The MCU broke up with Natalie Portman, but Taika Waititi won her back

polygon.com:

Fans of Natalie Portman had plenty to cheer about with the teaser trailer reveal of her Thor: Love & Thunder role as the god of thunder, and for close followers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Thor franchise, there was no doubt about who was behind that shiny helm. For anyone else, it might have been harder to guess.

Beyond her “appearance” in Avengers: Endgame (a cameo comprising some brief voice work and repurposed footage), Portman hasn’t had a major role in the MCU since 2013’s Thor: The Dark World. She was nowhere to be found in 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok, the Taika Waititi film that gave the MCU’s Asgardian setting its first unabashed critical success.

So why did she leave? And why return? It may be more that Marvel left her behind, and is now playing a bit of catch-up.

Reportedly, Portman’s first attempts to extricate herself from the Marvel Cinematic Universe began during the first stages of producing a sequel to Thor, when she was considering a several-year break from acting to spend more time with her first child, born in 2011. According to industry reporting at the time, Marvel sweetened the deal by including Portman — already a director with aspirations to do more — in the process of choosing the film’s director.

That year, Marvel entered into talks with Patty Jenkins, and closed on a deal that would have made the Monster director the first woman to direct a Marvel Cinematic Universe film. And Portman — an activist, an advocate for increased diversity in Hollywood, and a woman who had spoken publicly and eloquently on the ways in which female characters are boxed in by male-dominated cinema — was energized by helping bring about that first.

But only a few months later, Marvel and Jenkins parted ways,