It was quite possibly one of the biggest surprises to come out of Comic-Con – Natalie Portman would be returning to the Thor franchise as Mighty Thor in the fourth movie in the series.
The star had been notably absent in Thor: Ragnarok with many believing this was to do with a falling out with Marvel after they fired Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins from Thor: The Dark World.
Portman even refused to come back for reshoots, forcing production to use Chris Hemsworth’s wife Elsa Pataky as a stand-in for her.
Now, the actress has finally addressed the reason she didn’t make it into Ragnarok, telling ET, “They came to me. Obviously I wasn’t written into the third Thor because of where it took place.
“It wasn’t really on Earth and my character was on Earth. And then they came to me with the fourth idea and said, you know, ‘We have this idea, that was a storyline in some of the comics, where Jane becomes Lady Thor.’ And I was like, this is very exciting.
“And also of course with Taika [Waititi], and I love Tessa [Thompson] and Chris [Hemsworth] so much. So it’s exciting to get to work with them again. And yeah, I’m very excited to wield the hammer.”
It actually makes a lot of sense, I guess Thor didn’t have much reason to see Jane during the third film, so it didn’t make a lot of sense for her to be involved.
In fact, all the human characters from Thor were absent during Ragnarok. Darcy and Dr Selvig weren’t involved at all.
In the movie it was revealed that Jane had broken up with Thor and then she briefly appeared in Avengers: Endgame with co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo using old footage of her to make the scene work.
Waititi, who is directing Thor: Love and Thunder, explained to Variety how he got Portman to return to the series, saying he pitched it to her as something totally different to what she’d previously been doing.
“I just said to her ‘Are you interested in coming back to this thing, but doing something really different?’”
“No one wants to keep repeating themselves, and no one wants to play the same characters all the time. And I think for her, just coming back, reprising that character in a whole fresh new way was really what would interest anyone.
“Especially in most of these films, if you’re not a superhero… do you really wanna keep doing that? I mean, I wouldn’t. I’d want to come back and change things up.”
We’ve got a while to wait before finding out exactly how Jane becomes Mighty Thor as the movie is set for release on November 5, 2021.