All the major characters from the Thor franchise are in a very different place in Thor: Love and Thunder compared to where Thor: Ragnarok left them. After the events of Avengers: Endgame, Chris Hemsworth’s hero has retired, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) is now the Mighty Thor, and Korg… Well, OK, Korg’s probably just the same. But Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie is certainly far from the washed-up drunk she used to be as she’s now replaced Odin’s son as the king of New Asgard.
The warrior was excited by the opportunity when Thor gave her the keys to the kingdom in Endgame, but apparently the job won’t be all it’s cracked up to be. While teasing what’s to come in Love and Thunder to Entertainment Weekly, director Taika Waititi revealed that Valkyrie will find that she doesn’t love being king as much as she thought as it actually involves a lot of boring, hard work that doesn’t suit her skillset. As Waititi put it:
“She’s got to do all the things that they never tell you about when you’re supposed to rule the people, which is deal with all of the infrastructure and figure out the economy and have delegates visit from other countries. So, she’s spending a lot of her time not fighting, and all of her new battles have to do with ruling her people.”
This fits with the glimpse of Valkyrie we got in the first teaser trailer, which saw Thompson’s heroine dressed in a suit with a sulky expression on her face as she attended some kind of board meeting. In Endgame, Valkyrie promised Thor that she “would be making some changes” to the place, but it’s possible she’ll discover her hopes of changing New Asgard for the better will be blocked by bureaucratic red tape.
Her social status as sovereign isn’t the only big development for Valkyrie in the new movie, either, as Thompson has previously teased that she’ll be getting a huge power boost, too. Apparently, we can look forward to Valkyrie reviving the dead, a process that involves possessing their bodies, something the actress described as “quite erotic.” Likewise, we’re expecting some exploration of her bisexuality. Besides that, it would be pretty nice to find out what her actual name is.
Thor: Love and Thunder blasts into theaters on July 8.