Ever since director Taika Waititi presented Natalie Portman with Mjölnir at SDCC 2019, we’ve been waiting to see her in action. And we finally got our first glimpse of Portman in Asgardian mode, in the first teaser for Thor: Love and Thunder. True, she only appears for a second. But we see her wielding the mystical hammer which once belonged to her ex. But is it actually her ex? Is it even the Jane Foster we knew, or a multiversal variant?
In today’s Nerdist News, we break down why the Mighty Thor might not be the Jane we remember, but hail from another reality. Even if she does look exactly like her. It turns out, there are many reasons to think this Thor comes from a universe other than the 616. And it’s not just because she’s way more buff than we remember her.
In the pages of the comics, Jane became the Mighty Thor under less than ideal circumstances. It happened while she underwent treatment for breast cancer. During this time, they deemed the God of Thunder unworthy of wielding Mjölnir. The hammer came to Jane, transforming her into the Mighty Thor. But that transformation into a perfect, godly specimen came at a price. It purged all the chemotherapy treatments from her body, leaving her more ill than before when becoming mortal again.
It’s unknown if the movie is going to go down this route. With so many characters to juggle in this film, it might be a lot to introduce the cancer storyline into this film and do it justice. So it’s more than possible that this is merely a different Jane from an alternate timeline. One who crossed over into the main MCU Earth due to the events of Loki and (most likely) Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Part of the reason the teaser was so light on plot might be because a more detailed one might give away plot points from Doctor Strange.
It’s possible that Hela breaking Mjölnir was a nexus event, something described in Loki as a moment in time that if altered created a branch reality. Maybe in this Jane’s reality, she and Thor never broke up. She might have been with him when Hela destroyed his hammer. And somehow, she found a way to put it back together. She is a rather brilliant scientist after all. As we know now, in this new Marvel Multiverse (should we call it the MCM and not the MCU?) anything is possible. Including Jane Foster not being the one we thought she was.