Image: Marvel Studios
Jane Foster stands at the gates of Valhalla, having earned a warrior’s rest after making a sacrifice so worthy that even she, a mortal, has gained the respect of Asgard’s fallen heroes. But she waits a moment and turns away from the gates of eternal paradise. All she can say is, “I wasn’t ready to die.”
This is the moment that reaches The Mighty Thor #706, the final regular issue starring Jane Foster as the titular heroine. After defeating the vengeful beast Mangog before she could wreak havoc on all of Asgard, sacrificing Mjolnir, and eventually succumbing to the cancer whose treatment washed out of her body every time she transformed into Thor, Jane clung to that to the end Life. In the comic, with that faith and love, and her selfless sacrifice despite that love, she is rewarded by even touching the heart of Odin himself – a man she despised for taking on the role of his son, even on the lowest level of Odinson. Working together with his son and the Godstorm that once reigned in Mjolnir itself, the two Asgardians give Jane a reward even greater than eternal rest: a chance at life, a chance to face her illness and use her as a Jane Foster to overcome rather than the Mighty Thor.
Image: Russell Dauterman, Matt Wilson and Joe Sabino/Marvel Comics
This isn’t Jane Foster, nor is it the Mighty Thor we find in Marvel’s latest film, Thor: Love and Thunder. Of course there are similarities – both Janes have cancer, although the film never goes deep into Jane’s cancer in its superficial portrayal of their treatment, both Janes become the Mighty Thor, and of course there’s a degree of aesthetic similarity in their hero costumes. Both make the final sacrifice, and both go to Valhalla – it’s just that Jane stays there in Love and Thunder, and the reason she makes the decision to die and go out with one final round since Thor isn’t for the Love is the life she lived so energetically despite her illness, but… well, the other love of her life, Thor Odinson.
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It’s not even really a problem that Jane’s arc in Love and Thunder is inseparable from her romantic relationship with Thor, to the point that even her cancer storyline feels swept aside — rather than in for it — amidst all the film’s jokes and mood swings when all the things she loves die, she mostly dies especially for him. Okay, maybe that’s it, but it’s not the issue I’ve been thinking about so much since seeing the film on opening weekend. It’s that post-credits scene in Valhalla that makes Jane shocked but happy that she found that place in paradise with Heimdall and all the other fallen Aesir. This is…this just isn’t The Mighty Thor.
Image: Marvel Studios
Jason Aaron, Russel Dauterman, Matthew Wilson, and Joe Sabino’s three-year journey with Jane on the sides of their two Thor tiles is too expansive to condense into a single film, but the Mighty Thor of Love and Thunder and the Mighty Thor of which comics might as well pale in comparison. As part of the film’s overall tonal discrepancy between wanting to be a Ragnarok-esque comedy while also engaging with storylines dealing with things like cancer or grief and loss, Jane’s role avoids when she portrays Thor in Love and Thunder will, much of the latter Focus on the former, for all the pre-release talk of her main story. Clumsy and clumsy like an inexperienced superhero, she has an ongoing gag about trying to come up with an appropriate catchphrase after trying many, many terrible ones. She can fight and be strong and kick ass, but she’s more of a vehicle for comic relief and a vessel for Thor himself to long for until it’s time for her to make her sacrifice for him and dying in his arms then she is on her own arc as a character. We don’t even find out what cancer she has (in the comics it’s breast cancer), it’s just “cancer” touched and left until it’s time for her to be sick and dead at the end of the film, never explored or interrogated – except for a moment when an enraged Jane-Thor smashes a bathroom sink after being momentarily dazed – because the film’s understanding of her is based on jokes and action rather than an attempt to explore how herself her character feels. She’s there to crack jokes, kick ass and die.
In contrast, The Mighty Thor’s Jane bursts with a depth of life that the shallowness of Love and Thunder could never match. It lies in her resistance to Asgardian kings and super-villains claiming the Thor name for themselves, and her insistence on facing her breast cancer as a human rather than an ally of literal gods – a stark contrast to Love and Thunder’s Jane, which so is presented as practically jumping at the chance to use Mjolnir to halt her illness. It’s implicit in all of her brazen decisions, from banging on everyone from Odin to the Phoenix Force, to the simple act of kissing Sam Wilson’s Captain America on a mission with the Avengers just because she can. Every moment Jane is Thor, doing the best she can, for most people, and loving every second of it because it makes her feel alive in a way that her illness is slowly denying her. In her final battle with the Mangog, she slams the creature in the face with a powerful right hook and, after asking why she would die for these gods who despise her, roars, “I die for love, Mangog. You die for nothing but hate – that’s why you lose.”
Image: Russell Dauterman, Matt Wilson and Joe Sabino/Marvel Comics
Part of that love is indeed for Thor Odinson, as it ultimately is in Love and Thunder. But it’s not just for him. The splash page presenting this line in The Mighty Thor #705 stretches higher and higher from Jane’s punch, a massive Krakoom rising above it as we see glimpses of her life: as a child with her parents, holding hands with dem Odinson as a young woman, as a cancer patient drinking with Freyja, as Thor himself. Jane’s love encompasses more than just romantic love but a love of life itself, a life she truly loved, as Thor or otherwise too live, and that is the sacrifice she is willing to make, not just for a single man.
I wish Love and Thunder could have understood that. I wish Natalie Portman’s Jane had the time to have even a little of the power that her comic book counterpart had – to say no, she wasn’t ready to leave as she stood at the gates of eternal rest. Instead, she must simply die, unexplored, unintentionally beyond her need to force Thor into his new status quo as an awkward adoptive father. The Mighty Thor comics have always been about Jane facing death, from the moment she picked up Mjolnir. But at every step she defied that conclusion with an overwhelming love of life. Love and Thunders Jane is asked to just accept it, if not for herself, but at least for the Thor, who cares much, much more.
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