‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ Will Finally Address Thor and Jane’s Split

Thor: Love and Thunder is hitting movie theaters on July 8 — coming in as the 29th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the fourth Thor-centric entry in the series — and it sounds like fans will finally learn why Thor and Jane broke up.

In the trailer for the superhero pic, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is stunned to see that his ex Jane (Natalie Portman) has picked up his hammer Mjolnir and become the hero known as Mighty Thor in the years since they saw each other.

“What’s it been, like, three, four years?” Jane asks him.

“Eight years, seven months, and six days… give or take,” Thor responds. (But who’s counting, right?)

We heard about Thor’s split with the astrophysicist in 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok, when the Asgardian hero denies the narrative that Jane broke up with him. “She didn't dump me, you know,” he claims, talking to Loki (Tom Hiddleston). “I dumped her. It was a mutual dumping.”

Actress Natalie Portman had told The Wall Street Journal in 2016 that she was “done” with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as far as she knew. “I mean, I don’t know if maybe one day they’ll ask for an Avengers 7 or whatever, I have no idea,” she added at the time. “But as far as I know, I’m done. But it was a great thing to be a part of.”

When Ragnarok director Taika Waititi returned to write and direct Love and Thunder, he wooed Natalie back so that Jane could take on the mantle of Mighty Thor.

Taika revealed Natalie’s involvement at a San Diego Comic-Con panel in 2019, after telling fans that Love and Thunder would be based on Jason Aaron’s Mighty Thor comic book series. “That story line is incredible is full emotion, love, and thunder, and introduces, for the first time, [a] female Thor,” he said. “For us, there’s only one person who could play that role.”

Talking to Fandango this month, the writer-director said that Jane was “probably not the most exciting version of the female character we want” in the first Thor films. “I had to talk to her about the fact that I wanted to change that character just like we’d changed Thor’s character for Ragnarok and give her more license to be adventurous and fun and funny, ‘cause Natalie’s a really funny person.”

In an interview with Total Film this month, actor Chris Hemsworth said that Love and Thunder will provide context for his character’s off-screen breakup with Jane.

“We had a lot of fun exploring that, and answering a lot of the unanswered questions from the second film [onwards], when they parted ways,” he said. “That was left pretty open, and up for interpretation, as far as: Who dumped who? What actually happened there? Did they keep in contact? What were their feelings about how that all ended? We had some good times diving into all of that.”