Things are heating up in the world of Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder. After a long wait, fans finally got a glimpse at the movie when its first full trailer was released. Although he sat out of the movie’s teaser trailer, Thor: Love and Thunder‘s villain, Gorr the God Butcher finally made an appearance on our screens. Christian Bale, of course, will be playing the villainous Gorr in the movie. And now we have our first good look at him and he is every bit as scary as we’d imagined.
Though he looks cool, this character might not be an immediately recognizable rogue to casual comics fans. Still, he is a terrifying baddie with a very interesting connection to Venom and the symbiote, not to mention, he was almost referenced in Moon Knight. Here’s a little background on Thor: Love and Thunder‘s main villain Gorr the God Butcher.
The origins of Thor‘s Gorr the God Butcher
Gorr the God Butcher was first introduced in 2013’s Thor: God of Thunder #2. The intriguing arc from Jason Aaron, Esad Ribic, Ive Svorcina, and Joe Sabino could hint at the plot of Waititi’s film. In Thor: God of Thunder, there are three Thors in three different timelines. A young Thor of the past contends with a dead goddess. Thor of the present discovers “the home of alien gods turned into an abattoir.” Finally, ancient Thor of the future is Asgard’s final bastion against a horde of monsters.
In the second issue of the series, we meet Gorr: a truly terrifying and high-fantasy sort of villain. In that same issue, we learn that all three iterations of Thor are battling Gorr and his minions. This comic will certainly influence the MCU’s vision of Gorr. In the Love and Thunder trailer, we get to see a near-perfect recreation of a panel from the pages of Thor: God of Thunder #2.
Gorr the God Butcher has an astonishing and deadly power set, which is weirdly connected to both Spider-lore and one of the Fantastic Four’s biggest villains.
What Powers Does Gorr the God Butcher Have? Does He Threaten Thor?
Well, his name is probably a good clue. Gorr the God Butcher can kill gods without a second thought. He is incredibly strong and wields a weapon known as All-Black the Necrosword. In the current continuity, the sword was created by Knull, a primordial deity who was also the creator of the symbiotes. You know, the alien creatures who were first spotted as Spider-Man’s black suit and later became Venom. That’s why Gorr’s powers and the god-killing sword might remind you of the famed symbiote villain. Gorr the God Butcher’s cloak of tendrils can kill any deity—including Asgardians—and his shifting obsidian sword can do the same. It’s yet to be seen whether or not Marvel introduces Gorr as a means of bringing Venom further into the MCU’s world.
How Likely Are We to See a Comics-Accurate Version of this Thor Villain on Screen?
Taika isn’t afraid of doing weird stuff. It’s part of what made Thor: Ragnarok the best Thor movie. Gorr the God Butcher is a truly fantastical monster with a prehensile cape (that moves of its own accord, similar to what we’ve seen in Dr. Strange) and a skeletal face. The most exciting thing here is the sword, though. Once Thor even used it to fight Galactus! With Jane Foster likely holding onto Mjölnir and the Fantastic Four on their way, we expect Thor will eventually end up with a god-killing sword of his own.
So far, the MCU rendition of Gorr the God Butcher looks pretty close to what the comics have revealed to us, All-Black the Necrosword and all.
And it looks like this Thor villain will be surrounded by dark tendrils in the MCU as well. They creep all around him as he begins his quest to kill every selfish god. But we will have to wait and see whether these aspects of Gorr relate at all to Venom or Knull.
In other glimpses of the God Butcher, Gorr seems to have a fairly undead look to him. His body appears stitched together in a Frankenstein-like way. And his robes remind us a bit of a mummy. We see from the Love and Thunder trailer that the MCU’s Gorr appears to live on some kind of grayscale planet or reality, but we don’t get too much about where that is from the trailer.
Although we’re glad to finally see our first look at Christian Bale’s full MCU version of Gorr the God Butcher, we still have many questions about this Thor villain’s origins, powers, and motivations.
Where Could Gorr the God Butcher fit into the MCU?
Disney
With Thor out and about in space alongside the Guardians of the Galaxy, there are really no limits to how or where Gorr could fit in. In the comics, we see him at three different periods in time, including after the decimation of a line of alien gods. Perhaps Thor comes across him there. Maybe he’ll be hunting down the monster to stop him—which he does in the comics after noticing a series of missing gods—which could be why MCU Jane needs to take up the Mighty Thor mantle. There’s also the matter of his God Butcher minions. Their existence means that Thor will likely not have just one god killer to worry about.
Seeing as Marvel cast Bale in the role, it’s likely that Gorr the God Butcher will have a meaty role in the MCU whichever route they choose.
Gorr, the God Butcher in Moon Knight
Interestingly enough, Gorr the God Butcher almost appeared in another MCU show, Moon Knight. This makes sense since Moon Knight introduced the gods of Egyptian mythology into the MCU’s world. Moon Knight‘s head writer and executive producer Jeremy Slater shared more about how Gorr almost had an earlier introduction to Marvel’s world. He told The Direct:
When we started working on the show, we didn’t know when we were debuting. We always sort of assumed it would be later down the road, and we would sort of be coming out in fall of 2022, and we thought we would probably be following Thor[: Love and Thunder]. But at that time, Thor didn’t necessarily have a concrete release date either, everything was sort of up in the air, and it’s like we might be ahead of Thor, or we might be finishing up.So there were different versions of the script where the Gods would sort of talk about, ‘This thing with Gorr the God Butcher just happened, and now we’ve got this new problem.’ And then there were other versions of the script where they sort of talked about, ‘We’re hearing rumors [that] Gods are dying, this is not the right time to get involved.’ Like we tried to have our cake and eat it too.”
Ultimately, Gorr’s Moon Knight appearance did not happen. But the idea that Gorr the God Butcher’s influence could have touched another MCU property certainly speaks to the possible importance of the villain. We’ll find out exactly what this baddie gets up to when Thor: Love and Thunder releases on July 8.
Originally published on December 14, 2020.
