its end in Thor: Ragnarok, with the characters borrowing a version of the hammer from an alternate universe in order to battle Thanos and returning it after they were done. We already had a big hint Mjolnir would be back when Natalie Portman raised it above her head during the Love and Thunder announcement, but how is this possible?
Well, in the comics, the weapon has been destroyed a few times, but has always been able to be rebuilt from core fragments that can still judge “worthiness.” After all, when Hela smashed Mjolnir, she merely shattered it into pieces, so at the point Jane Foster proves herself worthy, the hammer will likely spontaneously reform for her. But if that’s the case, how is it back in Chris Hemsworth’s hands?
That remains to be seen, but Thor: Love and Thunder is currently filming in Australia, so let’s hope we get some more set photos that shed a bit of light on what’s to come.
