Thor: Love and Thunder is already a major financial success for Disney, having made $700 million globally since the July 8th premiere. And that’s without China and Russia, where the film has not been released. But the story isn’t perfect, and we’ve already highlighted the big expected Avengers plot hole. Some have also theorized that Love and Thunder creates a major plot hole for Endgame, the biggest Avengers movie to date.
But we’re going to explain why that’s not the case. Thor 4 doesn’t ruin the Endgame plot, and that’s because Marvel gave Avengers 4 the best possible plot armor there is. Not only that, but the MCU has also set in motion a turn of events that further strengthens the Endgame plot. Beware, MCU spoilers will follow.
Love and Thunder’s big Eternity reveal
The plot of Love and Thunder is quite simple. We have a villain, Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), who wants to kill all of the universe’s gods. Rather than fight all of them one by one, he wants to get his hands on Stormbreaker. That’s the weapon that Thor (Chris Hemsworth) created in Infinity War to fight Thanos (Josh Brolin).
Gorr wants Stormbreaker so he can reach Eternity, the powerful being at the center of the universe who will grant any wish to the first person that reaches it. Gorr ends up reaching Eternity, but Thor manages to convince him not to ask for the obvious desire, the death of all gods in the universe. Instead, Gorr’s wish becomes something entirely different. He asks for his daughter to be resurrected.
How does that create a plot hole for Endgame? Marvel fans have started wondering why Thor didn’t just visit Eternity himself at the end of Infinity War to ask for Thanos’s step to be undone Or why Thanos didn’t go to Eternity himself to purge half of the universe’s living beings.
The Love and Thunder plot does seem to create a big plot hole for Endgame, but we can explain everything away.
Thor and Thanos do not know everything
The simplest way to debunk this Endgame plot hole is to look at the timeline and remember that these superheroes and villains do not know every single detail of the universe.
First, Thor only needs a replacement for Mjolnir when he makes Stormbreaker. That’s what the weapon is. It’s not a doorway to Eternity, even though it works as one on Love and Thunder. And Thor only realizes in Love and Thunder what Gorr intends to do when Zeus (Russell Crowe) tells everyone that Gorr will not reach Eternity.
Therefore, Thor couldn’t have known what he had on his hands after the Infinity War disaster. He used Stormbreaker to kill Thanos, and then the hammer became a glorious bottle opener.
Secondly, when Thor creates Stormbreaker, Thanos is already in the process of conquering all the Infinity Stones. It’s not even clear if he knew of Eternity at that point. But he couldn’t have known that Stormbreaker was the key to getting there.
The real reason why Love and Thunder doesn’t create a big Endgame plot hole
But we don’t even have to analyze the actions of Thor and Thanos and speculate on what they do and don’t know. The reason why Love and Thunder doesn’t create a big plot hole for Endgame is actually very simple. Avengers 4 has the best possible plot armor of all Marvel movies.
Marvel set it up all the way back in Infinity War, fully knowing that it has to ensure no future events can ruin the Endgame plot. When Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) tells the Avengers on Titan that there’s only one way to beat Thanos, he means the chain of events we end up witnessing in Endgame.
He saw more than 14 million versions of the future. Thor might have used Eternity in some of them to bring everyone else back. But that wouldn’t have been the win Strange was looking for.
Similarly, a bunch of memes came out after No Way Home, pointing out that Strange could have made Thanos forget he wanted to wipe half of the universe’s living beings out of existence. But, again, that wouldn’t have been a successful way to win, per Infinity War’s plot armor.
It’s all Kang, baby!
We explained recently that the Avengers’ win over Thanos was carefully orchestrated by Kang (Jonathan Majors). He needed to ensure that events happen in a particular order in the Sacred Timeline. That meant Thanos won the initial battles in Infinity War. And it meant the world had to endure five years of incredible pain until the Avengers saved the day.
Kang wanted these events to happen in this order. He needed the world to develop to a place where the 31st century version of himself could be born. He needs the world’s massive diversity to get to that point. And you can’t risk having Thanos wipe out one of your ancestors.
Similarly, he needed the world to develop technology he would later use and improve to travel through time. And Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) comes up with the first successful time/multiverse travel device in the five years between Infinity War and Endgame. Had Thor used Stormbreaker to reach Eternity, Tony Stark might have never come up with time travel.
This is just speculation, of course, but it’s based on the events happening in the MCU Phase 4 so far. With all that in mind, the Love and Thunder story does not create any significant plot hole for Endgame.
However, we’re certainly curious as to why Eternity will grant only one wish. Or why the unannounced Avengers 7 is called Eternity Wars.
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