When Natalie Portman says that something is “so gay,” I want to believe her. After all, she’s a queer icon by virtue of starring in Pablo Larraín’s Jackie, many Miss Dior commercials, and, first and foremost, winning the Oscar for the Black Swan, a psychosexual pas de deux between two warring ballerinas. So when Portman swore during a Q&A at the London premiere of her latest film, Thor: Love and Thunder, that Marvel’s newest offering is “so gay,” my interest was immediately piqued—and while I hadn’t seen a Marvel film since 2018’s Black Panther, I had to know whether Thor 4 would be an entry into the queer cinematic canon à la Moonlight, Carol, and the Nicole Kidman AMC ad.
So off to the cineplex I went, trusting in Natalie Portman despite rumors that Thor: Love and Thunder might not be as gay as she claimed. But still, I had faith. Thor: Love and Thunder was directed by Taika Waititi, whose queer, pirate HBO Max show, Our Flag Means Death, certainly crosses the threshold of “so gay.” Bisexual actor Tessa Thompson went on record at San Diego Comic-Con saying that she wanted to find her character Valkyrie, the female King of Asgards, a queen in the next film. Plus, there was going to be a Rita Ora cameo. All positive signs!
What I found…well I’m still trying to wrap my head around. Below is a list of the gay moments, subtext, and energy that I could find in Thor: Love and Thunder, ranked by their level of gayness. Be warned: Spoilers abound.
Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord is pretty heavily featured in the first 15 minutes of the film. There’s a fight scene where Thor fends off two monsters while in a Russian split, and Star-Lord dramatically rolls his eyes (which got a big laugh from the audience, by the way). Shaming another man for being super flexible and a “bit much”? Sorry; that’s anti-queer behavior, I’m afraid.
Christian Bale’s performance as Gorr the God Butcher was giving Voldemort vibes, which made me think of Harry Potter, which made me think of J.K. Rowling—who is actually harmful to LGBTQ+ people and to my psyche. Also, for the entire film I thought he was Paul Bettany.
There’s a bit where Heimdall’s son, Axl (Kieron L. Dyer), renames himself, and Thor insists that Axl use his previous name, Astrid. Eventually, Thor acquiesces and calls Axl by his chosen name…but it’s left a weird taste in some LGBTQ+ fans’ mouths.
There’s a short montage of Thor, played by Chris Hemsworth, and his many lovers…all of whom are women. Technically, he kisses a “wolf woman” while riding “a woman wolf,” but the energy of it all is overwhelmingly straight lothario.
The montage that depicts Natalie Portman’s Dr. Jane Foster and Thor’s relationship is basically just a 10-minute version of The Breakup (2006) starring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, plus a magic hammer. Decidedly not gay.
Matt Damon and Melissa McCarthy both appear in a performing troupe in Asgard, acting out the legend of Thor. Later on, Damon appears again and asks Valkyrie if he should write a play to help save the town, which has been ravaged by VoldeGorr the God Butcher. While the sheer amount of surprise celebrity reveals in the film is somewhat gay (who doesn’t love a Ruveal!), the mockery of stage acting is not gay at all.
The film opens with a preface that features the god Dionysus (Simon Russell Beale)—shirtless in a field of giggling flowers and wearing a sparkly golden crown and statement necklace, bragging about how many followers he has. Flowers, statement necklaces, and being obsessed with followers? Definitely a bit gay!
Korg mistakenly calls Jane Foster “Jane Fonda.” The invocation of Miss Fonda, ’80s aerobics and 9 to 5 queen, is definitely slightly gay!
The first needle drop of the film is, quite randomly, Enya’s “Only Time.” This feels weirdly appropriate given the recent resurgence of witchy former pop stars who now live in castles completely off the grid. Again, not explicitly gay in any way, but I definitely caught queer vibes.
Thor’s clothes accidentally get stripped from him, leaving him standing in a room full of gods in the nude. While nothing salacious is seen (the movie is only PG-13, after all), I believe that imagining Chris Hemsworth naked will result in a queer awakening for some of the youth (and, let’s face it, the adults) in the audience. Bonus points: Korg said, “It looked like a little courgette,” i.e. a zucchini—which is a hop, skip, and a jump away from the eggplant emoji.
Thor, Jane, and Valkyrie more or less exclusively travel by riding screaming yaks who run on a supercharged rainbow. While rainbows are canonically gay (see: the Pride Flag, “Somewhere Over the”), this is sort of the lowest possible bar you could pass for having queer content. But, I guess it counts.
The sheer number of fierce pantsuits Valkyrie wears as King of Asgard. Serving lewks is gay!
Valkyrie brings a portable speaker with her on the rainbow goat ship and plays a snippet of “Family Affair” by Mary J. Blige. That’s a bop, and gays love bops!
Russell Crowe gives the worst vocal performance of his career since Les Misérables (2012). His blowhard Zeus sounds like the first draft of an Italian accent, but Zeus is famously Greek. It was confusing and confounding and reminded me of his Javert, and there’s something inherently queer about that.
The so-called gayness of Valkyrie is (intentionally) confusing. At one point she tells Dr. Jane Foster—with whom she clearly has no romantic chemistry—that she misses her “sisters.” Does she mean sisters like relatives, sisters like girlfriends (platonic), or sisters like girlfriends (romantic)? We never find out. Valkyrie is the gayest part of the film for sure, but does nothing explicitly queer except maybe…
When she’s escaping the Kingdom of the Gods. Valkyrie briefly stops to make bedroom eyes at one of Zeus’s female concubines, who I am pretty sure is played by Rita Ora. This happens so fast (and is filmed in such a way that I’m pretty sure it could get cut out of the movie if it needs to be in less LGBTQ+-friendly territories) that I am actually not sure if it’s Rita Ora or not. But it does happen, and is a moment—the only moment—of girl-on-girl “action” in the film, if you can call it that.
At one point, Thor is involved in a little bit of a love triangle between Jane Foster and his ax, Stormbreaker. Many laughs are (attempted) to be wrung out of Stormbreaker’s seeming jealousy of Jane. It was confusing to me, a Marvel-neophyte, as I assumed that Thor’s ax was a genderless object—and not to gatekeep the word gay, but I’m pretty sure a love triangle between a man, a woman, and a magical ax doesn’t qualify as “so gay.” But I’m happy to keep an open mind on the matter.
The most explicit “gay” moment: Valkyrie and Korg have a (very brief) heart-to-heart about romance while Thor and Jane full on make out. In the scene, Korg explicitly says that he has two dads, and that his species are conceived when two Kronan men hold hands over a lava pit. It’s a sweet moment, but the scene is placed in such a way that, again, it feels like it could be entirely removed in other markets. During the conversation, Korg also mentions Valkyrie’s dead girlfriend and how she’s closed herself off from love. Again, definitely recognition that LGBTQ+ people exist—but it’s the first and last time we hear any mention of Valkyrie’s love life or interest in women.
At the end of the film, there’s also the briefest of shots of Korg holding hands with another rock Kronan (presumably a man) over a lava pit, in an attempt to maybe make a baby. Did Marvel just show us our first scene of gay Kronan sex? It’s hard to know.
Natalie Portman using this film as a showcase and then having her character die, hopefully releasing her from the MCU and allowing her to get back to projects like Closer.
Valkyrie casually wearing a Phantom of the Opera sweatshirt while kicking some spider monster ass.
Kat Dennings also appears as a colleague of Dr. Jane Foster in one (1) scene, never to be seen or heard from again. She’s been a guest judge on Drag Race and has a cool vibe, so she gets an honorable mention here.
So, it looks like Thor will not be winning any GLAAD awards. By my scientific calculations, there were far more not gay moments than gay moments, and only two that would qualify as “so gay.” In every way, the film was less gay than Dune, which featured Timothée Chalamet pouting, butthole-shaped worms, and Stephen McKinley Henderson holding a little parasol just so.
But what were we to expect? A movie produced by Marvel which is owned by Disney—which has come under a bit of fire for its handling of gay content and its financial support of anti-LGBTQ+ politicians—was maybe never bound to be “so gay” after all. So the next time the former understudy for Laura Bell Bundy in Ruthless the Musical off Broadway says that something is so gay, don’t necessarily take her word for it.
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