Spoilers to follow…
If you’ve seen Thor: Ragnarok by now – which, you probably have – you’ll know that the God of Thunder has a pretty transformative character arc in the movie. Not only is his trusty hammer Mjolnir destroyed near the film’s beginning, but Thor loses an eye in the final battle with Hela, the Goddess of Death, and during Ragnarok‘s last scenes, we see that he’s donned a swanky eye patch that mirrors his father Odin’s.
This came as a shock to fans, as it’s a twist that’s been cleverly hidden in the trailers, with certain shots from the climax of the film being altered so as to reinsert Thor’s missing eye. The same goes for the footage shown of Avengers: Infinity War at this past summer’s San Diego Comic-Con, in which Thor went sans patch. We were left uncertain, then, whether this development would follow through into next year’s team-up movie.
According to Chris Hemsworth, though, his character won’t suddenly find himself with a new eye in Infinity War and will continue to don his patch as he joins up with the rest of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in the fight against Thanos.
“Yeah we carry it into the film with the eye patch you see in this film.”
As for how the idea came about, director Taika Waititi explained that it was a product of his and the film’s writers’ attempts to totally reinvent Thor’s character.
“That kind of just evolved just throughout the script process, to just keep stripping that character down, having him lose the hammer and all those things and to kind of create a broken version of the character. At the end, he sort of becomes a refugee.”
Though it might seem like a missing eye won’t change the God of Thunder that much, symbolically, the addition of the eyepatch shows how he’s now much more like his father and could have an extra weight on his shoulders given that he’s King of Asgard, which should be interesting to see explored in future movies.
Thor: Ragnarok is currently playing in cinemas worldwide, while Avengers: Infinity War arrives on May 4th, 2018.
