Thor: Love and Thunder is set to come out in 2021 and it’ll be directed by none other than Thor: Ragnarok maestro Taika Waititi. Although little’s yet known about the film and its plot, audiences should expect a lighthearted yet adventurous story, one that’s filled with the type of humor and crazy antics which only the creator of Jojo Rabbit could deliver.
As far as theories go, one Reddit user by the name of The MediocreCritic made an interesting proposal for the plot. Not only does it fit well with Waititi’s aforementioned MO, but it also makes sense of the confusing cast – which sees Natalie Portman reprise her role as Jane Foster – and also builds on information shared in Avengers: Endgame.Â
In a nutshell, MediocreCritic speculates that Love and Thunder will involve an alternate timeline in which Foster, Thor’s ex-girlfriend from Thor and Thor: The Dark World, takes up her lover’s mantle to become the Goddess of Thunder. According to MediocreCritic, this timeline will be created by the same Loki that escaped when the Avengers revisited the aftermath of their first film to reclaim the Tesseract.
Here’s how their theory reads:
Loki, using the tesseract(space stone), creates a portal and brings the main Thor into the alternate timeline. Loki brings Thor in for a very simple reason, to defeat an evil even bigger than himself. Gore the god killer. In this timeline, Loki rules Asgard while Jane Thor is exiled. Loki hopes that Main Thor can help him convince Jane Thor to join them to defeat a mighty Gorr. Who is quickly closing in on Asgard. They are going to need everyone they can get, and two Thors are better than one.
Gorr(played by Christain Bale) has been running amok, killing the gods and terrorizing the realms. It is revealed that Thor, when he was younger, which would have been both alternate Thor and main Thor, created this villain with his youthful arrogance almost a millennium before. When Thor learns this, he feels compelled to fix the problem he created. Jane Thor comes to help, and a battle for the realms begins. But the tension between the three remains.
 Here lies the crux of the movie. The main timeline Jane is dead, during the events infinity war, she lost a lengthy battle with cancer. When the main Thor found out, he was devastated with grief and guilt. Jane, in the alternate timeline, lost Thor when Loki killed him. She is devastated by this loss. The two are racked by grief when they enter each other’s lives again. But they are not really the ones they lost—just the alternates.
 We also get a reunion between two characters that left each other at very different points. The last time main Thor saw Loki, they were on good terms, and Loki was somewhat redeemed. Thor was broken when Thanos killed him, but the last time Alternate Loki saw Thor, he killed him. Also, in main Thor’s time, Asgard is destroyed, but in this alternate timeline, it still stands. These timeline variances between the Thors, Loki, and Jane pave the way for some amazing character building and situations that test our characters. All our characters love each other, but they cannot get past the past.
 So How would these characters work together, would Thor even want to leave this timeline if both Jane and Asgard are in it? II believe this opens up so many possibilities. And at the very least, it’s just a fun theory you read one night.
Well there it is, I hope you enjoyed it.
Since the concept of multiverses played a prominent role in Endgame – in case you don’t remember, it’s the very thing that allowed the Avengers to travel back in time and stop Thanos – seeing it return in one way, shape or form is not unthinkable. Considering how the next Doctor Strange film is set to dabble with alternate timelines, too, the possibility becomes all the more likely.
Here’s the kicker, though: the Loki who escaped never got to redeem himself in Ragnarok. As such, this individual will be the sly, mischievous trickster we came to know and love in the original MCU movies. If Thor: Love and Thunder decides to take this route, Waititi will therefore have an excuse to access a part of Loki’s persona which he didn’t really get to play with much before.
