If Thor becomes Thunderstrike in the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder, this could mean that there are some serious questions about Thor’s body.
The recent photos showing Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt on the set of Thor: Love & Thunder have people talking about Thor’s new outfit. The red sleeveless jacket and shiny black pants could just pay homage to Thor’s extreme version from the ’90s known as Thunderstrike. However, another thought is that the costume could show that the man once known as Thor in the MCU is now, in fact, Thunderstrike. Jane Foster will become Thor in the new movie, and Thor Odinson could choose to take on the new superhero identity of Thunderstrike.
The MCU chose to take on the version of Thor where he is a god 100-percent of the time. However, in his original form in the comics, Thor was Dr. Donald Blake, a man who walked with a cane. If he struck the cane on the ground, he would become Thor. Later, Eric Masterson became friends with Thor, and to save his life, Thor convinced Odin to merge them into one, similar to how he did with Donald Blake. Later, the two ended up separated when Thor found himself banished, and Thunderstrike set out on his own as a warrior, fighting to honor Thor’s name.
When Jane Foster takes up Mjolnir and becomes the new Thor, it should cause a transformation as it did in the comics with Donald Blake, Eric Masterson, and later Jane Foster herself. For Jane, it was a traumatic experience because she developed cancer. Every time she became Thor, it wiped out all the chemotherapy treatment from her system, which put her one step closer to death by the day. However, there is another scary thing about the transformations, and this was shown in the recent Thor series by Donny Cates and Nic Klein. While no one mentioned it until now, Thor’s transformation is nothing more than body swap horror.
When Donald Blake struck his cane onto the ground, he did not become Thor. He summoned Thor to take his place in this world. Meanwhile, Blake was sent to live in a world that Odin created, a seemingly perfect world where Blake could go on living day to day until Thor changed back into Blake again. At that time, Thor went into the Odinsleep. It was completely different, and while Thor thought it was a good swap, he was wrong. In this new series, Donald Blake went mad, stuck in this fake idyllic world, unable to escape, his god no longer listening to him. Finally, when Thor brought him back this time, he began to seek revenge and ensure he never returned to that world.
Now, Donald Blake was never a real person. He was always a creation designed by Odin to punish Thor by making him live a human life for many years before he proved worthy enough for Mjolnir. It is unclear if Jane Foster went to this idyllic world or a similar one when she turned into Thor. There is also the case of Eric Masterson. He was also a real human with a family. Did he end up in this world while Thor was on Earth? It even raises questions whether Eric Masterson’s Thunderstrike or Jane Foster’s Thor are even the same as that of Donald Blake. Since they are not calling on Thor Odinson to take their place, do they just power up? What is known is that when it is the original Thor switching with a human host, there is a body swap that takes place.
Admittedly, some of this was sexplained away in the 2011 Thunderstrike reboot, where Kevin Masterson, Eric’s son, takes up the mantle left after his father’s death. In it, a Valkyrie named Gruenhilda, who was tasked with training Kevin in Asgard’s warrior ways, suggests that the mace transforms its bearer into anything programmed into it. As such, Kevin changes his original Thunderstrike appearance, which was a copy of his father’s (and thus, a copy of Thor’s, with minor changes), into an over-the-top ’90s-style anti-hero. He later resolves this by changing his look closer to his own original appearance. The explanation that an Asgardian body copy is just a magical glamor, however, seems to be specific to this series and potentially the mace Thunderstrike wields and after which he took his name. Given Thor’s current arc, this element from the Thunderstrike miniseries also seems to have been either retconned or possibly forgotten.
In any case, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has never dealt with a character trapped in a potential body horror scenario like this, outside of Hulk. When Bruce Banner turns into Hulk, the two sides have been shown fighting mentally with each other, specifically when Hulk refused to return in Avengers: Infinity War. In Thor: Ragnarok, Banner said he went into darkness for a long time when Hulk dominated their pairing. That was a scary thought, but it never went beyond Banner’s description of it. If Eric Masterson ends up sharing a body with Thor as Thunderstrike, the MCU could show something as horrific as the body swap, where at least one of them is banished to a land of make-believe for as long as the other remains in control. If anything, it would make changing into a hero much more traumatic than just flipping powers on and off.
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