Did Thor: Love & Thunder Break Its Valkyrie LGBTQ+ Promise?
Warning: Contains spoilers for Thor: Love and Thunder
Early in production Thor: Love and Thunder promised to provide better LGBTQ+ representation for the MCU, but saying whether that promise was delivered on is more complex than it may appear. Since the MCU first began with Iron Man in 2008, it has rarely focused on romantic storylines. However, that is often not what representation is about and in the early days of the MCU the cast of characters were notably white, cisgender male, heterosexual figures. While changes have been made since then it is a developing area for the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Kevin Feige promising more LGBTQ+ characters back in 2018, which has begun to be fulfilled with movies like Eternals.
A particular focus for the MCU’s LGBTQ+ has been on Tessa Thompson’s portrayal of the Asgardian hero Valkyrie, who is canonically bisexual in the comics. Introduced in Thor: Ragnarok, Valkyrie appeared in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame with her last story appearance seeing Thor make her king of Asgard when he left to travel with the Guardians of the Galaxy. When asked about the future of her character at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019, Tessa Thompson said “First of all, as king, as new king [of Asgard], she needs to find her queen. So that will be the first order of business. She has some ideas. I'll keep you posted,” seemingly promising an explicitly queer romantic storyline as a priority for the Valkyrie.
Related: Thor: Love & Thunder’s Unanswered Questions
Of course, Tessa Thompson does not get to write the movies, so whether that would come to fruition or not was always marked with a question mark. While Taika Waititi, who directed and co-wrote Thor: Love and Thunder, seems eager to portray
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