Headscratchers / Thor: The Dark World

New entries go on the bottom.

Why Malekith?

• Getting a little meta with this one: why were Malekith and Kurse chosen as the villains for this movie? Is it because they debuted in Walt Simonson's run? Because whilst I understand that using Loki as the sole villain (and I use that term lightly, as he spends most of this movie locked up or helping Thor) would be harder to pull off, there are surely much better Thor villains to use — Enchantress and Executioner come to mind.
  • I guess that's because — as I understand — Malekith is associated with the Aether, and the Aether is one of the Infinity Stones. Therefore, Infinity Stones and the Gauntlet are introduced, as well as Guardians Of The Galaxy (Stinger!). That's one. The other thing is that by introducing Thanos in Avengers and Infinity Stones here, creators of MCU built the basis for the Grand Finale of Avengers, as Thanos wants the Gauntlet, we know the Gauntlet is in Asgard, and to run the Gauntlet, you need Infinity Stones. Loki, imposting Odin, has access to both Tesseract (first IS) and the Gauntlet, and thanks to Malekith, we have a second IS — the Aether!
  • The Aether was made up for the movies, actually. In the comics Malekith is associated with the Casket of Ancient Winters, which had already shown up in the previous movie as being a Jotun device instead.
  • I think it’s because Malekith was the only Thor villain that really worked. In the comics he is almost a poor man's Loki. He is a sorcerer and a schemer who either wants to rule or destroy everything. Most of Thor's foes focus more on muscles than brains so unless you change a lot they do not work. Amora never had the ambitions or resources for something like this. Surtur is the biggest Thor villain so it would be a waste for a throwaway villain that has not been built up. Hela raises questions about the whole "land of the dead" that risked getting complicated so it was best to ignore. Seth or Ares would require bringing in another pantheon which again complicates things. Malekith was the only Thor villain with the resources to be a threat to Asgard yet still somewhat throwaway. Either that or another Ice Giant. The whole Aether and connection to the Infinity Stones were made up for the films.
  • Besides, what other Thor villain wants to plunge the world into darkness?

Where did the Bifrost come from?!

• Its destruction at the end of the first movie was treated as such a big deal, but *poof* it's back with no explanation! How did they repair it? If it's so easy to repair that it's not worth mentioning, that really cheapens Thor's sacrifice at the end of the first film.
  • They had the Tesseract after The Avengers. As this film shows, a single Infinity Stone can destroy the entire universe if used at the right time — rebuilding the Bifrost wouldn't have been difficult. It would have been nice to have a line or two explaining it, though.
  • It's a bit of All There in the Manual, as it is more properly addressed in the tie-in comic.

Witness protection program

• So, what's about that witness protection program Jane was under in The Avengers? When and why was it lifted? Why didn't anyone even mention it?
  • It wasn't so much witness protection as "We found an excuse to keep her somewhere isolated for the duration of the crisis, to make sure Thor didn't have to worry about her." It is a little bit odd that SHIELD was apparently completely ignoring them (judging by the fact that Darcy mentioned she tried calling and they didn't answer), but there was never any real attempt to restrict her movements, even for her own safety.
  • Plus Shield did that because Loki was the enemy and Loki knew about Thor's feelings for her, so there was worry he'd deliberately target her to spite Thor. Once Loki was defeated and sent back to Asgard, Jane would be safe, as Thor has no other foes aware of their connection (or at this point, any other foes at all).
  • It's also possible that the events of the film happen around the same time as Captain America: The Winter Soldier — during which Shield has very important matters going on. As it's in the process of being infiltrated by HYDRA and later disbanded by Cap it makes sense they wouldn't have time to take Darcy's calls.
  • It isn't. Agents of SHIELD has episodes concurrent and referencing each, Winter Soldier doesn't happen until long after The Dark World.

Tyr? Where are you?

• So uh... what happened to him? Was the character cut out of the movie, or something?
  • For that matter, does Odin even have other sons? In Thor, Loki got to the throne as soon as Odin went into Odinsleep, and here he acted (it was Loki, yes, but still) as if there was no other heir to the throne after Thor rejected it.
  • Not every Asgardian has shown up yet. Balder, Amora, Skurge, etc. And not every Asgardian has the same relationship as in Norse Mythology either. Or even the comics, where Freya is married to Odin instead of Frigga, for example.
  • Or for that matter Frigga and Freya are one and the same in the comic books.
  • True, but Tyr was specifically stated to be in this movie.
  • And if they are introduced later, there is still the question of why none of them is a possible heir to the throne. The information we have up to now would make them nonexistent rather than not-yet-introduced.
  • I suspect that his role was eventually supplanted by Bor. It's even possible that the rumors of Tyr were based on a mishearing of Bor's role.
  • Except Tyr is even listed in the credits. It's possible his scenes were cut.
  • Actually, he is still in the movie. The Asgardian who seems to be the head of the guard is played Clive Russell. He can be seen here in this behind the scenes shot, stood to the right of Odin.
  • In an interview, Clive Russell (Tyr) talked about filming a scene with Benicio del Toro (The Collector), but in the actual film, Sif and Volstagg were in that scene instead. It is possible that his role was reduced as a punishment for giving spoilery interviews, and the scene with del Toro was replaced for the same reason.

Odin's Glee

• Did Odin's subtle glee when he said "[my father] killed them all" seem a little bit on the sociopath side? This is the guy who was totally against using the Bifrost like a Death Star on the Jotuns but he seemingly has no problems with the genocide of the Dark Elves? Even before they give him specific reason to by murdering his wife?
  • I took it as more of a hint that the Dark Elves were just so much worse than the Jotuns. The Frost Giants were just trying to conquer earth; the Dark Elves were trying to destroy all of existence.
  • That may have been Odin's reasoning but I still found the smile unsettling. After all the Jotuns and Dark Elves were ultimately trying to do the same thing which was conquer the nine realms and xenoform them to their tastes. The Dark Elves just went about it in a different way.
  • I can't really agree with this. The Jotuns were engaged in fairly normal, if ruthlessly brutal, conquest and expansionism. The Dark Elves were seeking to basically end all life in the entire universe. That is a huge difference.
  • I am guessing Odin's smile was more displaying pride for his old man than for the death of the Dark Elves, specially as King Bor's victory over the Dark Elves saved all of existence.
  • Remember back in the beginning of the first film? Thor thought all Jotuns were horrible monsters that should be killed because of his fathers tales of the war, even though that wasn't actually the case? Odin probably heard similar stories about the Dark Elves from Bor and thus felt it was a great thing that they were wiped out.
  • Assuming that movie-Odin's genealogy is the same as comics-Odin, then he is //himself// half-Jotun via his mother Bestla, which might explain his reluctance to wipe out the Jotun.
  • In the comics, Odin has increasingly been depicted as a Chessmaster, bordering on an Anti-Hero, in recent years. Even Thor has taken to becoming bitter over his father's seemingly endless plotting and scheming, which often involves cosmic conflicts. His film version may likewise be more morally ambiguous.
  • I think the whole movie was a good way to take the Asgardians off their pedestal. Mythological deities are often big jerks, and the Norse Mythology is based on the Asgardians. And Odin isn't the Reasonable Authority Figure, and if Thor was a Jerkass Blood Knight, it's because he takes after Odin, not because Odin failed somewhere. Odin is a Hypocrite, and from the way he treats Loki and Jane in this movie, it's clear The Good King image he had was only a public image. He criticizes Loki on thinking himself above humans, but he compares bringing Jane to Asgard as "bringing a goat to a banquet table", the same way he criticized Thor's Blood Knight and War Is Glorious views, but is willing to sacrifice his kingdom to fight the Dark Elves. One starts questioning whether the Dark Elves are really Always Chaotic Evil, or if Malekith isn't in fact an Anti-Villain; Eccleston did say he once had a family, but they died, and Word of God is that the Dark World is a wasteland because the Asgardians used toxic gas to try and kill the Dark Elves.
  • This sadly I think has more to do with different writers and directors than the first Thor film. In the first film, Odin was The Good King and a Reasonable Authority Figure. For some reason a lot of people noticed he became a major jerk. It may be due to his life's work falling apart, the treachery of his son, and finally the loss of his wife. All of that plus the stress of knowing he is still expected to rule for years to come would take its toll on a guy. At the same time, I don't think this changes views on the Dark Elves. Word of God does not matter in this case because there is no proof of that in the film or that Asgardians use that type of weapon. There are also the facts of Malekith dropping his own fleet on his own people and trying to destroy the entire universe.
  • It was set from the first film Odin could be a major Jerk, with deciding the best way to deal with family issues is banishing his son from the world (and no, just because it helped Thor's Character Development, it isn't a "good, sensible action", and the road to hell is paved with good intentions, just look at SHIELD). Saying that Word of God doesn't matter is completely nonsense; Christopher Eccleston stated in that lots of backstory and expositions got cut from the movie, but that doesn't make them non-canon. We're also being told the story from Odin's perspective (that is, what his father told him), which might be just as accurate as Loki telling the truth about anything. Read the last entry below on Malekith killing his own people.
  • No, Thor's banishment was entirely appropriate. This was not a mere family issue. Thor committed treason by defying Odin and nearly started a war with Jotunheim. So yes, a severe punishment was entirely appropriate. And Word of God often doesn't matter because all too often it is contradicted by what the actual canon of a story. So yes they are non-canon. And we have no reason to doubt Odin's word considering the moment Malekith returns he is once again trying to destroy the entire universe and expresses nothing but contempt for other beings.
  • Or Odin has his good and bad moments like any person, and he just happened to have more good Chess Master moments in the first movie and more Well-Intentioned Extremist moments in the second.

I now take from you your power

• Odin easily turned Thor into a human in the previous film; why wouldn't he take away Loki's abilities when locking him up? Leaving him as a super-strong, bulletproof and powerful illusionist seems like a dangerous thing to do even though he's imprisoned. And, for that matter, why didn't he put the same enchantment on Gungnir as he did on Mjolnir? Then Loki wouldn't have been able to pick it up later.
  • It's not quite clear where an Asgardian's powers come from. Are they just naturally superhuman, and Odin did something special when he exiled Thor? Or are they normally human (or close to it) and get all their powers from their magic items? Maybe Loki's powers are different from Thor's in some way, and they can't be removed from him so easily. Or maybe you can't take away the illusion powers without taking away the immortality, and Frigga convinced him not to.
  • Asgardian's powers are natural, and they enhance them with weaponry and the like. Odin just took Thor's natural power and tied it to Mjolnir so that anyone who can pick it up will get those powers. Even before this enchantment, Mjolnir could only be lifted by the worthy, it's just a part of what Mjolnir is. Odin, being the one who crafted Mjolnir in the first place, of course has a say in who is and is not worthy. So he tied Thor's power to Mjolnir, then declared Thor currently unworthy. Maybe he could have done the same to Loki, but he didn't have any dying stars handy with which to forge another unliftable weapon. Making it so that anyone who picks up whatever random item he has at hand gets all of Loki's powers is just begging for trouble. Easier just to lock him up in a prison he obvious cannot escape from without assistance.
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. implies that even Asgardian commoners have superhuman strength.
  • Well, that's not clear. The Berserker wasn't exiled, he left of his own free will, so it's not clear if he's naturally superhuman, or if he just kept whatever powers/magic items make him superhuman.
  • As for Gungnir, we don't know what limits the worthiness spell has. Maybe he wasn't sure he'd be able to continue using it forever if he put that spell on it. Or maybe he just didn't think of it. After all, he didn't consider enchanting Mjolnir until the last minute, when a lot of problems would have been avoided if he had done that from the very beginning (when Thor first got it a few hundred years ago).
  • He didn't enchant it because it was unthinkable to him that Odin, the All Father, could ever be defeated or otherwise tricked into having him give it up to anyone other than someone he choose to succeed him.
  • There's two other possibilities: One, that Odin could only take Thor's power because he was related by blood to Thor; or two, Odin could take Thor's power because Thor was an Asgardian. Remember that Loki is adopted, and a Jotun.
  • Keep in mind much of Thor's power comes from Mjolnir. It's possible that granting it to Thor tied his power to it. Loki by contrast learned his magical talent through lessons from Frigga. It's his, and probably can't be easily taken away. Loki did have additional power granted to him from magical weapons, like Gungnir and the staff Thanos gave him, which made him formidable enough to stand a chance against Thor but that was taken from him when he lost those weapons. That's probably the limit to how much he could be depowered. Plus Loki does seem otherwise powerless besides his illusions until Thor gives him his knives back. Also... Odin's kind of arrogant. He probably figured Loki lacked the physical power to escape on his own, and just told the guards to ignore anything Loki said or did in his cell no matter how strange because it was probably an illusion. Thor by contrast he just wanted to learn a lesson, hence he depowered him until he could learn to be responsible with it.
  • Because Odin had plans for Thor. Remember, stripping him from his powers wasn't a punishment per se; it was a Secret Test of Character. Either Thor wised up and became the man his father wanted him to be or someone worthy would take the mantle instead. Meanwhile Loki was just a criminal being punished for his crimes, and thus deserved to be imprisoned. And from the looks of it Odin doesn't go around willy nilly depowering every prisoner that falls in his magic jail. If he had, then the prison riot started by Kurse would have lasted about 10 seconds, max.
    • Well... maybe he should have.
  • Maybe Odin can't take power from just anyone, and they must be his own offspring to exert his power over them. Thor was de-powered and Hela was imprisoned, but unlike the two of them, Loki was not Odin's true offspring.

Frigga in Loki's cell

• So, was that Frigga sending an illusion down to the dungeons to speak to Loki despite Odin's express command, or was that Loki generating an illusion of his mother to try and compensate for what had been forbidden him? It's hard to tell because both Frigga and Loki have green-tinged illusions.
  • The talks they had seems to make it clear it's Frigga, because of how she gets an emotional reaction out of Loki by asking if she's not his mother.
  • It was really Frigga, the whole point of it was to set up her illusion powers for later when she used them on Jane.
  • Thor tells Loki "you got her tricks" later on — it can be assumed that she taught him how to perform illusions.
  • Odin had decreed that Loki would never see Frigga again. But Frigga obviously interpreted it as "I can't see him... in person" to not actually feel like she was betraying her husband's wishes.
  • A deleted scene makes it clear Frigga was visiting him through her illusions. Loki could see Frigga in his cell and Frigga could see him in her room.

Swords and Shields

• Why were the Einherjar armed with only swords and shields? Granted, they have been enhanced and can be useful in close combat, but it made them vulnerable to the Dark Elves. Were they so used to lesser projectile weapons, like guns and Chitauri-level weapons, not hurting them that they were not used to fighting projectiles that could easily take them down? They had become used to teleporting into the middle of a battle using Bifrost that projectile weapons were not a major threat? Also, when watching it it did not appear to me that the Dark Elf blasters ever penetrated the Einherjar armor and only knocked them out. Kurse was the only one killing them. Is this the way it happened or did I miss something?
  • Rule of Cool, plus they are from Norse Mythology, you can't really see them armed with anything other than swords and shields.
  • Also, I suspect the answer is yes, most ranged weapons are relatively ineffective against Asgardians, between their natural durability and armor. Certainly human firearms were useless even on Loki, let alone Thor, and Chitauri energy weapons, even the heavier ones, weren't all that effective on Iron Man, let alone the more durable Thor. Against the typical space opera energy blasters, Asgardian doctrine is probably "block/parry the heavy artillery, ignore the small arms, close to melee and slice up everyone with superior strength." It's just that the Dark Elves are a people who use black holes as hand grenades; their energy rifles are probably of proportionate advancement. We never got the opportunity to see a benchmark, but I wouldn't be shocked if one hit from them would slag an Iron Man armor.

Why was Asgard so ineffectual against the Dark Elves?

• Why was Asgard so ineffectual against the Dark Elves? Thousands of years ago Bor was able to defeat them at the height of their power including numerous ships and thousands of troops. In the movie, Malekith and his forces had spend all the time in between in suspended animation without developing new technologies or magics. Why then was Asgard unable to detect their ship or have so much trouble with them? Had the long peace made Asgard complacent? They were so unused to taking the fight to their enemies they were not really prepared for an attack on Asgard? Did Malekith's ship have some sort of cloaking device and weapons that the rest of his forces lacked?
  • Possible the weapons technology was lost over time. It's happened in real life throughout history and not just limited to weapons.
  • There's a big difference between an army that's invading a known enemy who they've been fighting for years and years, and a group of guards who were caught flatfooted against an enemy they didn't know even existed until they came out of the ship and started shooting.
  • But it isn't a known enemy. The time of Bor was a very long time ago, even by Asgardian standards, so the current Asgardian army have never fought against them. So why would they still practice and remember tactics against an enemy that, for them, is likely to never reappear?
  • Yes. That was exactly my point.
  • Who's to say that Asgardians were any kind of match for them in Bor's era? They the won the war via creative use of the Bifrost, and it doesn't look like they were terribly more effective than modern Asgardians beyond that. It seems pretty clear that the exact events of the war were obscured by five millennia of re-telling: Malekith sacrificed his own race to escape (so Bor didn't kill them all), one ship's worth escaped (so they're not extinct), and the Aether was hidden and not destroyed. It seems entirely possible that scene in the beginning is a last ditch effort by the Asgardians to save the universe from a foe that hopelessly outguns them rather than the conquering heroes decisively ending the war.
  • I have to strongly disagree with this. If the Dark Elves had such an advantage technologically then there would have been no need for Malekith to have sacrificed his own people. Bor would never have been in a position to exterminate them. Malekith could have still conquered Asgard and either forced Bor to tell him where it was or create a new one. Instead, he took a desperate act for survival.
  • But if the Asgardians were so outmatched, then why did Malekith sacrifice his own people to cover his escape? He could have just turned around and conquered Asgard.
  • The Asgardians weren't outmatched. They were just caught by surprise. In the opening the Asgardians are the ones on the offensive and are mostly handing the Dark Elves their pale posteriors. Even old timey Kurse gets brought down, even temporarily, by just four guys who happen to know what to watch out for. The Asgardians are normally more than a match for the Dark Elves but here they were just plain unprepared. Even the best army can lose a fight if they get sucker punched in the middle of their barracks. The stealth technology on Malekith's ships also probably wasn't standard hardware.
  • No one thought that anything but the strongest magics (Loki) could hide from Heimdall so the Asgardians were caught completely with their pants down. In addition the attack was directly on the Palace so the Elves weren't fighting the Asgardian Army they were fighting Palace Guards. Considering the King and Crown Prince are the strongest Warriors in Asgard there really isn't a need to have your very best soldiers on guard duty. In addition Asgard has been cleaning up the Nine Realms insurgency so it is likely the bulk of Asgard's army is out on Peacekeeping missions. So you have the best the Elves have to offer and all the escaped prisoners against 2 huge heavy hitters in Odin and Thor, Sif and the Warriors two, and a bunch of mooks, I'm guessing largely containing noble children who aren't strong enough to be real warriors but given a job so they can put on a nice suit and act like big shots. Even then the attack was repelled.
  • In an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Asgardians used to have Berserkers in the old days. It is unknown if they still use them in the modern day. Warriors with a Berserker staff get so angry with rage that they have the equivalent strength of twenty men. Elliot Randolf was a former mason that signed up with the Asgardian army, all he ever wanted was travel. He chose to stay on Earth around the 12th century.
  • What does this have to do with the topic? The Asgardians already have the strength of twenty men or more. Their shields could block Dark Elf weaponry. From the sounds of it, the staff is not an uncommon weapon. So why does this matter?
  • It matters because a Berserker Staff is an Amplifier Artifact. They make the Asgardians stronger too, and have the same rage inducing effects. So they're not standard issue, but in a total war they would have been.
  • The Dark Elves weren't exactly at the height of their power in Bor's day, having been poisoned and weakened, but they still managed to fight him off well enough that the war stretched on for a long time as Odin mentioned. What we saw at the beginning of the film was just the decisive final battle, and in he end when Bor looks across the field you can see that quite a lot of his warriors died in the process. As for why the Dark Elves seem to be more effective — you may have noticed that they tend to favor suicidal tactics, from their shock troops using power ups that are ultimately fatal to intentionally crashing their ships into their targets and even Malekith's own Thanatos Gambit to restore darkness on the slim chance that maybe a few of his people would actually be able to survive in the end. An army that's concerned with Not Dying is probably going to be somewhat less effective against an enemy who like to sacrifice themselves for their race or cause as a whole and who are already slowly dying anyways or will be if their plan doesn't succeed and don't have a home to return to or very much to live for anymore. Unfortunately a lot of the scenes that establish the Dark Elves' motives were cut from the final version of the film, so we're just left with a bunch of confusingly suicidal elves who appear to want darkness for no apparent reason. But basically, their desperation and willingness to make huge sacrifices to achieve their goals is what makes them more dangerous and effective against the Asgardians.
  • Don't forget that Thor has been leading the Asgardians' best fighters into battle in other Realms without a break ever since Bifrost was brought back online, restoring the state of order that collapsed with the Rainbow Bridge. It's entirely possible that many of Asgard's veteran troops are still out there enforcing the newly-restored peace, leaving their home garrison rather understaffed.

Loki's trial

• The tie-in comic showed Loki's trial-esque talk with Odin taking place immediately after Thor brings him back after The Avengers. In the movie, it's not as clear. It looks like it's taking place along with the rest of the movie, a year after Loki was brought back. Am I wrong and that scene was supposed to take place much earlier than the rest of the movie? Otherwise, what have they been doing with Loki up until then? He seems surprised by his imprisonment sentence, so it would seem quite odd if it took place a year after his capture.
  • I'm pretty sure the trial takes place right after The Avengers. Then Thor and company were out fighting battles like the one we see, apparently for two years, according to Darcy. The moments of the movie before Jane finds the Aether simply cover a long time span, like a prologue (well, a second prologue, in this case, I guess).

Where was SHIELD?

• Seriously, where on earth was SHIELD? Darcy mentions trying to contact them, but not being able to. But Selvig is a former SHIELD researcher, who crazy or not did work with a highly dangerous technology. And they know Jane Foster is important to Thor, and they would at least send someone to talk to Darcy and Ian after Thor shows up and takes off with her. Not to mention that random gravity anomalies and stuff disappearing into thin air is the sort of thing they'd at least send an agent to investigate.
  • Actually, it's more like an entire team. November 19th.
  • The whole event only lasted for at least a few hours at most. Besides I think shield would be busy doing something else in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
  • Cap 2 is set a year after the events of Thor 2.
  • Still leaves the "dude, it occurs over a couple hours" part.
  • Still seems odd they weren't monitoring Selvig, or Jane at all, considering their respective connections to certain Asgardians.
  • Selvig was probably cut loose after he decided that pants were hampering his concentration.
  • Who says they weren't monitoring them? Just that as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. shows, the monitoring tends to be very low-key unless they think the person is a threat or in immediate danger. And as already stated, the events happened so quickly that S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't have much time to react. (Plus they probably figured, quite rightly, that Thor and the Scientists Three could handle the problem better than S.H.I.E.L.D. could on that short notice, since Thor & Co. are fully trained in the issues and S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't.)
  • And isn't SHIELD based in America? The entire events of the movie take place in England. On a regular plane, that's an eight hour flight at least. So by the time they mobilize people to send out and properly assess the situation before sending their helicarriers, it would have been wrapped up. There's an episode of Agents of SHIELD showing them cleaning up after the destruction, so they clearly got there too late to help in the battle.

Heimdall and Kurse

• Heimdall clearly knew something was up when Algrim came through the Bifrost. Why didn't he say anything?
  • Because he might not have known what was wrong, exactly, and the Kurse stone, unless activated, is just a rock. That happened to be inside Algrim's body, presumably against precisely this sort of thing. I personally wasn't sure if he knew something was strange, or if he was just looking at the prisoners.

Dark Elf Jane?

• This is more of a Doylist quibble, but what was the point of Jane's gradual dark elf-ification? It's paid close attention when it first starts, appears at several points to remind us of it... and then it completely stops after Malekith takes the Aether out of her. What was the point?
  • Reminding us that the Aether was slowly consuming her. That's also why she kept fainting. Loki said "The things I could do with the power in her veins..." Thor responded with "It would consume you." "She seems to be holding up all right." Well, when she opened her eyes and they were dark-elf black, he realized that no, she is not holding up all right, and nixed any plans he might have had to steal it.
  • I feel like I'm missing something big here... I know a point was made that the Aether inside Jane was slowly killing her, but when was it ever implied that it was turning her into a Dark Elf, as the OP seems to be suggesting? We saw it make her weak, prone to fainting, give her bad visions, and turn her eyes a funny color. How does that equate to being transformed into a different species?
  • Probably just a mistaken impression — a result of the movie using 'contamination' that looked a little too similar to its elf make-up. I don't see it myself.

Why close the Bifrost and bench Heimdall?

• After the first attack, Heimdall mentioned that the Bifrost is closed and he is put on the bench by Odin. Why? The Dark Elves didn't really seem to need the Bifrost to get into Asgard. Heimdall sure as heck didn't open the door for their entire ship to get in the first time. And later, after Jane leaves Asgard with Thor and Loki, the Dark Elves didn't need the Bifrost to leave Asgard either. It's almost like sealing the bank door and firing the security while ignoring the fact that the robbers are exiting through open windows all around the building. Odin might be better served by letting Heimdall join in surveillance forces to find the Dark Elves the first time they make a mistake.
  • Odin knows that to use the Aether as a universe destroying super weapon the realms need to be aligned. This is happening relatively soon and doesn't last very long. He only needs to worry about protecting the Aether until the alignment is over. After that it's just your run of the mill doomsday weapon not a Universe destroyer. It makes perfect sense to lock down Asgard and put all his best warriors as the last line of defense, in the palace, until the alignment ends.
  • To keep Thor from using it maybe? Odin knew that Thor might go against his wishes so he cut out the only way out (that he knew of) to make sure Thor didn't disobey him. The entire reason the group had to use such a crazy way out of Asgard was because the Bifrost was closed, they would have been stuck in Asgard without Loki's help.
  • I think it actually had more to do with locking down the Tesseract. Going by the interquel comic, the rebuilt Bifrost uses the Tesseract as a power supply, and they really don't want anyone stealing it. Since Asgardians shouldn't be going about while on watch for an imminent attack, anyway, this is inconvenient only for Thor and company.
  • What I want to know is why they didn't open it up again and send down some warriors to help Thor on Earth when he was fighting Malekith there. Even if Heimdall was in trouble, the damage was already done, Thor was already on Earth fighting the guy, why not help him out to make sure he wins so that, y'know, the universe doesn't end.
  • The fight takes a grand total of maybe 10 minutes. Heimdall is probably imprisoned, and he seems to be the only one who can see what's going on from Asgard. The amount of time it would take him to convince someone to release him and muster troops would've seen the battle over before anyone touched down. Remember that Thor and Loki left a lot of confusion in their wake when they left.
  • It has been shown that the Asgardians very in strength wildly. You have people like Thor, who defeated the Destroyer in single combat and fought the Hulk to basically a stand still, and Odin who took out an entire room of Dark Elves with a wave of Gungir. On the other end of the spectrum you have the guards who were easily mowed down by Dark Elf guns. The only Asgardians shown to be anywhere near Thor and Odin's level are Sif and the Warriors Three all of whom are indisposed. Sending lower tier Asgardians against someone as strong as Aether infused Malekith would just be a distraction for Thor.

Uh. Frigga? What are you doing?

• We know an illusionist can make more than one at a time. If Frigga was just going to make an illusory decoy of Jane anyway, why not make an illusion of Jane and herself instead of directly confronting Malekith and company? It would have delayed them for exactly the same length of time and achieved the same result, except she'd be alive. Even if she was sure she could take Malekith in a one-on-one fight, she already knew he wouldn't be alone.
  • She is the Queen of a warrior culture, she would rather fight than hide.
  • Making them both illusions would not have delayed them the exact same length of time, because most of the delay Frigga provided was by kicking Malekith's ass. Something an illusion couldn't have done, and it would've fallen apart the second Malekith touched her.
  • A more important question is why Frigga tried to hold Malekith captive once she had her sword to his throat, instead of just slitting it.
  • I took it as Frigga wanted him to answer for what he'd done. What's better, a dead Malekith and no answers either on the Aether or his attack on Asgard or how the Dark Elves survived, or a captured enemy leader that Odin would be able to interrogate (possibly by use of torture)? Moreover, she'd actually succeeded until Kurse showed up and there was no accounting for that.
  • My theory is that Frigga really did make an illusion, she was just better than Loki at it to the degree of faking enough for the entire funeral. Fuck knows why, but it sure is a better explanation that they really did kill off an important female character just to give motivation to male heroes again.

The Direct Solution

• Why didn't Thor just Mjolnir Malekith to the face once the aether had been extracted from Jane instead of trying to destroy it, which the animated book pretty much clearly states isn't possible? Given that the Aether doesn't do anything without a controlling intelligence and dissipates pretty quickly, as seen in the end of the movie, this should've been the most obvious way to end the Dark Elf threat.
  • Because Thor didn't know it wasn't possible. If the Aether exists, it's still a potential threat.

Loki saving Jane

• Why? I mean, on the flight out, he seems utterly unconcerned whether she lives or dies, though has some vague appreciation for her spunk. He also warns Thor of the consequences of loving her, which suggests he put some thought into it, but more into worry for Thor. Yet he saves her twice, on reflex, at one point, nearly at the cost of his own life. Why? Is this the start of a Heel–Face Turn, more of Loki's moral yo-yoing between Anti-Hero and Anti-Villain, or an elaborate gambit to fool Thor and make his Heroic Sacrifice all the more believable?
  • On the flight out, he was just snarking. If Jane had died, the Aether would have gone haywire (you'll also note Thor wasn't particularly concerned about her collapsing). As for the rest... who knows? It's impossible to tell with him. Maybe he did it to trick Thor into thinking he was getting better, but it was so fast that seems implausible. Or maybe he really did like her, or know that her death would break Thor. He's noticeably more genuinely friendly with his brother in this movie (if it was all an act, he could have just had Thor confined to Asgard at the end, or at the very least not offered him the throne).
  • I am not sure how he could possibly plan a Batman Gambit this big, but the fact that Jane Foster still lives caused Thor to give up his place in the succession and go to Midgard instead. If Jane had died, Thor would have lost ties with Midgard and just stuck around in Asgard instead. With Frigga dead, Thor was the only one who is close enough to Odin to notice any errors in mannerisms and raise suspicious.
  • I'm inclined to think that it's simply a question of "why not"? It doesn't need to be a part of a complex scheme, even if it's Loki doing it. He is on the same side with Jane for the moment, so why not help her and earn some points with the big brother for the time being? Loki doesn't hate her and she poses him no threat.
  • This is just speculation, but... the scene on the ship earlier has both Thor and Loki noting that they were doing stuff just like they once did, as brothers together off an adventure. It's possible that Loki got into the spirit of the role more than he perhaps even intended, and for a bit started acting as not the bitter villainous Loki of the present, but the roguish hero Loki of the past. And that Loki was the kind of person who would push a bystander out of the way.
  • Why not? Because it almost killed him. Loki saved Jane, but had Thor not intervened he would have been sucked into the black hole grenade.
  • The fact that he did it on instinct could be hinting that he's not completely irredeemable, thus keeping him as a complex Anti-Villain instead of a flat-out villain. In a non-meta sense, Thor probably told him to protect Jane while he attacked Malekith when they were forming their plan, and Loki had no reason not to go with the plan so he just ended up doing whatever he could to protect her without stopping to think about it.
  • Right. It's a great Pet the Dog moment for him, along with his genuine sadness over Frigga's death. Never have I liked a villain as much as I like Loki.
  • Although I'm sure he constructed a more twisted rationale once he'd thought it over consciously, it does seem like an instinctive response: the fact that he was locked helplessly in a cell when his foster-mother could have been saved by his actions may have led to a subconscious 'Woman in peril! Me save!' reflex.
  • In The Avengers, Tony Stark points out Loki is a prima donna that like to put up a show with him as the star. If Jane dies Thor will be distraught more about her than Loki. Loki being the attention whore that he is won't have that.
  • Or here's a reason more in line with Loki's scheming. He wanted Jane to survive so Thor would go back to Earth with her and spend time there, and not be hanging around Asgard and noticing Loki switched with Odin.
  • Perhaps pushing Jane out of the grenade's range was Loki's earlier, failed attempt at faking his own heroic death.
  • Or, maybe Loki had found out that Frigga died saving Jane, and he wasn't willing to let his mother's sacrifice and final act go to waste.
  • Or maybe he genuinely liked Jane, as he said earlier when she slapped him.

What was Loki apologizing for?

• While Loki is dying, he repeatedly says "I'm sorry" to Thor. What is he sorry for? Considering that the death was all just an act it's tempting to chalk it up to just another empty lie to gain Thor's sympathy, but I have a hard time seeing why it would even be worth it to stay in good favor with Thor at this point considering that Loki could usurp the throne with or without Thor's love. Was it a preemptive apology for taking the throne? Or for the events of The Avengers? Or was it because Loki blames himself for Frigga's death?
  • Probably just a general, "Sorry for just about everything I've done and just being a prick in general for the last couple years." We don't know how exactly he survived, yet — he might himself have not known at the time he was going to live.
  • "Sorry for everything I've done to be a shit over the course of my life", probably. For what it's worth, I kept expecting the mood to turn on a dime and for him to beg Thor's pardon, what he meant was, Thor's a fool, but it didn't happen, obviously.
  • If Loki didn't know he was going to survive it might have just been a "sorry I was stupid enough to go and get myself killed". Or all of the above...
  • Or he was hedging his bets, just in case Odin saw through his scheme when he came back to report his own death disguised as the guard. Had his illusion been penetrated, he could've claimed that he'd honestly wanted to make amends, but just couldn't believe Thor or Odin would ever forgive him. So (he'd argue) he faked his death to test them both, seeing whether a Heroic Sacrifice and/or a "dying" declaration of remorse would earn back their respect and affection.

So... impalement was all part of the plan?

• Okay, so Loki was planning to fake his own death, which is all in line with his character. That being said, how did he know that Kurse would impale him with the spear? And for that matter, how did he even survive that? There's no way he could have calculated that spear would have hit him in a non-fatal area, and Thor's reaction to it indicates that this would be a pretty lethal injury for an Asgardian.
  • He probably guessed that Kurse would impale him because well... it's an obvious villainous thing to do and Loki is a villain so he knows how villains act. As for how he survived... Maybe he had a supercharged healing stone on his person or something?
  • More than likely, everything other than him actually stabbing Kurse was an illusion. He probably dodged the stabbing entirely and simply made it look as if he'd been stabbed, and then illusioned that he had died. No need to be healed if he was never hurt.
  • Perhaps the illusion was as simple as the sword that impales Loki is much much shorter, i.e. a dagger. Loki needed to distract Kurse until the grenade went off, Kruse isn’t shown to react to pain so might ignore something as small as a dagger, but a sword requires pulling out before carrying on fighting. Loki might not have foreseen the Kruse rying to stab him before removing the sword/dagger, but used the opportunity to fake his death anyway as the dagger didn’t reach to stab Loki (or just stabbed him a little bit, non fatally).
  • We don't really know much about Jotun biology, but since they can turn parts of their body to ice and have limited shapeshifting powers, it is not unreasonable that they may have some healing abilities. Just like many of the fans, Thor himself often forgets that while Loki may look like one of them, he is a different species entirely.
  • Hell in the comics Loki once got his HEAD cut clean off by Balder, and just nonchalantly put it back on. Remember that Loki is not only a Jotun (thus would have a different physiology than Asgardians or Humans) but he is also a super-powerful sorcerer. He probably knows some spells that would heal him back to life that Thor, being a warrior, doesn't know about. Heck, if you look back at the original Thor movie, you'll notice that when the Jotuns get cut up, they don't bleed so it's possible they don't even have a heart in the first place, or have an entirely different set of organs than humans or Asgardians do.
  • Actually, yes, they do bleed. There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it close-up during the scrap on Jotunheim in the first movie, where Sif stabs a Jotun, and there's a spurt of what looks like blue blood when she extracts her sword.
  • On a second note, from the same scene, note that Fandral suffers impalement in about the same place as Loki does. Fandral survives, conscious, much longer than it takes for Loki to appear to die. Frankly, comic continuity/canon is about as applicable here as Norse Mythology — as in, at the writers' discretion, and can be directly contradicted.
  • Fandral's wound is through the shoulder. Loki's is in the center of his chest. Very different spots.
  • Someone took the time to closely analyze the angle and depth of the wound based on what we can see of the weapon and the impalement itself, and compared it with Frigga's death, and their conclusion was that yes, Loki's wound (being in the front stomach) was survivable where Frigga's wound (being in the back lungs) was not.
  • Or he had a plan to fake his own death at the first available opportunity, and Kurse stabbing him just ended up being that opportunity. He's a trickster, he's good at improvising. He "dies" a lot faster than he should considering who he is. If he really did get stabbed, he probably started working on healing himself as soon as Thor left and just created an illusion of his body for whomever came back for him to find.
  • I always figured it was a combination of illusions to create Loki's appearance and telekinesis (which Loki demonstrates when he smashes all the furniture in his cell) to give the illusion a shape. Sort of like the Doctor from Voyager.
  • Perhaps Loki actually did die on Svartalfheim, but he knew he could be resurrected. Loki did tell Kurse, "See you in Hel, monster!" (and I'm quite certain he wasn't referring to the Christian hell). I don't know if she exists in the movieverse, but Hel is Loki's daughter in Norse mythology, so it's possible that he made a deal with her so that he could live again. Maybe Hel asked for Odin's soul in exchange, or she knew it would be in her best interest to help Loki to get on the Asgardian throne, as her father would be in a position to obtain something that she desires.
  • The films don't seem to be hewing too closely to mythological canon. No mention has been made of Helheim except that one comment, or any afterlives at all. Note that in the comics, the Einherjar are the honored dead, while here they appear to just be city guards. The Asgardians don't seem to have any better idea of what happens after death than humans do. You'd think that if Hel was around, Thor would have mentioned at some point "Wait a second, isn't my brother's daughter in charge of the place he went after death?"
  • Hel is confirmed to be a place in the commentary of the movie, when different realms are seen during the Convergence:
    Kevin Feige: That's Vanaheim, that's Jotunheim, that's Asgard, and for the very first time, although we never say it, is Hel. Seeing more of the Nine Realms than we've ever seen before. That's Hel with one "L," Tom.
    Tom Hiddleston: Indeed. Do you think we'll see more of it one day, Kevin?
    Feige: I think we could. I think these little seeds are put into films to see if the audience wants us to feed them and have them grow.

The throne of Asgard

• The movies make it pretty clear that there are no other siblings, it's just Thor and Loki. Odin is aging, was ready to retire years ago, and was especially not in good shape after losing his wife. Why in the world would the sole heir to the throne abandon his realm, for any reason? What does he think is going to happen? There is nobody else now! It just strikes me as very off that a noble person like Thor would do that to Asgard, and to (what he believes is) his recently-bereaved not-getting-any-younger father, for a mortal.
  • Loki points out that Asgardians live at least 5000 years or so more than humans. Odin being "ready to retire" and "not in good shape" might mean he's "only" going to be around for another century or two. Thor may be planning to return to Asgard to rule after Jane dies of old age.
  • Plus in the comics, Balder is stated to be a son of Odin whose heritage is kept hidden from him for various reasons not worth getting into here. It's plausible that whilst we haven't seen him in the movies, Balder is there and since Thor was one of the few who knew Balder was his brother, he knows that there is another heir for the throne if needed.
  • And even if he doesn't, Odin is still (as far as Thor knows) fit to be king. Meanwhile the other realms are, to put it mildly, going to hell in a hand basket after eons of relative peace, with an unknown alien force making a play for Earth, the Dark Elves returning after being gone for thousands of years, the Infinity Stones making a sudden reappearance, Earth going into a new age of super powered beings and super science, etc. Thor's talents, as he himself says, are needed elsewhere at the moment and he cannot protect all the realms if he's focused on ruling Asgard.
  • Odin is not a Fisher King; any relatively competent Asgardians could be placed in what's called a 'regency' until Thor feels up to his responsibilities. Personally, I keep expecting Heimdall to say, "My loyalty to Asgard is absolute, so why don't you crazy people get to a therapist, sort out your goddamn soap opera and come back when you're all less screwed up? I got this."

Malekith's Motives

• I'm just gonna put this out there for those who don't understand, but why does Malekith want to bring darkness to the universe? Is it because he he hates it? Is the Aether subconsciously controlling him? Or is it for no reason?
  • In the comics, light kills Dark Elves.
  • He sees light as an unnatural blight on the universe.
  • Specifically, he is from the previous universe, which was apparently one of darkness. We never get a good look at what precisely that means (is it literally no light? Just a different type of matter and energy?), but the point is that he wants to return things to what he sees as the proper order.
  • They talked about converting the universe to one of dark matter, so I assume it's not simply a matter of no visible light, but the substance and, to some extent, the laws of physics being different.
  • There's something about the way the universe currently is, whether it's light or something else, that poisons the Dark Elves. The masks they wear actually contain life support, according to The Manual. There are ruins everywhere and no signs of life on their world besides the enviro-suit-wearing Dark Elf remnants themselves, and in a scene that didn't make it into the movie it's explicitly mentioned that breathing the air without their masks is painful and eventually fatal. They simply have nothing else left to live for except this slim chance of making their world somewhat habitable again — with wiping out the Asgardians as a side bonus. They just don't seem to care that making the universe livable for them will make it unlivable for everyone else.

Coulson didn't stand out?

• Whenever Loki's crimes in Avengers are brought up it's only mentioned that him bringing the Chitauri to earth led to several humans dying in the attack on New York. and him screwing with Selvig's head. Well how come Thor never brings up Coulson? The other deaths during the battle in the city were as a result of Loki's actions so he's indirectly to blame for that, but Coulson was personally killed by Loki just to be a dick to Thor. Granted Loki probably killed a few guys in Germany and maybe elsewhere so he likely did directly kill some others, but you'd think Thor would specifically point out that Loki personally killed a friend of his right in front of him just to piss him off when he's going on about how he can't trust him. And yes, Coulson ended up surviving, but Thor shouldn't know that, as he hasn't been to Earth since Avengers, nor has he seemed to have kept in contact with Captain America or any of them (if they even know Coulson survived).
  • Because the death of one man, even a friend of Thor's, pales in comparison to the war casualties and gets lumped in with the others Loki personally murdered. Yes, Coulson was a unique case. But not so unique as to be worth mentioning in the face of the whole "brought an invading army to conquer the planet" thing.
  • One must remember that Thor is still a Norse god and as such dying in battle is actually the best way to go out. Thor saw The Son of Coul, a warrior, face off in single combat against a vastly superior enemy and not flinch. Sure he was defeated pretty handily but there is no shame in going out fighting against an enemy that completely outclasses you. As far as Thor is concerned dying in such a manner is how every warrior should want to die. The attack on New York on the other hand targeted civilians and not warriors. The attack on Jotunheim did not allow the Jotuns to fight back, robbing them of a good death for them. I have a feeling Thor would have thought very differently about the invasion if Loki had attacked military targets instead of a city.
  • But Thor shouldn't know that, as he hasn't been to Earth since Avengers, nor has he seemed to have kept in contact with Captain America or any of them (if they even know Coulson survived). Why assume Thor doesn't know? He's best bros with a guy who can stand at the end of the Bifrost and see literally everything in the galaxy if he's looking for it.
  • Heimdall has a limited Omniscience. He has to be looking for something to see it. Why would Thor ask him to look for a dead man?
  • It can go this way
    Thor: So, Heimdall, what's going on with my mortal friends from Midgard?
    Heimdall: Let's see... Jane Foster is taking a shower. She looks so hot...
    Thor: Stop stalking my girl, dude! What about the others?
    Heimdall: Let's see... Selvig is receiving medical treatment... Darcy is seeking fans that would support a petition to revive the "Daria" animated series... Iron Man is buying a giant toy for his girlfriend... the Black Widow is plotting the assassination of Hugo Chávez... Captain America is running for president... Hawkeye is training as a ninja... Hulk is dancing in the Brazilian carnival... Nick Fury is playing Galaga...
    Thor: Great!
    Heimdall: ...and the son of Coul is organizing a covert team of spy agents.
    Thor: Say Whaaaaaaaat?!
  • In the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode "Yes Men," Sif is surprised to see Coulson alive, meaning (a) Thor has made mention of Coulson's death to his friends, even if it never comes up in The Dark World, and (b) we can be sure that Thor doesn't know.
  • It's been stated in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that none of the Avengers know Coulson is alive and that they aren't allowed to know. Coulson told Sif that he wants to tell Thor himself that he's still alive (Continuity-wise, The Dark World happens before Sif meets Coulson, so she wouldn't have known he was still alive during the events of the movie).

On Mjolnir's inability to break coat-hooks.

• How in Hel is Thor able to hang Mjolnir up on Jane's coat-hanger? In the first movie, Mjolnir destroyed pickup trucks that had the audacity to try to lift it out of the crater.
  • Breaking the truck was just a sight gag which works fine under the mythological rules for Mjolnir, but violates the comic book rules. In mythology only Thor can lift Mjolnir because it's really freaking heavy and only he's strong enough. In the comics, only the worthy can lift Mjolnir, but it can be moved through mechanical means. Going by the comic book rules, the truck would have been able to drag Mjolnir around without effort, but it would still be immovable by anyone trying to pick it up afterwards. This is why Mjolnir doesn't break coat-hooks. It's not unusually heavy, it just can't be moved... and since it's magic the rules are entirely context-based rather than logical. Iron Man may be able to tie a chain to it and drag it around... but if he tried to swing it by that same chain it would not move.
  • Mjolnir can clearly distinguish between something trying to lift it, and merely providing a resting place. This is also why it doesn't zip off into space from the Earth's movement, or put a giant hole in the Helicarrier during the fight with the Hulk.
  • Also, Rule of Funny.
  • Mjolnir appears to have an artificial intelligence in place so that it can make that distinction.
  • I once saw someone describe Mjolnir as "Not heavy, just stubborn". It isn't any actual physical weight that holds it in place, just its inability to be relocated by anyone who isn't worthy.
  • Whatever rules the film is going by, it's very clear that Mjolnir can fly under its own power. If Thor puts it on a coat hook with a clear intention to have it stay there, why can't it just hover in place to avoid breaking the peg?
  • The coat hook isn't trying to lift Mjolnir, it's just holding it in place. Just like a floor or the ground.
  • When visiting the home of an ally, proper warrior etiquette is to place your weapons on a weapons-rack to show your peaceful intentions. Mjolnir is just displaying good manners, as any properly brought-up hammer should.
  • There's a much simpler explanation: the coat hook is worthy.

Kids in the Warehouse

• There is now a large and presumably very durable ice troll running around London. Specifically it is chasing pigeons around the warehouses that we earlier saw a bunch of precocious vagrant children hanging out in.
  • The kids were arrested fortunately (or unfortunately), or they just left the area long ago so they're probably out of the woods. Still not good to have a dangerous creature running around.
  • Are they definitely vagrants? Kids have a knack of finding their way into areas they shouldn't be, and from the way Darcy drives to the warehouse, it's just off a major street in London. It's entirely possible the kids just went home.
  • It's likely this is going to be dealt with in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode following up on the events of the film.
  • The episode didn't really touch on it after all, but in any case, the kids probably took off when Darcy called the police, and if they didn't the police surely sent them home to their parents or otherwise made sure they were safe and under adult supervision.
  • As for the creature, it will surely become an urban myth, like the Loch Ness monster, and anyone claiming to have seen it will be treated as a hopeless nutcase.
  • Although they've been Out of Focus for a long time, this is exactly the kind of loose end that Damage Control takes care of in the comics universe. Although Damage Control aren't worthy of a movie per se, they'd be a hilarious cameo in Age of Ultron, presenting Thor with a bill for relocating 'one (1) Jotunheim basilisk' to an uninhabited island in the Baltic or somewhere.

How did he know what Thor said?

• Odin remarks to Thor on how he once said that there would never be a wiser king than him. This is referring back to the exchange between them at the end of the first movie. Problem is, Odin is really Loki, who wasn't around to hear that. So how did he know Thor had said that?
  • It's Loki. Predicting what people do or say is one of his many skills, and while Black Widow was able to trick him on that, Thor and Odin are rather predictable in actions and even words. Assuming he knew Thor at least stepped down from being king for the time being after the first film, he just correctly guessed that Thor said that to Odin at some point because it was a very "Thor" thing to say.
  • Why do we assume that the time he said it at the end of the last movie was the only time he ever said it?

Stupid Cops

• Seriously, those cops that went to the warehouse must be the worst cops ever. First, they were called because someone vanished for 5 hours. Said person returns, and they start accusing her of invading private property, even though the place was clearly abandoned, without so much as "are you okay, what happened, were you kidnapped or stuck somewhere?", never mind the fact of the now-worldwide famous Avengers is standing right there! One of them manhandles her like some crook and then and everything blows up in an energy blast. They start labelling her as dangerous, while not having any freaking idea of what's going on, and try to detain (with no more than a baton, and the one doing it must be the most wimpy fucking police officer EVER) and "call reinforcements" on FREAKING THOR! The guy who fought of an alien army with a freaking hammer! What are they going to do, taser him?! It's a mix of Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop, Lawful Stupid, Skewed Priorities and Suicidal Overconfidence!
  • Actually, even if a building is visibly abandoned, in most cases it still belongs to someone, and you can't get inside any more than if was in use.
  • It's still a case of Skewed Priorities! Someone's gone missing, and a famous scientist at that, who was detecting a physical anomaly (I'm not sure if Darcy did tell them, but since it's apparently sacred ground for them, they would or should have asked why a famous physicist was looking around)! And that doesn't excuse any of the other issues! This isn't Hitman, where you're allowed to shoot people if they step into a place without knowing if it's restricted area or not! How do they even know it's restricted area? They aren't personal security, they were called in by Darcy! Who the hell cares about the abandoned warehouse when there's someone gone missing?! First you find the person, then you ask if she's okay, where she went AND THEN you might want to ask why she was poking around, no need to treat it as a case of terrorism! Common sense, people!
  • This is the Met we're talking about here. Overreacting to "terrorism" is a new thing but they have been defending property over people for over a hundred years.
  • The building was private property. It's not clear if Jane, Darcy and the others even had permission of the property owner to be there.
  • The bigger question is, why were the willing to let Jane and Darcy wander thither and yon before deciding to arrest them?
  • Er, Darcy called the police herself because Jane had gone missing. Jane showed up five hours later, so presumably they waited to confirm that Jane was unharmed before deciding to arrest her.

Separating the Infinity Stones

• Even if separating them is as necessary as they say, who thought it was a good idea to give ONE of a SET to a guy called THE COLLECTOR? That's just asking for trouble. Surely there's somewhere else they could've stored it. On Vanaheim, maybe, or with the Nova Corps, or even with SHIELD. None of those are optimal, I guess, but they're better than the freaking Collector.
  • But the Aether was thought lost, and nobody had seen the Tesseract in a very long time either. The Infinity Stones were scattered for eons and their return was totally unexpected. They are likely assuming the other stones won't be appearing anytime in the near future, so even if the Collector wants the others he'll never be able to find any but the Tesseract which they have under lock and key. The Collectors vault is secure and by his reputation he'd be content with just having it, and not try to do anything with it. SHIELD will probably never be trusted with something like that again, because Fury tried to make weapons out of the last one (and Thor himself personally took the Tesseract from SHIELD in the first place at the end of the Avengers.) Any other place would seemingly be understaffed or not secure enough. He would trust Hogan with it in Vanaheim but Vanaheim is just hut villages apparently, so it would basically be out in the open. He'd trust the Avengers but they seem to have gone their separate ways so it would just sit in Stark Tower with only Iron Man guarding it, not enough protection against a Loki level threat. Even SHIELD with all their resources and guards failed to stop Loki from waltzing into their secret underground facility, killing half the personnel and brainwashing the rest, and walking out with it. Heck they couldn't even keep Coulson's team of normal yet skilled humans from getting into the Guest House. They wouldn't be able to protect it from the high threat villains who would be looking for those things. The Collector was the only one who could protect it, and was knowledgable and smart enough to know NOT to mess around with it.
  • They probably figure that the Collector, at least, is more interested in having the Stone(s) than in using the Stone(s). Better if those darned things are sitting on a shelf than actually being unleashed by somebody. Plus, even if the guy does start looking like crazy for the rest of them, is that necessarily a bad thing from Asgard's POV? The Collector has contacts and avenues for searching that they don't, and if he actually did manage to track down another of the still-missing Stones, perhaps Odin expects that Heimdall will spot what he's doing in time for another Bifrost-beam to slam down and snatch the thing away before he, or anyone else, can claim it.
  • Which is exactly what didn't happen in Guardians of the Galaxy.
    • Note that the Power Stone was never actually in the Collector's possession. He opened the Orb, but after the ensuing explosion the Guardian took the Stone back. It's still entirely possible that Heimdall could have been waiting to see what the Collector would do with it before intervening.
  • Another possibility is that it was actually Loki as Odin (who is the only one at the moment who knows that someone is trying to collect them) who gave the Aether to the Collector. Maybe he wants to prevent Thanos from getting all Infinity Stones after all and gives it to someone he suspects tries the same, so that the Collector would try to keep it just as hard as Thanos would try to keep his stones (forget the Mind Stone for a minute) and eventually neither of them would get all stones.
  • "Only an idiot would give that man a stone."

Is MCU Thor invincible?

• What physical (not emotional or psychological) weaknesses of Thor's were made clear in Thor, Avengers, and/or Thor 2? Can Thor die? Can he be injured? If so, how? And where? Not on Earth? Just on Asgard? Elsewhere?
  • Realms do not matter regarding Thor's strength. Whether he's on Earth or Asgard his strength level is the same. As for MCU Thor, he can be injured, and presumably killed by characters near his power tier, such as other top level Asgardians, The Hulk (and probably Abomination too), Malekith when powered by the Aether, galactic beings like Thanos etc. Hulk drew blood in Avengers, and Loki managed to injure him so he's not totally invincible. Standard human weapons are useless against him, but Asgardian weapons should work (ex:The Professor in Agents of SHIELD who had a combat knife bend harmlessly against his bare hand, but was impaled by the Berserker staff). Infinity Stone derived weapons might also work as Loki's staff also hurt him. He'd have to be hit several times and he'd be really hard to kill but it's possible. However nothing standard on Earth can really pose a threat to him.
  • Thor is not invincible. One day he shall fight Jörmungandr, kill her, and then go back nine steps and die as well.
  • They're asking about MCU Thor. His fate and anything else in mythology or the comics is irrelevant.
  • Actually, both comics and films are just an Expanded Universe of the Older Than Dirt mythology. It is always the Viking myths who will be canon.
  • Please support the above. Where is this stated? Anyways, Thor's shtick has always been that, while he is incredibly powerful, he's extremely stupid, or at the very least fatally hotheaded. This is shown by his tendency to charge blindly ahead without thinking about it, not to mention the fact that he's extremely prideful. His character development in the MCU is clearly correcting this, though, so we'll have to wait and see where it goes..
  • Thor is not stupid, and never has been, even in the myths (for instance, tricking a dwarf who came asking to marry Thor's daughter into staying put all night, thus turning to stone when the sun came up.) At his worst, Thor merely typifies When All You Have Is a Hammer…, because he rarely needs to think through a problem beyond "introduce hammer to face." When he does, however, he can come up with some surprisingly clever solutions.
  • Thor can be injured, we see plenty of that, such as the normal "you've just been punched really hard or been bludgeoned with something, so you're gonna have a few cuts on your face" bleeding that you see him with during the final fight of this movie. Loki also shivs him back during their scrap on Stark Tower in Avengers, and that doesn't seem to slow him down too much. On the other hand, Hulk punched him across Grand Central Station, and that didn't slow him down much either. He was also pretty keen on getting out of that giant cage Loki dropped him out of the Helicarrier in, so it's reasonable that he was uncertain about making it through the landing alive or not critically injured. Bottom line is if it bleeds, you can kill it.

Kurse and Mjolnir

• How the hell does Kurse No-Sell Mjolnir three times? I get he's super powered by being one of the Kursed... But in the flash back, those dudes, while tough, could be taken down by 4 or 5 Einherjar with their regular weapons. One is even tripped by a single Einherjar suplexing him by the head. Yet Algrim reacts to Mjolnir (described by Odin as one of the most powerful weapons known to the Asgard without equal for destruction or creation) like someone shot a nerf ball at him. It barely makes him flinch, let alone sends him flying or anything. The same weapon that could trade blows with the Hulk. That same weapon easily triumphed over the Destroyer, over entire groups of frost giants, over even one of the giant's gigantic beasts. So how the hell is Algrim so damn resistant to it?
  • Kurse is a Dark Elf, a race that seems to be on par with the Asgardians in physical abilities. Your typical Asgardian is probably approximately as strong as an Extremis enhanced human or an Iron Man suit, with people like Thor, Odin, and Heimdall being significantly stronger. On top of that, Kurse is basically running on the Dark Elf version of Extremis, complete with fire hands and greater strength. Unlike the other Dark Elves to use the stone, Kurse had his stone surgically implanted in his torso, whereas the ones in Bor's time just crushed them in their hands, so it makes sense that he's getting a bigger boost. Plus it's consistent with the comics, where Kurse has a history of smacking Thor down with or without Mjolnir. Kurse is physically the strongest MCU character right now, and it makes perfect sense why.
  • The "gem" or whatever was only "implanted" to get it through Asgard security. Once Algrim was in his cell, he pulled it out and crushed it in his hand, same as the other Kursed. My Wild Mass Guessing is that, when Malekith told Algrim he "would be the last Kursed," he was referring to the fact that this was the last stone they had, and couldn't make any more (possibly because it was an Aether-powered weapon, like Red Skull's Tesseract blasters.) So it may have been substantially more powerful than the others, resulting in a substantially more powerful Kursed. Or that Algrim was already much more fearsome than the average Dark Elf, so the gem increased his power by substantially more.
  • These particular Dark Elves have spent thousands of years expecting a rematch with Asgard. It'd make sense for them to have directed their efforts towards specifically foiling Asgardian weaponry. Heck, Kurse might even have the dark-matter equivalent of vibranium imbued into his transformed skin.

Malekith's Genocide... Or Is It?

• According to Odin, Malekith sacrificed his own people during their Last Stand. But the scene doesn't show or hint on Malekith doing ANYTHING, especially after losing the Aether. We're shown the Asgardians slaughtering the Dark Elves, and then the Dark Elves' ships crashing down, and his lines after that are too ambiguous to prove he actively caused the ships to crash instead of just taking advantage of the situation to retreat. Are we supposed to assume he can telepathically make an entire fleet, piloted by his own people, just shut down and crash (or that his entire species was in those ships? Sure, the Dark World doesn't seem to have any buildings, but still...)? Or is that a hint that Odin's history lesson is inaccurate and biased? Aside from him, no one says anything about Malekith committing genocide, not even his own men, and Malekith and Kursed's lines on the Dark World, plus Odin then later stating, gleefully, that his father actively slaughtered all the Dark Elves, imply Bor and the Asgardians shut down those ships and put the blame on Malekith when writing the history. This, plus Word of God that the Dark Elves' realm is a wasteland because the Asgardians used toxic gas to try and kill the Dark Elves, Eccleston's comments on Malekith having lost his family, and Odin's rampant Jerkassery through the movie implies there's more to that story.
  • No, it does not hint anything. What would Bor gain by dropping Dark Elf ships upon his own army? He had the battle virtually won and had the Aether. It makes no sense for him to do shut down the ships and if he could it would make sense to do so before the battle. Malekith knew the battle was lost and he had to cover his escape. "There deaths will be our salvation" or whatever he said indicates he did do so to cover his escape. The look Algrim gives Malekith indicates this was Malekith's doing since Algrim looks like this was too much of a desperate move even for him. And it is easy to think all the Dark Elves were there. Odin stated "after an eternity of war" indicating that either wars with the Dark Elves were frequent or the war had been raging long even by Asgardian standards. Given the displayed hatred and threat the Dark Elves posed to the universe it would not surprise me if other races in the nine worlds hunted them down to eliminate the threat for good. Malekith and his closest followers are fanatics who think anything justifies their actions and they will make up for it later. Word of God and Eccleston's comments are not canon. If you have an interview to the claim the Asgardians used toxic gas please post a link since I have not heard this anywhere else from anyone else. Odin is a bigger jerk because his life's work is falling apart, Loki turned evil, Thor does not want the throne and is in love with a short-lived human, and his queen is killed. I would say Odin has plenty of reasons to be pissed off about.
  • While certain deleted scenes, like Malekith remembering his family in the ruins of the Dark World, imply some rather nasty things about Asgardians, it's still unlikely that Bor destroyed those ships. In fact, Malekith probably didn't need to either. It seems easy to blame him, but unless he's telekinetic on a truly massive scale, there just wasn't time for him to cut power to all of those ships. Given the apparent Dark Elf fondness for suicide attacks, the ship captains probably decided to crash their ships independently. Another deleted scene explain that Malekith doesn't wear a mask (which contains a life support system, according to the writers and the labels on the props) because he doesn't plan to survive his scheme to restore darkness himself, so it wouldn't make sense for him to sacrifice his own people to save himself ("Our survival will be your legacy"?). Perhaps the real question that should be asked is, do the Dark Elves intentionally throw themselves into kamikaze runs because they're dying anyway? Or are they dying out because of their Martyrdom Culture? Maybe a mix of both? Either way, they're pretty tragic villains without shoving even more of the fault onto Bor. He did enough already.

Algrim's infiltration of Asgard

• When was Algrim captured in Kurse form? I know Fandral and Volstagg were the ones who captured him since they're the ones who lead him with a group of Marauders to the dungeons (prior to Frigga visiting Loki in his cell). Was he captured on a different Realm? He couldn't have been caught on Vanaheim.
  • This is bothering me too! I don't even know how they let that slip, it's so obviously a mistake.
  • He pretended to be a random raider, and allowed himself to be caught. It's not complicated.
  • And he wasn't in Kursed form yet, either. They gave him the "Kurse" helmet to conceal his nature as a Dark Elf (though it makes one wonder why no one looked under the mask), got caught deliberately, went quietly to his cell, pulled the Kurse gem out of his stomach, crushed it, became Kursed, and got all rampagey.

Dark Elf invisibility

• When the first Dark Elf craft flies by Bifrost, it is using a cloaking device in an attempt to avoid being seen by Heimdall. Heimdall is tipped off by the craft's engine, and takes it down with just his daggers. Then he looks up, just in time to see both the Dark Elf mothership and three attack craft fly past him. My question is: if the first craft used a cloaking device, why didn't the following three also use their cloaking devices to render themselves invisible?
  • Either the cloaking device isn't standard, or they just said 'to heck with it' when they were discovered.
  • A third possibility is that the cloaking devices limit the ships' speed and maneuverability. When Heimdall discovered their invasion force, the remaining ships needed to move quickly to reach the city before the shield was raised.

Number of Dark Elf ships

• How many Dark Elf craft entered Asgard? Three clearly make it past Heimdall. Of these three, one gets blown out of the sky by a flying boat, another gets destroyed by the defense shields, and the one with Malekith gets past the shields and into the palace. We then see Malekith and Kurse escape on another Dark Elf ship to escape to the mothership after killing Frigga. It's obviously not the one Malekith arrived in, since that's the one Loki and Thor pilot later. So did their escape craft arrive off-camera while the battle was going on inside the palace?

How the Dark Elf ships operate

• We see that the Dark Elf attack ships can rotate to navigate through tight corners. How does the cockpit of the ship stay level and upright despite all this rotation? Is the cockpit on a gyro-stabilizer of some sort?
  • Artificial gravity and inertial dampeners? We see the Dark Elf ship out in space when they all wake up after Jane finds the Aether, so clearly they have some sort of artificial gravity.
  • I think it's something akin to those in-car cams that I've seen installed in some NASCAR race cars at the Daytona 500, where the camera is on a rig that is always level with the surface of earth even when the car is going through the steeply banked turns.

Jane Foster, Indestructible Astrophysicist

• Okay, so Guardians of the Galaxy showed us that even touching an Infinity Stone can literally rip someone to shreds and that a group of people all sharing its energy can only hold it for a little before they are consumed. If this is so, then how the ever loving heck can Jane get away with having the Aether running in her veins for days with only dark eyes and occasional fainting spells? Is the Aether not as strong as Guardians of the Galaxy's Infinity Stone? Is Jane stronger than she looks?
  • Likely just differences in stones. The power stone was volatile enough that it destroys organic matter with a touch. The rest do not matter. The nature of the Aether's power is different and probably less volatile.
  • Nick Fury barehandled the Tesseract at the start of Avengers, and maybe only singed his fingertips. Different stones react differently to people handling them. The Aether, in particular, "seeks out living hosts," as Odin said in the film. Wouldn't do the Aether much good to seek out a living host if it vaporized said host two seconds later.
  • Fury did not barehand it. He was wearing gloves.
    • That's a difference without a distinction. Red Skull was also wearing gloves and he got tesseract'ed into space, and it was arguably just as "active" then as it was when it brought Loki in; the group of unnamed aliens tried to control the Power Stone with an external device and were still overwhelmed by it.
    • Then again, SHIELD's had time to test and examine the Tesseract by then: Fury could have been wearing gloves specially designed to be able to hold the Tesseract.
  • As said above, the Aether chooses a living host and drains their life force. Jane finds it when it's been locked away for centuries, so it drains her life force to get more powerful.

Why is the Aether mostly useless?

• Why is the Aether, an Infinity Stone capable of altering reality itself, used so poorly by Malekith when fighting Thor? You'd think he would be able to pull all kinds of crazy, reality-warping tricks with it, but all he does is shoot glass-like shards and basic shockwaves with it. This seems incredibly un-inspired for what the Aether is supposedly capable of.
  • Things that act powerfully on a large scale don't always work so well on a small scale. Put it this way — with an atomic bomb, you could level a city, but you couldn't use it very well in a fist fight. Also, Malekith is just not that good of a fighter. Frigga would have ended the movie all by herself if Kurse hadn't arrived to bail Malekith out, for instance. He's a novice fighting a master warrior, with the Aether being the only thing keeping him in the fight.
  • Thor more or less confirms the idea that Malekith just isn't very good at using the Aether in a direct fight when he mocks how little damage Malekith's attacks are doing despite all the power at his disposal.
  • Infinity War better showcased the Reality Stone's variety and Thanos' character imposes strong implications:
    • Thanos' research on the stones predates Malekith who didn't even know it was an infinity stone; Thanos knew so much more about the reality stone and therefore utilized it far better than the Dark Elf. Thanos is also smarter and more powerful in general, enabling him to wield the stone better.
    • The Aether also likely deemed Malekith unworthy, like the Tesseract did Red Skull, and refused to offer its full power. Thanos' desire for the stone, while still horrifying, is ultimately less evil than simply shrouding the universe in darkness. As the stones have shown a form of sentience, the Aether could have resisted being used in such a fashion.
  • Note that the Aether drained lifeforce to revive itself, and that lifeforce came from Jane Foster, a hard-science astrophysicist. Even if her concepts of physics do encompass concepts that seem Indistinguishable From Magic, her life's work is still grounded in the laws of reality as it currently stands, not as something to be twisted on a whim. Possibly the Aether is operating so grudgingly/conservatively, in part, because Jane's mindset about physics rubbed off on it, making it tend to prefer those laws of nature which she studies over Malekith's altered ones.

Nature of the Universe

• What exactly IS a "realm"? Sometimes it seems like a realm is just a planet like Asgard or Earth, but other times it seems like a realm is another word for "universe". So which is it? It a realm another dimension? Is it a sector of the universe? Is it a planet? What?
  • It is ambiguous and there is evidence for both. The after-credits scene in the first film mentioned alternate dimensions and the whole Convergence implies that as well. Yet, Yggdrasil is depicted as some cosmic cloud in the same universe and the Marauders able to attack the different realms means either some pirates got inter-dimensional technology or the realms are all in the same universe.
  • The MCU Wiki states that the "realms" are just planets connected by Bifrost/Yggdrasil — sorta like metro stations within a bigger city. It's uncertain whether the Wiki is correct in its assertion, but it would explain why Marauders can travel between the realms without Bifrost, and there could be something specific about Yggdrasil's nature that makes Convergence so dangerous. The "world tree" is probably some sort of natural or Asgard-engineered reality warp that encompasses those nine worlds and somehow bends reality to make "practical" distance between them shorter and allow shortcuts like the one Loki knows of. The Convergence could simply mean the reality warp being in its peak condition — melding the worlds instead of just providing shortcuts — so Yggdrasil's capability to mess up the rest of the universe could be at its peak as well.

"...and afterwards, this cell."

• Excuse me if it is obvious, but I do not quite get what Thor means when he tells Loki that he will grant him vengeance "and afterwards this cell". The way he says it it sounds as if the cell will be some kind of reward for helping him, but Loki already "has" the (initially rather comfortable) cell and surely does not believe that Thor will free him forever after what he has done, even if he helps him. So why does Thor mention the vengeance and the cell in the same sentence that way?
  • Thor is making it clear that he is not promising Loki freedom, only a chance to avenge his (adopted) mother's death. Avenging his mother's death didn't absolve him of his crimes.

Why not turn completely blue?

• When Loki fakes his death, his skin takes on a blueish-grey mottled hue. Why didn't he let it look like the blue of the skin of a Jotun? I get that at this point Loki still hates his origin, and it was very believable anyways, but if he really was dead, shouldn't his skin revert to a deep blue? Or is this a hint that he maybe didn't fake everything, and his skin turned only slightly blue because he was, well, Only Mostly Dead?

If the Dark Elves evolved before the universe developed luminescent stars, then why do they have eyes?

• Eyes work by receiving (and in more evolved species, focusing) the LIGHT bouncing off or being emitted by objects. How in the Nine Realms could their physiology evolve to utilize a phenomenon that didn't exist yet ? I realize that the actors playing them all have eyes, but all they'd need to do is stick some rubber masks on them. It'd even make for creepier villains.
  • I guess that their world of primordial darkness doesn't mean that there was just no light. In the film they mentioned dark matter so their world would be totally different from just our world devoid of light. However if there was some other kind of electromagnetic radiation such as infrared they could use their eyes to percieve it. There are many earth species that see in infrared and because of it they can see in what to humans seems like an absolute darkness. Plus, all the lightning and symbols displayed in dark elves ships were red (a bit of fridge brilliance?). Aside from that I think that the movie creators just wanted to depict them like in the comics and myths. The fact that unrelated species such as frost giants, asgardians, dark elves, humans and many others are so similiar to each other is already scientificly inaccurate (if they are unrelated and evolution works in MCU).

---