Valkyrie's Arc in 'Thor: Love and Thunder' Is Probably the Gayest Marvel Will Ever Get
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Thor: Love and Thunder stars Tessa Thompson and Natalie Portman, along with creator Taika Waititi, surprised moviegoers at a London preview screening, showing up to champion the film and answer questions from the audience.
Someone asked, "How gay is the movie?" to which Portman responded: "So gay."
You probably won't be surprised to learn that Thor: Love and Thunder was not so gay. It was moderately, sort of gay, and probably more gay than other Marvel vehicles, but certainly not the kind of "gay" that seemed to be intimated by Portman's answer.
We certainly wouldn't be the ones to champion Marvel and Disney's attempts at LGBTQ+ representation when, historically, they have done the bare minimum while implicitly condoning discriminatory anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
Despite their continued claims towards inclusivity, the moments of on-screen representation have been fleeting and, most notably, handily unimportant to the overall plot; perfect to edit out when a film is distributed in a foreign market unfriendly towards queer characters.
But Thor: Love and Thunder felt like it could be different.
After all, it features Zeus, a notoriously pansexual god, Korg, a canonically gay rock man, Valkyrie, long confirmed by Thompson herself to be bisexual, and Waititi at the helm—a director who doesn't shy away from more complicated character arcs (whether you agree with his artistic decisions or not).
For Thompson, who has portrayed Valkyrie since 2017, Thor: Love and Thunder was a chance to truly explore her character from a multidimensional perspective.
"That was something Taika and I had a lot of conversations about because, for me, I think one way of diminishing the humanity of queer characters is to hang a narrative entirely on their sexuality," she told Digital Spy.
As Thompson has said before, Valkyrie could have had that story: "There was a version of Valkyrie's arc in this [movie] that was going to just do that squarely, and not give much room actually for anything else that might be happening with her."
Thompson's view of her character is far less myopic than most—understandably, given how long she's played her. Valkyrie is a warrior whose entire sisterhood was slaughtered; she was left alone and listless and found camaraderie with Thor, and now, in the fourth film, with Jane Foster.
"I think what we landed on was far more interesting," she said.
Indeed, as Korg and Valkyrie discuss their love lives and traumas, Korg aptly analyses Valkyrie's dalliances and attitude as a way of shielding her heart and preventing herself from having to suffer through the loss of love again—platonic love, romantic love, and familial love all falling under that umbrella.
For Thompson, this kind of exploration of her character is more "normalizing" of "the stories of folks that have been on the margins of narratives for too long." They aren't reduced to their identity-politic-ticking-demographic-box but instead given layers through which to parse.
"It's kind of the way I mean—I think that's the way that it exists in real life. So I'm happy to see a projection of that on screen, and especially in a film like this."
We certainly agree and in the vacuum of one movie-going experience, the casualness in the way Valkyrie's sexuality is discussed is surprisingly refreshing. It's also probably as good as we'll get representation-wise in the MCU for the time being.
However, we can also hope for a future where movies with the cultural ubiquity of Marvel can unabashedly center queer characters in a way that is not only natural and organic, but so integral to the story that there is no way to white-wash the queerness out.
Thor: Love and Thunder is out in theaters now. The previous three Thor movies are available to stream now on Disney+.
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