Disney and Marvel have announced today that Jeff Goldblum and Karl Urban have boarded Thor: Ragnarok. They’ll join a cast which already includes Cate Blanchett, Tessa Thompson, Mark Ruffalo and of course, Chris Hemsworth as the titular hero.
Thanks to a press release sent out earlier today, we know that Goldblum will play the Grandmaster, a character who wasn’t part of the original Ragnarok storyline but is being worked into the film. He’s “one of the ageless Elders of the Universe and has mastered most civilizations’ games of skill and chance.”
Urban, meanwhile, will step into the shoes of Skurge the Executioner, an Asgardian who was once Thor’s axe-wielding antagonist but eventually switched sides to help the God of Thunder on a mission to Hel, where “he sacrificed his axe to destroy Naglfar, the ship of the dead, and delay Ragnarok, and sacrificed his life to hold the bridge at Gjallerbru so the heroes could escape the forces of Hel.”
Finally, the press releases confirms that Tessa Thompson will indeed play Valkyrie, which is what many people assumed to be the case when she was cast.
While the first two Thor films might have been middling efforts, Ragnarok is shaping up pretty nicely so far, thanks in no part to the promise of a great arc for the Hulk. While we’re still a bit skeptical of whether or not Marvel can give the God of Thunder a solo effort on par with some of the films we’ve been seeing come out of the MCU in recent years, we’ll remain hopeful that maybe, just maybe, the third time will be the charm here.
Thor: Ragnarok hits theatres on November 3rd, 2017.