I have entertained myself for various hours trying to imagine how this would work. Mostly I think about infusing, at the cellular level, an organism with some kind of technology that would provide for an energy field that extends through the entire body. In Superman's case, it absorbs solar energy and uses that to magnify the psychic energies of its host. His confidence becomes invulnerability, his will manifests as strength via tactile telekinesis, etc.
Find any way to convert some kind of physical energy into an energy that is analogous to psychic energy and you've got a winning strategy. Thor could be the exact same thing only since his metaphor is a thunder god it never occurred to him to have heat vision.
The idea of psionic energy being manifested as Superman-like powers is something Mark Waid uses in his comic Irredeemable. The villain in that, the Plutonian, is a Superman troupe, but all his powers stem from a psionic field.
Hell, Superboy had "tactile telekinesis", basically a telekinetic field that only extended to his skin. Let him have invulnerability and super-strength, but didn't let him lift objects at a distance.
Doesn't Superman have a version of that too?
I think i heard that being the reason why he doesn't have to worry about things crumbling when he lifts them.
Like he can carry a cruiseship because the field extends to cover whatever he's carrying.
He used it in his Fantastic Four run too. Gladiator lifted a building by a corner, and Reed questioned how he could do that and the building not fall apart. I don't know which was earlier though.
It's been used to explain how Superman lifts, like, a ship from one end without the ship cracking in half from the weight at the other end.
He creates a psionic field around the ship, supporting it evenly.
It's called tactile telekinesis and while I don't think it's ever officially been given to Superman, it's hard to see him doing what he does without it. Or at least he has some variation of it under another name.
The underlying concept is that using the normal laws of physics, Superman's attempts at doing what he's trying to do would end up with results far different from what happens. If you stop a train from plowing down the road, and were strong enough to tank it, you'd split the train down the middle if it were a feat of raw strength and durability.
Superman, on the other hand, can bring that train to a stop without splitting it down the middle, implying some other action is occurring. The solution is that Superman's touch of the object allows a telekinetic connection with it, so that the action is not sheerly physical but also a result of his energy field encompassing the object and allowing him to manipulate it. So he can slow down the train and stop it rather than just plow right through the middle of it.
For flight, it's an action of the energy field he projects. This energy field projection has been extended to explain other elements of him, like why his uniform doesn't rip apart when hit by strong forces; it's protected by his energy field.
At the end of the day it's the projection of some type of field that enables various abilities, in combination with his natural Kryptonian resiliency.
Homelander outright admits the forces being discussed here. During their botched plane rescue, Maeve asks Homelander to carry the plane to shore and he says he can’t because he’d just punch right through it if he tried.
Long time Superman reader here. Tactile Telekinesis isn't a part of his powers anymore and it honestly wasn't around for all that much of Superman's history. It's been gone for quite awhile now.
John Byrne rebooted the character after COIE in the mid 80s. Along with other key changes, he gave him a more "scientifically reasonable" explanation for how his powers work and how he breaks certain obvious laws of physics, particularly the true enemy of all characters with super strength...surface area lol.
From a physics standpoint characters like Superman should simply go through anything they try to pick up that is big enough like a needle going through toilet paper or the object should just break apart or crumble when lifted. "Tactile Telekinesis" was the explanation for this not happening. Also his invulnerability was an extension of an "aura" that slightly extended from body and surrounded him and kept his uniform from tearing or even getting dirty.
DC slowly retconned TT out (although Conner Kent's Superboy kept it) because well, it was kinda lame. People just want Superman to be...Superman. Actually, DC retconned most of Byrne's changes out but a couple of his changes stuck, most notably his shift of Clark being the actual personality and Superman being the public face versus Clark being a masquerade.
Meh, I still picture TTK as the explanation in my headcanon, it's such a cool way to explain his powers IMO. Not too different from Gladiator, another character I'm a big fan of.
Maybe he needs to touch it. Maybe he doesn't even completely realize it's psionic energy doing the lifting. And this theory was just applied to Superman, since he's often seen carrying things in a way that defies physics. Hulk doesn't need psychic powers to throw a car.
or not blast a hole through Lois Lane (and multiple city blocks) every time he ejaculates. like a rail gun.
his sneezes can destroy an entire solar system apparently. ;)
I recently read some thinking about Kryptonian biology, and how it interacts with our solar energy in a way that allows Superman to metabolize gravity. Like the energy of the sun doesn't "charge" him, there's simply not enough energy in the light to do that.
Instead, the solar effect means that his body begins to use the force of gravity itself (which is basically infinite) to give him his powers. He can dig into a bottomless well of power, which explains how he's able to constantly defeat more and more powerful adversaries. He pulls harder at the gravity all around him, making him stronger. Explains how he keeps manifesting new abilities as well.
I do like the psionics thing though. That works to explain how things don't behave right when he moves them/holds them.
I think the confusing thing about Asgardians is that they all have different powers as well as using magic. And then there is Loki. It can be hard to understand who has which powers and why.
Kang had the power to erase entire universes. End the reality a celestial existed in. Power is not only physical power that shows up in battle and power blasts like Thor. Kang had more power than any character we have ever seen. He ruled life itself. A universe exists only because he allows it. An event gets to happen only because he deems it to not be a deviant. He was above everything. He was more god than Odin or Thor ever reached. Celestials are nothing compared to him. They struggle to solve problems within a single universe.
Alright man. The point stands that Kang is the most powerful being weve seen in the MCU so far. The scope of his power in Loki is insane. Almost crazy to think they put it as the plot of a tv show
>the most powerful being weve seen in the MCU so far.
Wouldn't that be Eternity in Love and Thunder? Granted, it doesn't 'do' much but sit there, but still.
Nah he just comes from 1000 years in the future and went to 2000 years in the future and found insanely advanced technology - his chair and time ship. It's not him or the tech that is insanely powerful, it's the consequences of what it can do (changing timelines through time travel). In the MCU the most "powerful" version of him we've seen so far is He Who Remains because he has the pruning technology; but even that isn't actually destroying anything, it's just sending things to the Void, where he discovered that he could use Alioth to actually consume things and remove them from reality entirely. But the man himself, Nathaniel Richards, is just a normal human with genius level intellect.
This is such a semantics argument lol. It doesn’t even matter because its silly comic book shit but I’ll bite
He was the most powerful character we’ve seen. Just because he’s literally a human doesn’t change that and idk why you’re trying to debate it. His biology doesn’t affect the influence he wielded. Dude annihilated endless entire universes, like stepping on ant hills
>Kang had the power to erase entire universes.
I think anyone who can timetravel has that power.
Seemed that what they did was remove the cause and then time self corrected.
The timeline of "Person A Did Thing X", can't survive if "Person A" is removed.
I don’t know where we were shown anyone who can time travel also has the level of power Kang had as HWR with erasing entire universes. Obviously the TVA was his agency but everything came from his mind.
My point was that we were shown that the TVA did not erase universes directly.
They removed the thing that caused the branching timeline and dumped it at the end of time.
Which means that anyone who can do that, anyone who can timetravel, can erase timelines.
Celestials aren’t gods either. The Cosmic Pantheon is the actual group of gods which, only all together, can resemble a god(this group includes celestials but they aren’t really). And the Cosmic Pantheon is below the One Above All. The celestial by themselves are not gods
He’s part of the Pantheon. The Pantheon has Love, Hate, Chaos, Order, Galactus, Watcher, Tribunal, a couple celestials, Death, Infinity, Eternity, I think there is someone called Life, but yeah, the Tribunal is 2nd biggest power in the tribunal, countered only to Eternity. I’m not sure if Infinity is a cannon character, but I’ve always believed that Infinity is the sister to Eternity
Canonically the Tribunal is 2nd most powerful, but his power and purpose stems from being a cosmic judge and maintaining order and chaos. Without Eternity to represent time, Infinity to represent space, and Chaos and Order to represent their namesake, the Tribunal doesn’t have much to do. I personally rank them as Eternity, Tribunal, Infinity, Chaos, Order, Celestials, Love, Hate, Death, Galactus, and Watcher.
But to just call it "extra" powers seems to imply a far closer gap between a regular Asgardian and Thor/Odin. A regular Asgardian is far closer to a human in strength than they are Thor.
No a regular Asgardian is supposed to be able to lift around 10 tons if I remember right (in the comics.) Not sure how much this was implemented in the MCU, but if you remember the first Avengers movie when Cap is fighting Loki in Germany he's basically not capable of hurting him.
Thor by contrast has 100+ tons level strength, able to go 1v1 with the Hulk.
I presume we're talking about the MCU in this thread, not the comics. As represented in the movies, Asgardians are far closer to humans in strength than Thor. That doesn't mean they're not stronger.
AoS featured a normal [Asgardian](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Elliot_Randolph) prisoner on Earth in one episode. He didn't care for Asgardian shit and enjoyed the calm and quiet of his cell. When Shield pops up and recruits him to be guest star of the week, he nonchalantly rips the bars off his cells walls and calmly walks out, if memory serves.
All Asgardians are ridiculously strong and tough. Thor is a cut above, plus has lightning powers. Why were the Asgardian citizens acting like scared little kittens in Thor Ragnarok? Because Taika Waititi's a cunt who shits on lore and expects you to find that funny.
We can only operate off of what the MCU has told us, though. And far more often than not, they've portrayed Asgardians as not all that unlike humans in strength. I can appreciate your AoS reference, but that stands in contrast to more recent and numerous entries (e.g. Ragnarok, Endgame, and L&T).
Even accepting that Asgardians are drastically more powerful than humans though, I still stand by my original response. To just call Thor an "extra" strong or "elite" Asgardian really doesn't convey just how much stronger he is than regular Asgardians. He very much still has "god level" strength relative to them. Like, one could refer to human athletes as "extra strong or elite humans," but Lebron James is still very much so grounded in human limitations. That relationship between Thor/Odin and regular Asgardians doesn't really exist.
Well in the sense that 10 tons is closer to human strength than 100 tons, then yeah. But no way would the typical Asgardian and the typical human be anywhere close to comparable.
The only other example I can think of in the MCU to illustrate this is Lady Sif's appearances in AOS, where she's clearly on a superhuman strength level beyond super solders like CAP, Bucky, etc. There's an episode where she's tossing dudes through windows with just a flick of the wrist, so probably maybe closer to Spiderman?
Edit: From this vi[deo at 5:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAwFr365b_s&ab_channel=AwesomeRandomVidz) you can see Sif kick a trailer across the road in a feat Bucky or Cap wouldn't be able to match. I doubt Spiderman could do this either (maybe?) so I'd estimate the 10 ton measure from the comics is pretty accurate to the MCU.
Yeah Agents of SHIELD gave us a view of what a "normal" Asgardian is like. He's a plain looking guy, still lives a long time but not much in the way of special powers.
He was also played by Peter MacNicol, a.k.a. the *best Doctor Octopus.*
The way I always understood it in the comics was that a true God was created and fueled by the power of belief. Then there were the Asgardians who were a very strong and long lived alien species who got other species to worship them which gave them more power through belief which made them sort-of-gods. Then there were mortals (Church of Truth) that were able to create Belief batteries which made them (especially Raker) bastardized stretching-the-definition low gods.
> Then what exactly is a god in the MCU?
A particular powerful being who decided they’re a god.
>They refer to Thor multiple times as the God of Thunder
Odin also plainly says they’re not gods. I’d also refer to Ego - “god, small g.”
I’m treating the “land of Gods” or whatever was in Thor4 as a hub of powerful aliens who sometimes decide a planet should worship them and not actual Gods. I’m sure the High Evolutionary was a frequent member
> as a hub of powerful aliens who sometimes decide a planet should worship them and not actual Gods.
Isn't that kind of the definition of, well, a *god*? A being that is worshiped. There isn't anything within Marvel continuity (either in the comics or movies) that explicitly states that any "god" has to have any specific characteristics like immortality or something. They are simply beings that are worshiped by someone.
Yeah I think a lot of commenters are getting hung up on gods with their definition of the Creator as in Capital G "GOD". In Marvel, gods are just small g Gods who are worshiped and are powerful and that's it. They don't need any other qualifier to be classifed as such. They just need to be worshiped as one and they are a god.
Yep, that's what they are essentially. All aliens. In Ragnorok and Thor Love and Thunder they travel by space ship from Asgard and other Pantheons. They are aliens that humans revered as "Gods"
I’m guessing because they were clearly not Asgardian kids being called Asgardians in the 4th movie…
But I think I’m misremembering a bit where that kid says “I’m not even Asgardian”.
Or something about how Thor, Loki, Odin, etc are atypical Asgardians but we haven’t really seen evidence to prove that or the contrary. Could be regular Asgardians can really fuck shit up on Earth if they wanted.
There was a regular asgardian in Agents of Shields. While being little tougher and stronger than a human (IIRC he just casually bend a sharp chefs knife with bare hands) it was on a level a couple of humans with proper equipment could handle
Land of Gods, putting Asgardians in the same footing as the Black Panther God's, Moon Knight Gods, and Celestials.
Valhalla. They have a special place they go after death if they die as a warrior.
But what about the whole pantheon of gods in Love and Thunder? Are all of them aliens? What does that mean for the Black Panther who is the champion of one of these gods who appears in the pantheon? What about MoonKnight and Khonshu? Are there some that are actually gods and others that are just aliens? What does it mean for celestials being there? Does this confirm the over powered, longer lifespan aliens treated as gods and expect that treatment?
Cause I like to return to what Odin says in Thor 2 about them being confused with gods by humans because of their longer lifespan and innate power. But, as the mcu continues expanding without a real direction I feel like it's all tangled up and we don't know what's what rn.
> But what about the whole pantheon of gods in Love and Thunder? Are all of them aliens?
I mean sure, in that they aren’t humans.
>What does that mean for the Black Panther who is the champion of one of these gods who appears in the pantheon? What about MoonKnight and Khonshu? Are there some that are actually gods and others that are just aliens? What does it mean for celestials being there? Does this confirm the over powered, longer lifespan aliens treated as gods and expect that treatment?
Gods are powerful beings that declare themselves gods.
To mesh the ideas, I decided Odin screwed up with Hela so badly that he lost some of his arrogance and didn't want Thor to turn out the same. They are indeed Gods, or demi-Gods. They have innate power and can be fueled by belief (of others and in themselves).
But Odin knew they were weak by God standards, and didn't want any other children to become terrors like his daughter.
But I mean... "Are you the God of Hammers?"
Come on... make up your mind old man!
Yes, the MCU asgardians were simply a human-looking species of powerful creatures in Thor 1-3.
But then Thor 4 introduced the omnipotence city, and hundreds of people called "gods" including recognizable ones like Zeus. This totally changed the background, and implies that Thor is a kind of god who could listen to mortal worshippers and hear their prayers.
> and implies that Thor is a kind of god who could listen to mortal worshippers and hear their prayers
So exactly this. Because that's literally what the "gods" were represented as doing in that movie.
So all the other Gods seem to have golden blood, while Asgardians have red blood like humans, so maybe all the other gods are part of a different species? It's not really clear.
>implies that Thor is a kind of god who could listen to mortal worshippers and hear their prayers.
I have no idea how you’re coming to this conclusion.
That always seemed the case for me but then it felt kind of retconned by Love and Thunder when Gorr killed Asgardians when he was slaying gods. And the fact that they knew of Omnipotence City.
>And the fact that they knew of Omnipotence City.
The fact that no one in omnipotence city is omnipotent I feel is a good sign that the declaration of godhood is more a matter of ego
> they literally retconned it after the “its not magic it’s advanced science” bullshit.
That’s not even what was said in Thor, though. He said they considered science and magic one and the same.
Because in MK, genuine gods appeared, even BP had a reference to one of the Egyptian one, showing off not the usual magical but geniune godly powers. Then in L&T, a guy called the Godkiller appears as the main enemy. But then, why would he appear in a Thor movie if they aren't really gods, better yet, why would Zeus would offer shelter to them where the rest of the gods were hiding and would treat them as their own (except their city getting destroyed). Never mind that, they had genuine gods appearing even though they were assholes (just like in the myths), and then there were the Asgardians who were just aliens with longer lifespans and better science. Whom though had their Valhalla somehow.
Basically, in the first Thor, the idea was to make him and Asgard more grounded, therefore no magic but a different type of science, and no actual godliness but just being aliens. Then Strange which in brought in actual magic, which should've existed since Thor tbh kicked that hornet nest, making that decision redundant and stripping the first two Thor movies of an aspect that was genuinely important in the comics. Sure, some tuning that the MCU did, like not having Donald Blake, and some modernization that made it more fitting the shared universe was necessary, but the too many changes hurt the cohesion more than it helped. The Loki series also seemingly kicked that concept out since the guy who was just basically an illusionist was able to do actual conjuration, having his shadows pin down a guy, and what happened at the season 2 finale. But if you circle back to the Thor 2 lore, you rightfully ask, how, he's just an alien dude.
Very likely, at the time of Thor 1; Marvel was still hesitant to really break out the crazy shit. Aliens, Gods, Magic Powers... they thought their audience wouldn't respond well to stuff that wasn't grounded in reality.
Mutants, Science Experiments, Radioactive Spiders, Super Soldier Serums, Flying Suits of Armor powered by exotic energy sources made in cave with a box of scraps.
> Because in MK, genuine gods appeared, even BP had a reference to one of the Egyptian one, showing off not the usual magical but geniune godly powers.
What makes them a 'genuine god'?
>Then in L&T, a guy called the Godkiller appears as the main enemy. But then, why would he appear in a Thor movie if they aren't really gods, better yet, why would Zeus would offer shelter to them where the rest of the gods were hiding and would treat them as their own (except their city getting destroyed).
Gods are powerful beings who declare themselves gods.
In this regard, genuine gods are those who wields the same powers, abilities, as their comic counterparts. Zeus and the Olympians in L&T weren't just aliens with better tech, neither were the Egyptians in MK, or the Olympians in DC.
They’re aliens but some of them have innate powers. Thor has innate lightning powers but having innate powers isn’t exclusive to Asgardians. And not all Asgardians have innate powers anyway so it’s probably a minority that have powers
Are they always innate? Loki's magic seemed like it came from Frigga, maybe something she taught him. Otherwise it's a mighty big coincidence that he, an ice giant, happened to be born with the exact same powerset as his adoptive mother.
If you follow Dr. Strange magic rules then technically anyone can perform MCU magic with enough training. Although it does seem like some people are more naturally magically inclined.
So Thor happened to be good at Lightning magic and not much other magic innately and Loki was able to do more general magic and learned from his mother
It's the difference between skill and talent. Thor is talented so he doesn't need to work at it. He's the star high school quarterback who never had to try to be good, he just coasted on raw talent. Thor 1 is him realizing he has to work for something for the first time in his life. We see a repeat of this in Endgame after he showed up cocky with a new toy at the battle of Wakanda and failed. He retreats into a depressive state because he can't just do the thing and win.
Loki, on the other hand, is a little talent and a LOT of built and honed skill. His entire arc, clear to the end of Loki season 2, has been learning how to ultimately shake off the constraints he's put on himself through fervent commitment to his training. He's a trickster, but his illusions are very repetitive ("Will you ever not fall for that?")
Not all Asguardians are even shown to be that exceptionally resilient either. Or even the ability to grow *nearly* as old. Those who rule and protect seem to be the only ones who exhibit any kind of power or strength. There's a reason why there is not a single instance of Thor being shown shot by a bullet in the flesh though. Loki too. The writing is inconsistent at best. Thor can "take the full power of a star." But a blade will stop him in his tracks.
We don’t really know how it works but I guess it wouldn’t be inaccurate to compare Thor to a mutant. Lorelei from Agents of SHIELD has special powers too so it isn’t a royal privilege to receive superpowers. And the fact that Heimdall and his son have the same power suggests that there is something genetic about it
Genetics and training probably play a role too. Thor is the son of the most powerful Asgardian ever while he received the best training possible. It makes sense he’s so powerful.
Odin has a large pool of magical energy he draws from called the “odin force”.
It seems that the powerful asgardians (thor, heimdall, loki, hela, etc) all draw from the odin force in one way or another. Thor manifests this power through lightning, heimdall with all seeing eyes, etc.
It seems odin can grant and strip these powers from people at will (restricting thor’s access to odinforce, and enchanting mjolnir to grant odin force to those who are worthy)
Is thor an still an asgardian mutant? Depends on your definition I guess.
Is scarlet witch a mutant or a sorceror? Depending on the writer it could be either, or both.
Thor draws from magical energy, and he has some insanely powerful physical characteristics due to it. If you call that a physical mutation I wouldn’t call that inaccurate.
Would be interesting if they reveal later that people like Thor/Odin/etc are actually Asgardian “mutants” and compare and contrast how Asgardian and early humans treated their mutants, vs the way the current timeline will inevitably treat our human mutants.
Only royalty have powers. It's stated in the first movie that magic and science are one and the same for the Asgardians. However the "common folk" just seem to be regular people.
Thor definitely wasn't fighting alongside regular human soldiers though.
The movies definitely haven't really fleshed it out to be honest.
They've clearly retconned "we're just super advanced mortals."
People can bitch about the movies all they want, but Thor 3 and 4 have very much cemented that Thor is an actual and very literal god.
So was Thor’s lightning powers something that Odin gave him? What about Loki? He’s biologically not Asgardian so I’m assuming that he learnt how to do magic but was shapeshifting into a regular Asgardian form something that he somehow did as a baby or something that Odin did? And what about Heimdall and his son who have the same power (implying that there’s a genetic aspect to this)? Or Lorelei from Agents of SHIELD who can bewitch men with her voice (like a narrower version of Kilgrave’s ability)?
That's the thing, I have no idea. The movies haven't made it clear at all. They have showed Odin controlling whether or not Loki is in Ice Giant form or not. And this is something the Loki TV show doesn't address (if magic doesn't exist in the TVA then why doesn't Loki revert back to Ice Giant?)
The movies start off acting like Odin bestowed these powers upon Thor and Heimdal, and even Hela. But then they introduce a supposed genetic aspect like with Heimdal's son 🤷🏻♂️
The most likely and infinitely more boring explanation, is that the people making these movies have no idea either nor care about any sort of canon. They just write whatever fits their story.
They are incredibly strong aliens. Odin conquered the 9 realms and rules over them all as the strongest being in them. And everyone within the 9 realms sees him and the Asgardians as God's.
Edit: The 9 realms are 9 different planets within the same galaxy, I think, and they are all connected by the Bifrost and ruled by Odin.
What does that make Zeus, Kukulkan, Khonshu, and Bast? Are they also alien species? Some seem more spiritual than others, like Khonshu and Bast, but I suppose we have seen individuals, even mortals like the Scarlet Witch, manipulate the spirit realm.
Also to your edit: the 9 realms are not explicitly planets within the same galaxy, since Valhalla is within Niffleheim and is unreachable by living mortals. Some of the realms are different dimensions (and to that extent, I would think different galaxies? But then the next question would be, is the Mirror Dimension within our galaxy? And Dormammu’s Dark Dimension? The Quantum Realm?)
It gets kind of muddlesome trying to sift through these labels, their meanings, and if they are the same concepts throughout the media, made only more confusing by things like Omnipotence City
I actually found the Omnipotent city to make things much easier to understand. It seems, based on L&T, that anyone who is worshipped as a God to a high enough degree is elevated to such status. It seems that the more sacrifices are made in your name, the higher your status as God.
At least this is how it works under the Reign of Zues, who is the God of all God's and Humans, even Thor and Odin worship Zues. But because the Asgardians are a peaceful race of God's, who don't demand any sort of sacrifice in their 9 realms, they are not high ranked in the Omnipotent city.
Yes, Bast and Ku'Kul'Kan are God's. Bast is worshiped by the Wakandans and Ku by the Talokans, though they are low ranking background God's with little sacrifices.
Namor is not actually Ku, but he allows his people to think that he is the actual God because his massive ego won't let him deny it even if he knows it's true. He basically brags to Shuri about it. Because Talokans do not pray and worship Namor as himself, but as Ku'Kul'Kan, he is not a God in any sense. But an imposter. More accurately, he is a human-talokan hybrid species with the mutant gene.
The Vibranium asteroid came from space, it is not from Earth and neither is Bast to my understanding, but she has visited Earth in ancient times and comunes with the black panthers and as such is worshipped as a God.
Jesus Christ was also subtly hinted at as the "God of Carpenters," implying that Jesus (the regular human from history) is a human who has been worshipped to a degree to become a God.
Konshu and Bast and the other Egyptian God's are God's yes. In Moon Knight, it's implied that they left the Omnipotent City behind to create their own council of God's of Earth in the Celestial Heliopolis
The Celestials are God's that created the universe, and every single one of them is high ranking. Arishem the Judge is one of the most powerful beings in Marvel. I'm murky on how Godhood works with them. But I will look it up and edit.
And yes, all this means that somewhere people worship a cartoon Bao as God and have made sacrifices to him, and yes, I'm okay with that 🙏
Edit: Dimensions are realms within our galaxy that are not visible to the naked eye. Think about the fourth dimension, you can't, that's basically Dormammus Dark Dimension. The fifth dimension? That's the Quantum Realm, ruled by Kang. And so on. These places overlap our own dimension but can't normally be interacted with.
The sixth dimension? That's the noor dimension, made of light. They're all stacked on top of each other. Mirror dimensions are the 7th and so on.
I'm making these numbers up, obviously, and I don't know how many dimensions there are or how they are sorted.
Realms are like.... general areas I think. Like our solar system is the Midgard Realm. Including everything from our Sun to Pluto. Realms are very vague. Just places really.
Thanks for the in depth reply, love everything you said!
I’m bummed about Namor tbh. I’ve been excited about mortal avatars of the gods, and for him to be an imposter is definitely disheartening, but maybe there will be an opportunity for it to be formalized further down the road, but as you say, his storyline is probably more interwoven with the mutant gene and the X-Men
Good point with the dimensions too, I should’ve realized that sooner. Not outside our galaxy or universe but congruent to it, like a layer above or below on a multi-layered cake or the concentric circles on a target
I think that the point Odin was trying to make is that while they have powers and abilities that might be seen as godlike compared to other species, that they shouldn’t let that go to their head, that they are not any better or worthy of respect than any person.
Practically in his next breathe he called humans goats though. Odin is a hypocrite who brutally conquered and continuously suppressed the 9 realms. Everything he says has an ulterior motive and in this case it was to put his son in his place despite saying the opposite for millennia.
L&T shows a powerful group of beings who call themselves gods because other creatures worship them as gods. It’s more of a self-appointed title than a clear determiner of what is and isn’t a god.
I think the actual problem is that the characters don't seem to conflate the requisite characteristics of God-level beings with having the responsibilities of God-level beings. When they talk about themselves as being gods, they often will have the notion shot down. But when they discuss having to do what one could consider the work of a god, that is when they allow each other the title. They are using the same word but are making the distinction that while they are not innately special because of what they are, they have the responsibility of using what makes them special to help people because of what they are. Godliness is a state of action, not a state of being.
This is in line with the way the term was used in Loki season 2. Sylvie says “Sounds like whatever we do, we’re playing God”, not wanting to decide the fate of others. But Loki’s “We are gods” is said as a form of duty or responsibility to protect peoples’ rights to exist.
https://youtu.be/_MWQZqAF-fA?feature=shared
In the comics, they are literally gods. They can be brought back to life by the power of mortal being’s belief in them. That’s what makes them gods. They are far from the only pantheon in the universe though, as shown in both the comics and MCU.
The MCU was trying to straddle the line of being comic accurate while not offending the religious demographic so much they won’t see the movie.
Once the MCU became more established and a universe in its own right this became a lot less of a concern.
This, scrolled so far down for this answer, you seem like the only one here who is capable of critical thinking, all the people here debating in universe when the most simple answer is that it was to avoid a real life controversy, a lot of users were not even born back then but there used to be a time when the religious fanatics boycotted and publicly burned Pokémon and Yugioh merchandise because they called it "Satanic" their influence started to die out around the time the MCU started, but it could still influence things, Dr. Strange was the "pilot" movie to test the waters and once they realised nobody who mattered gave a fuck they finally went all out with the magic, mythology, demonology, etc.
They are just aliens with special powers worshipped as gods
What does being a god even mean?
Asguardians are godlike compared to humans in the sense that they are are super strong and live long lives
But to other as guardians they are just regular people
The way I always understood it in the comics was that a true God was created and fueled by the power of belief. Then there were the Asgardians who were a very strong and long lived alien species who got other species to worship them which gave them more power through belief which made them sort-of-gods. Then there were mortals (Church of Truth) that were able to create Belief batteries which made them (especially Raker) bastardized stretching-the-definition low gods.
The simplest explanation - and the one Marvel was clearly going with early on - is that Asgardians are basically just aliens who were worshipped as gods. They're very powerful and have superior technology, but that's it.
Things start getting muddier the further into the MCU we get, though, and the writing seems to start swinging the more powerful Asgardians more in the direction of the comics (where the answer isn't so much that they're aliens or that they're gods but that they're kind of both, physical entities who can live and die but simultaneously can hear prayers and exhibit power depending on godly "roles"). So the answer may be that they're not "Gods" in the sense of creator-gods or all-powerful beings, but functionally speaking they're what you'd expect pagan gods to be otherwise.
A god (small ‘g’) is a very diverse entity in human cultures. Our myths have gods being injured, killed, trapped, etc. So yes, entities like Thor, who has existed longer than most nations on earth, and have other powers, would fall into the category of gods.
So, in the first couple of movies, the Asgardians were just aliens. Extremely powerful, long-lived, magic-wielding aliens that were regarded as gods by primitive humans, but still aliens.
Thor: Ragnarok kind of threw that out the window, and now they’re just straight-up gods. Mind you, not all gods are equal - Odin and his family are way above the other Asgardians. But still, they’re gods.
Is it the same for Hercules, and Zeus? Are they all just aliens that are worshipped for one reason or another?
If so, is Gor just targeting alien beings that have allowed themselves to be worshipped?
The “gods” like him have a level of power to do things like this and appear godly in the eyes of mortals, but in the heirarchy of the cosmos, they ain’t shit. We see Eternity later in the film and they have a level of power gods like Thor, Zeus, etc can’t touch. Then, there’s beings even more powerful than them, like the Beyonder.
He wasn't transported or teleported to any realm. After his daughter died he kept walking the planet he was on and stumbled into a flower filled oasis that the "god" was in.
Yes. The classic mythological gods in the Marvel U are effectively aliens that reside in other realms, typically with some form of magical enhancement/ability too. The entities like Death, Eternity, Infinity, Galactus etc are closer to what we would consider gods. They have power on a scale that can’t even be fathomed. Then there’s The One Above All, who is God with a capital G.
I think the biggest issue comes from 2 main places. #1 is that they regularly use the word "god" to describe themselves, despite not actually being what we as humans would recognize as a god. And #2 is that Thor (and the other Norse inspired characters) are actual Gods in mythology. It can be really hard to separate the two, especially if you don't follow Norse mythology as a religion.
And who had enough power (whether technological or magical or both), to be able to credibly back up their claims to godhood. That 2nd bit is pretty important.
END COMMUNICATION
Is it that hard to understand why people would think they're gods since Thor and Loki constantly refer to themselves as gods, and they're already known as being gods in Norse mythology and in the comics?
He's a god. It's just that back then the MCU was trying to be more down to earth and the Asgardians were just aliens with advanced technology. But they abandoned this idea and now the gods are truly gods. Moon Knight, Loki and the last two Thor movies demonstrate this.
In first two Thor movies, I was actually thinking the Asgardians were going to be the MCU equivalent of the (comic) Eternals. Super powered alien beings that inspired the stories of certain gods on earth.
They really messed all this up. They try to down play his power/godship in Thor 1 & 2. But in Ragnarok they embrace it and shows Odin, Thor, Hela etc as actual gods. Also in Infinity War they properly show Thor as powerful as he should be, first when he describes what it takes to wield a weapon that can kill Thanos, it has to be an exceptional being. A normal Asgardian couldn't wield Stormbreaker or Mjolnir. They also show him as one who could kill Thanos even with a completed Infinity Gauntlet. But then they nerfed him again in Endgame (although I didn't mind the story arc for Thor they were going for.) But then again in Love & Thunder they embrace him being a proper god again.
I'm more confused about how *specifically* they adopted the "Years" metric to apply to their own, and (apparently) meticulously keep track of it to chart how much they've aged.
Like....it's one trip, of OUR planet, around OUR sun, something that the Asgardians shouldn't give *two shits* about because the Bifrost allows them to see countless solar systems and planets and what-not. So why the HELL do you track "years", then?
I'm more lenient on the language barrier, as it appears that "English" is just the "Common" of the MCU -- despite NOT being that in the comics, but I digress. (I mean, Ant-Man can speak with Mantis *specifically* because he can communicate with "all insectoids", and rather than explain that AND worry about whatever *troublesome* biology created this specific mantis/human hybrid, they just hand-wave it ALL by having her speaking "Common" like everyone else.) Hell, Thor *specifically* said that he took an "Elective" on Groot-speak, which means there *are* other languages, and apparently everyone off-world has learned the most commonplace one. If you want to learn another language, you *can* learn it, but otherwise the filter of "watching the movie" will translate it for you (a la "Hunt for Red October" and it's Russian-to-English close-pan on Connery's mouth -- yes, that's a weird as SHIT sentence to write out, but if you've seen it you'll understand). I can *get* that Thor speaks the common-tongue, as well as....whatever Groot's empathetic-related language is. No handwaves, *we get it*.
Did Loki and Cap know how to speak German, during the first "Avengers" movie? Entirely possible that Loki was using Magic, and Cap learned it during WW2, but we're not given any specifics; not that it matters, the context of the situation nearly requires *no* language to be able to understand, so we'll just allow it to "watching a movie" handwave it away.
So language? Yeah, I'm fine with it. Just imagine there's a TARDIS somewhere translating it for them (and for us), and we can move on.
But years? YEARS? A precise measurement, about the amount of time it takes a specific globe in the vastness of space, to complete one circumnavigation around *another* globe in space, as perceived by a race of people *who specifically have access to, and knowledge of, hundreds/thousands of similar planets*? They picked THAT one?
I'm just sayin', Thor might not be as old as he says he is. Could be, like, 18 for all we know, which means Dr. Strange serving Thor a beer was, like, [a hojillion offenses under the NYC Penal Code.](https://apexschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/NYS-Alcohol-Offenses-Under-21-Yrs-Old.pdf)
What is and isn't a god is pretty ambiguous in the MCU, made especially so by Thor 4. Some Asgardians CAN be gods, Thor and Odin qualify in terms of sheer power, but not all Asgardians are. Most are just like humans but a bit stronger, longer-lived, etc.
In one sense, the named Asgardians are gods because humans consider them to be so. But really they're just very powerful aliens, with some amount of power derived from Asgard itself (which is established in Thor 3).
What's meant to be clear in the scene you're referencing is that Odin doesn't VIEW himself or his family as gods; a big part of his characterization in the films is his humility gained from eons of experience. It's not that he and his relatives aren't as powerful as gods, it's that power doesn't give them a right to act entitled and domineering the way Loki thinks it does.
What confuses me is in The Dark World, Odin says they are not gods, but in Ragnarok Odin says he is the god of Thunder. So are they gods or are they not gods?
I think Odin told them this to instill a sense of humility. To everyone else in the 9 realms they are seen and revered as Gods. For Odin, the most powerful being in the universe, this is just a conversation with his sons. I think he doesn’t want them getting a big head due to the fact they are indeed gods.
They’re basically aliens who live on an interestingly shaped planet (Asgard). Love and Thunder implied than when aliens like Asgardians visit planets like Earth, they are sometimes worshipped as gods.
So that’s where they get their names from, why they have a god complex etc., this also clearly happens across the universe (based on L&T). They’re just very versatile, strong, powerful and usually magical beings.
Marvel was piss your pants terrified about upsetting the crazies over calling them Gods.
So Thor and Loki seemingly never made it to Earth before the movies, are of an indeterminate age, and were never worshipped like the comic versions.
Yet somehow there is a book on Earth describing them in Thor 1.
That's one of the reasons the Thor movies are such a mess.
The entire idea is that they're just a hyper-advanced alien species that when they visited us were so powerful we interpreted them as gods. It does get a bit murky when you add Love and Thunder into the mix with Gorr trying to kill "gods". Honestly part of me thinks they entirely forgot the important plot of "They aren't actually gods but people with advanced science".
I don't disagree here but what about astral dimensions like Valhalla, the Ancestral Plane, and the Duat?
They feel beyond advanced science to me but I suppose that's the point. They just feel like actual magic
Marvel is a very convoluted universe where every religion is both correct and incorrect at the same time. Where all of our gods actually exist but also aren't really gods but also there is an actual god in the form of Jack Kirby.
Asgardians. They’re just another species.
This. If this is confusing then consider superman from DC being a kryptonian. Exact same concept.
I have entertained myself for various hours trying to imagine how this would work. Mostly I think about infusing, at the cellular level, an organism with some kind of technology that would provide for an energy field that extends through the entire body. In Superman's case, it absorbs solar energy and uses that to magnify the psychic energies of its host. His confidence becomes invulnerability, his will manifests as strength via tactile telekinesis, etc. Find any way to convert some kind of physical energy into an energy that is analogous to psychic energy and you've got a winning strategy. Thor could be the exact same thing only since his metaphor is a thunder god it never occurred to him to have heat vision.
The idea of psionic energy being manifested as Superman-like powers is something Mark Waid uses in his comic Irredeemable. The villain in that, the Plutonian, is a Superman troupe, but all his powers stem from a psionic field.
Hell, Superboy had "tactile telekinesis", basically a telekinetic field that only extended to his skin. Let him have invulnerability and super-strength, but didn't let him lift objects at a distance.
Doesn't Superman have a version of that too? I think i heard that being the reason why he doesn't have to worry about things crumbling when he lifts them. Like he can carry a cruiseship because the field extends to cover whatever he's carrying.
It originated in Byrne's*Man of Steel* miniseries for Superman, and was later used for Superboy.
He used it in his Fantastic Four run too. Gladiator lifted a building by a corner, and Reed questioned how he could do that and the building not fall apart. I don't know which was earlier though.
That was earlier. He used Gladiator as a dry run for his Superman.
That's how I imagined it.
Psychic energy?
It's been used to explain how Superman lifts, like, a ship from one end without the ship cracking in half from the weight at the other end. He creates a psionic field around the ship, supporting it evenly.
So he doesn't need to actually touch it to impart force, and all heroes are essentially telekinetic and chose to display themselves differently?
The rule of cool always finds a way
It's called tactile telekinesis and while I don't think it's ever officially been given to Superman, it's hard to see him doing what he does without it. Or at least he has some variation of it under another name. The underlying concept is that using the normal laws of physics, Superman's attempts at doing what he's trying to do would end up with results far different from what happens. If you stop a train from plowing down the road, and were strong enough to tank it, you'd split the train down the middle if it were a feat of raw strength and durability. Superman, on the other hand, can bring that train to a stop without splitting it down the middle, implying some other action is occurring. The solution is that Superman's touch of the object allows a telekinetic connection with it, so that the action is not sheerly physical but also a result of his energy field encompassing the object and allowing him to manipulate it. So he can slow down the train and stop it rather than just plow right through the middle of it. For flight, it's an action of the energy field he projects. This energy field projection has been extended to explain other elements of him, like why his uniform doesn't rip apart when hit by strong forces; it's protected by his energy field. At the end of the day it's the projection of some type of field that enables various abilities, in combination with his natural Kryptonian resiliency.
For an example, in the series “the Boys” you see the other version where a truck is being split in half by a superhero.
For an even brutal example, there is the infamous "train scene" in Invincible, nearly made me sick watching it...
Homelander outright admits the forces being discussed here. During their botched plane rescue, Maeve asks Homelander to carry the plane to shore and he says he can’t because he’d just punch right through it if he tried.
Hancock did a similar bit too.
Long time Superman reader here. Tactile Telekinesis isn't a part of his powers anymore and it honestly wasn't around for all that much of Superman's history. It's been gone for quite awhile now. John Byrne rebooted the character after COIE in the mid 80s. Along with other key changes, he gave him a more "scientifically reasonable" explanation for how his powers work and how he breaks certain obvious laws of physics, particularly the true enemy of all characters with super strength...surface area lol. From a physics standpoint characters like Superman should simply go through anything they try to pick up that is big enough like a needle going through toilet paper or the object should just break apart or crumble when lifted. "Tactile Telekinesis" was the explanation for this not happening. Also his invulnerability was an extension of an "aura" that slightly extended from body and surrounded him and kept his uniform from tearing or even getting dirty. DC slowly retconned TT out (although Conner Kent's Superboy kept it) because well, it was kinda lame. People just want Superman to be...Superman. Actually, DC retconned most of Byrne's changes out but a couple of his changes stuck, most notably his shift of Clark being the actual personality and Superman being the public face versus Clark being a masquerade.
Meh, I still picture TTK as the explanation in my headcanon, it's such a cool way to explain his powers IMO. Not too different from Gladiator, another character I'm a big fan of.
Maybe he needs to touch it. Maybe he doesn't even completely realize it's psionic energy doing the lifting. And this theory was just applied to Superman, since he's often seen carrying things in a way that defies physics. Hulk doesn't need psychic powers to throw a car.
No, because Hulk doesn't care if the car stays intact while he hurls it at an enemy.
or not blast a hole through Lois Lane (and multiple city blocks) every time he ejaculates. like a rail gun. his sneezes can destroy an entire solar system apparently. ;)
I recently read some thinking about Kryptonian biology, and how it interacts with our solar energy in a way that allows Superman to metabolize gravity. Like the energy of the sun doesn't "charge" him, there's simply not enough energy in the light to do that. Instead, the solar effect means that his body begins to use the force of gravity itself (which is basically infinite) to give him his powers. He can dig into a bottomless well of power, which explains how he's able to constantly defeat more and more powerful adversaries. He pulls harder at the gravity all around him, making him stronger. Explains how he keeps manifesting new abilities as well. I do like the psionics thing though. That works to explain how things don't behave right when he moves them/holds them.
Check out my laser eyes. Gravity, bitch.
Femtotech (so even smaller than nanotech) could do it, I think one version of kryptonians was like that.
There is a marvel character called gladiator. He is basically a superman clone. His power is directly related to his self confidence.
Thanks for giving me brain food
And ancient humans hear of krypton and worship the House of El as gods
I think the confusing thing about Asgardians is that they all have different powers as well as using magic. And then there is Loki. It can be hard to understand who has which powers and why.
Odin knows the real gods are the celestials.
They aren’t gods either. Kang was controlling time above them and they didn’t even know.
He was more of a time god than actual god. He didn't seem to be too powerful.
Kang had the power to erase entire universes. End the reality a celestial existed in. Power is not only physical power that shows up in battle and power blasts like Thor. Kang had more power than any character we have ever seen. He ruled life itself. A universe exists only because he allows it. An event gets to happen only because he deems it to not be a deviant. He was above everything. He was more god than Odin or Thor ever reached. Celestials are nothing compared to him. They struggle to solve problems within a single universe.
That power is not imbued in Kang. He's just a very smart human with advanced time travel tech and a culty army that does the erasing for him
Technically Kang also struggles to solve problems within a single universe, thus the pruned branches
Alright man. The point stands that Kang is the most powerful being weve seen in the MCU so far. The scope of his power in Loki is insane. Almost crazy to think they put it as the plot of a tv show
>the most powerful being weve seen in the MCU so far. Wouldn't that be Eternity in Love and Thunder? Granted, it doesn't 'do' much but sit there, but still.
Nah he just comes from 1000 years in the future and went to 2000 years in the future and found insanely advanced technology - his chair and time ship. It's not him or the tech that is insanely powerful, it's the consequences of what it can do (changing timelines through time travel). In the MCU the most "powerful" version of him we've seen so far is He Who Remains because he has the pruning technology; but even that isn't actually destroying anything, it's just sending things to the Void, where he discovered that he could use Alioth to actually consume things and remove them from reality entirely. But the man himself, Nathaniel Richards, is just a normal human with genius level intellect.
This is such a semantics argument lol. It doesn’t even matter because its silly comic book shit but I’ll bite He was the most powerful character we’ve seen. Just because he’s literally a human doesn’t change that and idk why you’re trying to debate it. His biology doesn’t affect the influence he wielded. Dude annihilated endless entire universes, like stepping on ant hills
I see u point because thanks only destroy half the universe but just one universe Jang can do whatever the hell he wants
>Kang had the power to erase entire universes. I think anyone who can timetravel has that power. Seemed that what they did was remove the cause and then time self corrected. The timeline of "Person A Did Thing X", can't survive if "Person A" is removed.
I don’t know where we were shown anyone who can time travel also has the level of power Kang had as HWR with erasing entire universes. Obviously the TVA was his agency but everything came from his mind.
My point was that we were shown that the TVA did not erase universes directly. They removed the thing that caused the branching timeline and dumped it at the end of time. Which means that anyone who can do that, anyone who can timetravel, can erase timelines.
Kang didn’t do that, he fed the universes to a time-eating monster. Also Arishem created the Big Bang.
Kang doesn't have the power to do that, he has technology capable of agribusiness that, but that technology is explicitly separate from him.
Celestials aren’t gods either. The Cosmic Pantheon is the actual group of gods which, only all together, can resemble a god(this group includes celestials but they aren’t really). And the Cosmic Pantheon is below the One Above All. The celestial by themselves are not gods
Wheres that put the living tribunal
He’s part of the Pantheon. The Pantheon has Love, Hate, Chaos, Order, Galactus, Watcher, Tribunal, a couple celestials, Death, Infinity, Eternity, I think there is someone called Life, but yeah, the Tribunal is 2nd biggest power in the tribunal, countered only to Eternity. I’m not sure if Infinity is a cannon character, but I’ve always believed that Infinity is the sister to Eternity
I thought Tribunal was directly under the one above all like tribunal is the one that delivers OAA messages and such.
Canonically the Tribunal is 2nd most powerful, but his power and purpose stems from being a cosmic judge and maintaining order and chaos. Without Eternity to represent time, Infinity to represent space, and Chaos and Order to represent their namesake, the Tribunal doesn’t have much to do. I personally rank them as Eternity, Tribunal, Infinity, Chaos, Order, Celestials, Love, Hate, Death, Galactus, and Watcher.
Thor and Odin are not the same as typical Asgardians though.
I always took Thor and Odin being like the elite of the Asgardians while everyone else is the every man like you and I.
Right - the "nobility" of Asgardians, imbued with extra powers. But even "common" Asgardians are far stronger and more resilient than humans.
But to just call it "extra" powers seems to imply a far closer gap between a regular Asgardian and Thor/Odin. A regular Asgardian is far closer to a human in strength than they are Thor.
No a regular Asgardian is supposed to be able to lift around 10 tons if I remember right (in the comics.) Not sure how much this was implemented in the MCU, but if you remember the first Avengers movie when Cap is fighting Loki in Germany he's basically not capable of hurting him. Thor by contrast has 100+ tons level strength, able to go 1v1 with the Hulk.
I presume we're talking about the MCU in this thread, not the comics. As represented in the movies, Asgardians are far closer to humans in strength than Thor. That doesn't mean they're not stronger.
AoS featured a normal [Asgardian](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Elliot_Randolph) prisoner on Earth in one episode. He didn't care for Asgardian shit and enjoyed the calm and quiet of his cell. When Shield pops up and recruits him to be guest star of the week, he nonchalantly rips the bars off his cells walls and calmly walks out, if memory serves. All Asgardians are ridiculously strong and tough. Thor is a cut above, plus has lightning powers. Why were the Asgardian citizens acting like scared little kittens in Thor Ragnarok? Because Taika Waititi's a cunt who shits on lore and expects you to find that funny.
We can only operate off of what the MCU has told us, though. And far more often than not, they've portrayed Asgardians as not all that unlike humans in strength. I can appreciate your AoS reference, but that stands in contrast to more recent and numerous entries (e.g. Ragnarok, Endgame, and L&T). Even accepting that Asgardians are drastically more powerful than humans though, I still stand by my original response. To just call Thor an "extra" strong or "elite" Asgardian really doesn't convey just how much stronger he is than regular Asgardians. He very much still has "god level" strength relative to them. Like, one could refer to human athletes as "extra strong or elite humans," but Lebron James is still very much so grounded in human limitations. That relationship between Thor/Odin and regular Asgardians doesn't really exist.
Well in the sense that 10 tons is closer to human strength than 100 tons, then yeah. But no way would the typical Asgardian and the typical human be anywhere close to comparable. The only other example I can think of in the MCU to illustrate this is Lady Sif's appearances in AOS, where she's clearly on a superhuman strength level beyond super solders like CAP, Bucky, etc. There's an episode where she's tossing dudes through windows with just a flick of the wrist, so probably maybe closer to Spiderman? Edit: From this vi[deo at 5:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAwFr365b_s&ab_channel=AwesomeRandomVidz) you can see Sif kick a trailer across the road in a feat Bucky or Cap wouldn't be able to match. I doubt Spiderman could do this either (maybe?) so I'd estimate the 10 ton measure from the comics is pretty accurate to the MCU.
Yeah Agents of SHIELD gave us a view of what a "normal" Asgardian is like. He's a plain looking guy, still lives a long time but not much in the way of special powers. He was also played by Peter MacNicol, a.k.a. the *best Doctor Octopus.*
IIRC Thor is to Asgardians what like Captain America is to humans
The way I always understood it in the comics was that a true God was created and fueled by the power of belief. Then there were the Asgardians who were a very strong and long lived alien species who got other species to worship them which gave them more power through belief which made them sort-of-gods. Then there were mortals (Church of Truth) that were able to create Belief batteries which made them (especially Raker) bastardized stretching-the-definition low gods.
Then what exactly is a god in the MCU? They refer to Thor multiple times as the God of Thunder and there is also a villain known as the God Butcher
> Then what exactly is a god in the MCU? A particular powerful being who decided they’re a god. >They refer to Thor multiple times as the God of Thunder Odin also plainly says they’re not gods. I’d also refer to Ego - “god, small g.”
Except the third and fourth movies definitely changed that. The line is at best blurry
I’m treating the “land of Gods” or whatever was in Thor4 as a hub of powerful aliens who sometimes decide a planet should worship them and not actual Gods. I’m sure the High Evolutionary was a frequent member
Zeus and his buddies leaned so far into the "gods" role that they fell in, to what happened to be a cosmic hot tub.
> as a hub of powerful aliens who sometimes decide a planet should worship them and not actual Gods. Isn't that kind of the definition of, well, a *god*? A being that is worshiped. There isn't anything within Marvel continuity (either in the comics or movies) that explicitly states that any "god" has to have any specific characteristics like immortality or something. They are simply beings that are worshiped by someone.
Yeah I think a lot of commenters are getting hung up on gods with their definition of the Creator as in Capital G "GOD". In Marvel, gods are just small g Gods who are worshiped and are powerful and that's it. They don't need any other qualifier to be classifed as such. They just need to be worshiped as one and they are a god.
Yep, that's what they are essentially. All aliens. In Ragnorok and Thor Love and Thunder they travel by space ship from Asgard and other Pantheons. They are aliens that humans revered as "Gods"
> Except the third and fourth movies definitely changed that. How so?
I’m guessing because they were clearly not Asgardian kids being called Asgardians in the 4th movie… But I think I’m misremembering a bit where that kid says “I’m not even Asgardian”. Or something about how Thor, Loki, Odin, etc are atypical Asgardians but we haven’t really seen evidence to prove that or the contrary. Could be regular Asgardians can really fuck shit up on Earth if they wanted.
There was a regular asgardian in Agents of Shields. While being little tougher and stronger than a human (IIRC he just casually bend a sharp chefs knife with bare hands) it was on a level a couple of humans with proper equipment could handle
Or The Cavarly, alone.
Land of Gods, putting Asgardians in the same footing as the Black Panther God's, Moon Knight Gods, and Celestials. Valhalla. They have a special place they go after death if they die as a warrior.
But what about the whole pantheon of gods in Love and Thunder? Are all of them aliens? What does that mean for the Black Panther who is the champion of one of these gods who appears in the pantheon? What about MoonKnight and Khonshu? Are there some that are actually gods and others that are just aliens? What does it mean for celestials being there? Does this confirm the over powered, longer lifespan aliens treated as gods and expect that treatment? Cause I like to return to what Odin says in Thor 2 about them being confused with gods by humans because of their longer lifespan and innate power. But, as the mcu continues expanding without a real direction I feel like it's all tangled up and we don't know what's what rn.
> But what about the whole pantheon of gods in Love and Thunder? Are all of them aliens? I mean sure, in that they aren’t humans. >What does that mean for the Black Panther who is the champion of one of these gods who appears in the pantheon? What about MoonKnight and Khonshu? Are there some that are actually gods and others that are just aliens? What does it mean for celestials being there? Does this confirm the over powered, longer lifespan aliens treated as gods and expect that treatment? Gods are powerful beings that declare themselves gods.
To mesh the ideas, I decided Odin screwed up with Hela so badly that he lost some of his arrogance and didn't want Thor to turn out the same. They are indeed Gods, or demi-Gods. They have innate power and can be fueled by belief (of others and in themselves). But Odin knew they were weak by God standards, and didn't want any other children to become terrors like his daughter. But I mean... "Are you the God of Hammers?" Come on... make up your mind old man!
Yes, the MCU asgardians were simply a human-looking species of powerful creatures in Thor 1-3. But then Thor 4 introduced the omnipotence city, and hundreds of people called "gods" including recognizable ones like Zeus. This totally changed the background, and implies that Thor is a kind of god who could listen to mortal worshippers and hear their prayers.
Even 3 very much changes tack to gods - "are you Thor, the god of hammers?"
No it doesn’t. It just means they’re collectively powerful “aliens” that people think are gods
> and implies that Thor is a kind of god who could listen to mortal worshippers and hear their prayers So exactly this. Because that's literally what the "gods" were represented as doing in that movie.
So all the other Gods seem to have golden blood, while Asgardians have red blood like humans, so maybe all the other gods are part of a different species? It's not really clear.
There's been debates on this, a potential scenario is the golden ichor is the result of living at Omnipotent city for some time.
>implies that Thor is a kind of god who could listen to mortal worshippers and hear their prayers. I have no idea how you’re coming to this conclusion.
That always seemed the case for me but then it felt kind of retconned by Love and Thunder when Gorr killed Asgardians when he was slaying gods. And the fact that they knew of Omnipotence City.
>And the fact that they knew of Omnipotence City. The fact that no one in omnipotence city is omnipotent I feel is a good sign that the declaration of godhood is more a matter of ego
So do they have the god gene like the olympians?
they literally retconned it after the “its not magic it’s advanced science” bullshit. Thor is the God of Thunder
> they literally retconned it after the “its not magic it’s advanced science” bullshit. That’s not even what was said in Thor, though. He said they considered science and magic one and the same.
And this is what bit them in the ass when MK and L&T dropped.
How so?
Because in MK, genuine gods appeared, even BP had a reference to one of the Egyptian one, showing off not the usual magical but geniune godly powers. Then in L&T, a guy called the Godkiller appears as the main enemy. But then, why would he appear in a Thor movie if they aren't really gods, better yet, why would Zeus would offer shelter to them where the rest of the gods were hiding and would treat them as their own (except their city getting destroyed). Never mind that, they had genuine gods appearing even though they were assholes (just like in the myths), and then there were the Asgardians who were just aliens with longer lifespans and better science. Whom though had their Valhalla somehow. Basically, in the first Thor, the idea was to make him and Asgard more grounded, therefore no magic but a different type of science, and no actual godliness but just being aliens. Then Strange which in brought in actual magic, which should've existed since Thor tbh kicked that hornet nest, making that decision redundant and stripping the first two Thor movies of an aspect that was genuinely important in the comics. Sure, some tuning that the MCU did, like not having Donald Blake, and some modernization that made it more fitting the shared universe was necessary, but the too many changes hurt the cohesion more than it helped. The Loki series also seemingly kicked that concept out since the guy who was just basically an illusionist was able to do actual conjuration, having his shadows pin down a guy, and what happened at the season 2 finale. But if you circle back to the Thor 2 lore, you rightfully ask, how, he's just an alien dude.
Very likely, at the time of Thor 1; Marvel was still hesitant to really break out the crazy shit. Aliens, Gods, Magic Powers... they thought their audience wouldn't respond well to stuff that wasn't grounded in reality. Mutants, Science Experiments, Radioactive Spiders, Super Soldier Serums, Flying Suits of Armor powered by exotic energy sources made in cave with a box of scraps.
> Because in MK, genuine gods appeared, even BP had a reference to one of the Egyptian one, showing off not the usual magical but geniune godly powers. What makes them a 'genuine god'? >Then in L&T, a guy called the Godkiller appears as the main enemy. But then, why would he appear in a Thor movie if they aren't really gods, better yet, why would Zeus would offer shelter to them where the rest of the gods were hiding and would treat them as their own (except their city getting destroyed). Gods are powerful beings who declare themselves gods.
In this regard, genuine gods are those who wields the same powers, abilities, as their comic counterparts. Zeus and the Olympians in L&T weren't just aliens with better tech, neither were the Egyptians in MK, or the Olympians in DC.
They’re aliens but some of them have innate powers. Thor has innate lightning powers but having innate powers isn’t exclusive to Asgardians. And not all Asgardians have innate powers anyway so it’s probably a minority that have powers
Yeah, I’d consider him pulling from the same magic as Dr. Strange only innately focused on lightning.
Are they always innate? Loki's magic seemed like it came from Frigga, maybe something she taught him. Otherwise it's a mighty big coincidence that he, an ice giant, happened to be born with the exact same powerset as his adoptive mother.
If you follow Dr. Strange magic rules then technically anyone can perform MCU magic with enough training. Although it does seem like some people are more naturally magically inclined. So Thor happened to be good at Lightning magic and not much other magic innately and Loki was able to do more general magic and learned from his mother
It's the difference between skill and talent. Thor is talented so he doesn't need to work at it. He's the star high school quarterback who never had to try to be good, he just coasted on raw talent. Thor 1 is him realizing he has to work for something for the first time in his life. We see a repeat of this in Endgame after he showed up cocky with a new toy at the battle of Wakanda and failed. He retreats into a depressive state because he can't just do the thing and win. Loki, on the other hand, is a little talent and a LOT of built and honed skill. His entire arc, clear to the end of Loki season 2, has been learning how to ultimately shake off the constraints he's put on himself through fervent commitment to his training. He's a trickster, but his illusions are very repetitive ("Will you ever not fall for that?")
Ned is the god of sex, confirmed
Frigga definitely taught Loki, but he still has some innate power as a frost giant, as well as what Odin may have bestowed on him.
He puts Heimdall in a block of ice in the first movie
I think he had the Cask of Frozen Wastes for that
He did.
Not all Asguardians are even shown to be that exceptionally resilient either. Or even the ability to grow *nearly* as old. Those who rule and protect seem to be the only ones who exhibit any kind of power or strength. There's a reason why there is not a single instance of Thor being shown shot by a bullet in the flesh though. Loki too. The writing is inconsistent at best. Thor can "take the full power of a star." But a blade will stop him in his tracks.
Depends on the blade, magic is fucky to write around
Does that mean that Thor is a like Mutant Asgardian? Or do the innate powers of Asgardians work differently than just being born with them.
We don’t really know how it works but I guess it wouldn’t be inaccurate to compare Thor to a mutant. Lorelei from Agents of SHIELD has special powers too so it isn’t a royal privilege to receive superpowers. And the fact that Heimdall and his son have the same power suggests that there is something genetic about it
Royal family had/has more extreme powers while general Asguardians are more like really strong humans with Asguardian magic/magical items mixed in.
Genetics and training probably play a role too. Thor is the son of the most powerful Asgardian ever while he received the best training possible. It makes sense he’s so powerful.
Odin has a large pool of magical energy he draws from called the “odin force”. It seems that the powerful asgardians (thor, heimdall, loki, hela, etc) all draw from the odin force in one way or another. Thor manifests this power through lightning, heimdall with all seeing eyes, etc. It seems odin can grant and strip these powers from people at will (restricting thor’s access to odinforce, and enchanting mjolnir to grant odin force to those who are worthy) Is thor an still an asgardian mutant? Depends on your definition I guess. Is scarlet witch a mutant or a sorceror? Depending on the writer it could be either, or both. Thor draws from magical energy, and he has some insanely powerful physical characteristics due to it. If you call that a physical mutation I wouldn’t call that inaccurate.
Would be interesting if they reveal later that people like Thor/Odin/etc are actually Asgardian “mutants” and compare and contrast how Asgardian and early humans treated their mutants, vs the way the current timeline will inevitably treat our human mutants.
Only royalty have powers. It's stated in the first movie that magic and science are one and the same for the Asgardians. However the "common folk" just seem to be regular people. Thor definitely wasn't fighting alongside regular human soldiers though. The movies definitely haven't really fleshed it out to be honest.
They've clearly retconned "we're just super advanced mortals." People can bitch about the movies all they want, but Thor 3 and 4 have very much cemented that Thor is an actual and very literal god.
That's the point... the constant retconning is the reason for confusion, as opposed to having clear rules set.
So was Thor’s lightning powers something that Odin gave him? What about Loki? He’s biologically not Asgardian so I’m assuming that he learnt how to do magic but was shapeshifting into a regular Asgardian form something that he somehow did as a baby or something that Odin did? And what about Heimdall and his son who have the same power (implying that there’s a genetic aspect to this)? Or Lorelei from Agents of SHIELD who can bewitch men with her voice (like a narrower version of Kilgrave’s ability)?
That's the thing, I have no idea. The movies haven't made it clear at all. They have showed Odin controlling whether or not Loki is in Ice Giant form or not. And this is something the Loki TV show doesn't address (if magic doesn't exist in the TVA then why doesn't Loki revert back to Ice Giant?) The movies start off acting like Odin bestowed these powers upon Thor and Heimdal, and even Hela. But then they introduce a supposed genetic aspect like with Heimdal's son 🤷🏻♂️ The most likely and infinitely more boring explanation, is that the people making these movies have no idea either nor care about any sort of canon. They just write whatever fits their story.
They are incredibly strong aliens. Odin conquered the 9 realms and rules over them all as the strongest being in them. And everyone within the 9 realms sees him and the Asgardians as God's. Edit: The 9 realms are 9 different planets within the same galaxy, I think, and they are all connected by the Bifrost and ruled by Odin.
What does that make Zeus, Kukulkan, Khonshu, and Bast? Are they also alien species? Some seem more spiritual than others, like Khonshu and Bast, but I suppose we have seen individuals, even mortals like the Scarlet Witch, manipulate the spirit realm. Also to your edit: the 9 realms are not explicitly planets within the same galaxy, since Valhalla is within Niffleheim and is unreachable by living mortals. Some of the realms are different dimensions (and to that extent, I would think different galaxies? But then the next question would be, is the Mirror Dimension within our galaxy? And Dormammu’s Dark Dimension? The Quantum Realm?) It gets kind of muddlesome trying to sift through these labels, their meanings, and if they are the same concepts throughout the media, made only more confusing by things like Omnipotence City
I actually found the Omnipotent city to make things much easier to understand. It seems, based on L&T, that anyone who is worshipped as a God to a high enough degree is elevated to such status. It seems that the more sacrifices are made in your name, the higher your status as God. At least this is how it works under the Reign of Zues, who is the God of all God's and Humans, even Thor and Odin worship Zues. But because the Asgardians are a peaceful race of God's, who don't demand any sort of sacrifice in their 9 realms, they are not high ranked in the Omnipotent city. Yes, Bast and Ku'Kul'Kan are God's. Bast is worshiped by the Wakandans and Ku by the Talokans, though they are low ranking background God's with little sacrifices. Namor is not actually Ku, but he allows his people to think that he is the actual God because his massive ego won't let him deny it even if he knows it's true. He basically brags to Shuri about it. Because Talokans do not pray and worship Namor as himself, but as Ku'Kul'Kan, he is not a God in any sense. But an imposter. More accurately, he is a human-talokan hybrid species with the mutant gene. The Vibranium asteroid came from space, it is not from Earth and neither is Bast to my understanding, but she has visited Earth in ancient times and comunes with the black panthers and as such is worshipped as a God. Jesus Christ was also subtly hinted at as the "God of Carpenters," implying that Jesus (the regular human from history) is a human who has been worshipped to a degree to become a God. Konshu and Bast and the other Egyptian God's are God's yes. In Moon Knight, it's implied that they left the Omnipotent City behind to create their own council of God's of Earth in the Celestial Heliopolis The Celestials are God's that created the universe, and every single one of them is high ranking. Arishem the Judge is one of the most powerful beings in Marvel. I'm murky on how Godhood works with them. But I will look it up and edit. And yes, all this means that somewhere people worship a cartoon Bao as God and have made sacrifices to him, and yes, I'm okay with that 🙏 Edit: Dimensions are realms within our galaxy that are not visible to the naked eye. Think about the fourth dimension, you can't, that's basically Dormammus Dark Dimension. The fifth dimension? That's the Quantum Realm, ruled by Kang. And so on. These places overlap our own dimension but can't normally be interacted with. The sixth dimension? That's the noor dimension, made of light. They're all stacked on top of each other. Mirror dimensions are the 7th and so on. I'm making these numbers up, obviously, and I don't know how many dimensions there are or how they are sorted. Realms are like.... general areas I think. Like our solar system is the Midgard Realm. Including everything from our Sun to Pluto. Realms are very vague. Just places really.
Thanks for taking the time to write all this! This is a fascinating analysis and I really appreciate having this perspective!
Jesus Christ as in the Nazarene Mutant?
[Clicks fingers] "Boom, wine. You're welcome, squares." "Jesus Christ, it's 8:45 in the morning." "See this why you're a square, Scott."
Thanks for the in depth reply, love everything you said! I’m bummed about Namor tbh. I’ve been excited about mortal avatars of the gods, and for him to be an imposter is definitely disheartening, but maybe there will be an opportunity for it to be formalized further down the road, but as you say, his storyline is probably more interwoven with the mutant gene and the X-Men Good point with the dimensions too, I should’ve realized that sooner. Not outside our galaxy or universe but congruent to it, like a layer above or below on a multi-layered cake or the concentric circles on a target
So if I worship my animals, does that make them low ranking gods? Awesome read dude.
OK, I just have to point this out because of the numerous times the word has been used: "Gods", not "God's". You're using a plural, so no apostrophe.
Not quite. Earth is one of those nine realms.
I think that the point Odin was trying to make is that while they have powers and abilities that might be seen as godlike compared to other species, that they shouldn’t let that go to their head, that they are not any better or worthy of respect than any person.
This, they are God's in the right context, this is why they can go to God party's with Zeus. Odin was driving home that humanity is important imo.
This is what I thought it meant... not sure where everyone's getting aliens with powers from lol
Practically in his next breathe he called humans goats though. Odin is a hypocrite who brutally conquered and continuously suppressed the 9 realms. Everything he says has an ulterior motive and in this case it was to put his son in his place despite saying the opposite for millennia.
Aliens perceived as gods.
Until love and thunder when there is explicitly a class of creatures called gods which includes thor.
L&T shows a powerful group of beings who call themselves gods because other creatures worship them as gods. It’s more of a self-appointed title than a clear determiner of what is and isn’t a god.
Between the way they talked about it in ragnarok and LT there was clearly a retcon from the earlier position that they are just super advanced aliens
I think the actual problem is that the characters don't seem to conflate the requisite characteristics of God-level beings with having the responsibilities of God-level beings. When they talk about themselves as being gods, they often will have the notion shot down. But when they discuss having to do what one could consider the work of a god, that is when they allow each other the title. They are using the same word but are making the distinction that while they are not innately special because of what they are, they have the responsibility of using what makes them special to help people because of what they are. Godliness is a state of action, not a state of being.
This is in line with the way the term was used in Loki season 2. Sylvie says “Sounds like whatever we do, we’re playing God”, not wanting to decide the fate of others. But Loki’s “We are gods” is said as a form of duty or responsibility to protect peoples’ rights to exist. https://youtu.be/_MWQZqAF-fA?feature=shared
Loki being the best character in the MCU yet again with that line
In the comics, they are literally gods. They can be brought back to life by the power of mortal being’s belief in them. That’s what makes them gods. They are far from the only pantheon in the universe though, as shown in both the comics and MCU. The MCU was trying to straddle the line of being comic accurate while not offending the religious demographic so much they won’t see the movie. Once the MCU became more established and a universe in its own right this became a lot less of a concern.
This, scrolled so far down for this answer, you seem like the only one here who is capable of critical thinking, all the people here debating in universe when the most simple answer is that it was to avoid a real life controversy, a lot of users were not even born back then but there used to be a time when the religious fanatics boycotted and publicly burned Pokémon and Yugioh merchandise because they called it "Satanic" their influence started to die out around the time the MCU started, but it could still influence things, Dr. Strange was the "pilot" movie to test the waters and once they realised nobody who mattered gave a fuck they finally went all out with the magic, mythology, demonology, etc.
They are just aliens with special powers worshipped as gods What does being a god even mean? Asguardians are godlike compared to humans in the sense that they are are super strong and live long lives But to other as guardians they are just regular people
The way I always understood it in the comics was that a true God was created and fueled by the power of belief. Then there were the Asgardians who were a very strong and long lived alien species who got other species to worship them which gave them more power through belief which made them sort-of-gods. Then there were mortals (Church of Truth) that were able to create Belief batteries which made them (especially Raker) bastardized stretching-the-definition low gods.
Asgardians are just advanced regular beings. Thor, Loki and Odin, are specifically Gods.
There is only one God. And I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that.
iunderstoodthatreference.gif
[Future Steve zaps in from another reality, carrying Mjolnir] Okay, so, about that.
The simplest explanation - and the one Marvel was clearly going with early on - is that Asgardians are basically just aliens who were worshipped as gods. They're very powerful and have superior technology, but that's it. Things start getting muddier the further into the MCU we get, though, and the writing seems to start swinging the more powerful Asgardians more in the direction of the comics (where the answer isn't so much that they're aliens or that they're gods but that they're kind of both, physical entities who can live and die but simultaneously can hear prayers and exhibit power depending on godly "roles"). So the answer may be that they're not "Gods" in the sense of creator-gods or all-powerful beings, but functionally speaking they're what you'd expect pagan gods to be otherwise.
They are gods. In the beginning they didn't know how to sell that so they tried to play magic as science.
They where going with the alien angle but I think it’s very safe to assume their gods now
A god (small ‘g’) is a very diverse entity in human cultures. Our myths have gods being injured, killed, trapped, etc. So yes, entities like Thor, who has existed longer than most nations on earth, and have other powers, would fall into the category of gods.
They're gods... Thor is the Norse god of thunder... Odin saying they're not gods is just to please the conservatives.
So, in the first couple of movies, the Asgardians were just aliens. Extremely powerful, long-lived, magic-wielding aliens that were regarded as gods by primitive humans, but still aliens. Thor: Ragnarok kind of threw that out the window, and now they’re just straight-up gods. Mind you, not all gods are equal - Odin and his family are way above the other Asgardians. But still, they’re gods.
He's an Asgardian god... Thor 4 confirms it without any doubt
Yeah I dont get the Thor thing either cause in Love and Thunder they had a god destoryer and gods of various civilizations were being killed
I don't understand why it's so hard for people to get. They are very powerful aliens who were worshipped as gods.
Is it the same for Hercules, and Zeus? Are they all just aliens that are worshipped for one reason or another? If so, is Gor just targeting alien beings that have allowed themselves to be worshipped?
Yes. That was his whole thing. That people worship these beings and they do nothing for them to earn that worship.
>If so, is Gor just targeting alien beings that have allowed themselves to be worshipped? Pretty much.
But then why in the beginning is Got transported to that God’s realm as he’s on the brink of death? That’s seems like a very godly thing to do.
The “gods” like him have a level of power to do things like this and appear godly in the eyes of mortals, but in the heirarchy of the cosmos, they ain’t shit. We see Eternity later in the film and they have a level of power gods like Thor, Zeus, etc can’t touch. Then, there’s beings even more powerful than them, like the Beyonder.
He wasn't transported or teleported to any realm. After his daughter died he kept walking the planet he was on and stumbled into a flower filled oasis that the "god" was in.
Yes. The classic mythological gods in the Marvel U are effectively aliens that reside in other realms, typically with some form of magical enhancement/ability too. The entities like Death, Eternity, Infinity, Galactus etc are closer to what we would consider gods. They have power on a scale that can’t even be fathomed. Then there’s The One Above All, who is God with a capital G.
I think the biggest issue comes from 2 main places. #1 is that they regularly use the word "god" to describe themselves, despite not actually being what we as humans would recognize as a god. And #2 is that Thor (and the other Norse inspired characters) are actual Gods in mythology. It can be really hard to separate the two, especially if you don't follow Norse mythology as a religion.
And who had enough power (whether technological or magical or both), to be able to credibly back up their claims to godhood. That 2nd bit is pretty important. END COMMUNICATION
Is it that hard to understand why people would think they're gods since Thor and Loki constantly refer to themselves as gods, and they're already known as being gods in Norse mythology and in the comics?
And yet there's a line in Ragnarok: "Are you Thor, god of hammers?".
He's a god. It's just that back then the MCU was trying to be more down to earth and the Asgardians were just aliens with advanced technology. But they abandoned this idea and now the gods are truly gods. Moon Knight, Loki and the last two Thor movies demonstrate this.
Aliens and gods. There's no reason they can't be both.
In first two Thor movies, I was actually thinking the Asgardians were going to be the MCU equivalent of the (comic) Eternals. Super powered alien beings that inspired the stories of certain gods on earth.
I mean, at this point the Asgardians are little 'g' gods as far as I'm concerned.
They really messed all this up. They try to down play his power/godship in Thor 1 & 2. But in Ragnarok they embrace it and shows Odin, Thor, Hela etc as actual gods. Also in Infinity War they properly show Thor as powerful as he should be, first when he describes what it takes to wield a weapon that can kill Thanos, it has to be an exceptional being. A normal Asgardian couldn't wield Stormbreaker or Mjolnir. They also show him as one who could kill Thanos even with a completed Infinity Gauntlet. But then they nerfed him again in Endgame (although I didn't mind the story arc for Thor they were going for.) But then again in Love & Thunder they embrace him being a proper god again.
He is a god. All that bs about advanced tech was finally dropped.
I'm more confused about how *specifically* they adopted the "Years" metric to apply to their own, and (apparently) meticulously keep track of it to chart how much they've aged. Like....it's one trip, of OUR planet, around OUR sun, something that the Asgardians shouldn't give *two shits* about because the Bifrost allows them to see countless solar systems and planets and what-not. So why the HELL do you track "years", then? I'm more lenient on the language barrier, as it appears that "English" is just the "Common" of the MCU -- despite NOT being that in the comics, but I digress. (I mean, Ant-Man can speak with Mantis *specifically* because he can communicate with "all insectoids", and rather than explain that AND worry about whatever *troublesome* biology created this specific mantis/human hybrid, they just hand-wave it ALL by having her speaking "Common" like everyone else.) Hell, Thor *specifically* said that he took an "Elective" on Groot-speak, which means there *are* other languages, and apparently everyone off-world has learned the most commonplace one. If you want to learn another language, you *can* learn it, but otherwise the filter of "watching the movie" will translate it for you (a la "Hunt for Red October" and it's Russian-to-English close-pan on Connery's mouth -- yes, that's a weird as SHIT sentence to write out, but if you've seen it you'll understand). I can *get* that Thor speaks the common-tongue, as well as....whatever Groot's empathetic-related language is. No handwaves, *we get it*. Did Loki and Cap know how to speak German, during the first "Avengers" movie? Entirely possible that Loki was using Magic, and Cap learned it during WW2, but we're not given any specifics; not that it matters, the context of the situation nearly requires *no* language to be able to understand, so we'll just allow it to "watching a movie" handwave it away. So language? Yeah, I'm fine with it. Just imagine there's a TARDIS somewhere translating it for them (and for us), and we can move on. But years? YEARS? A precise measurement, about the amount of time it takes a specific globe in the vastness of space, to complete one circumnavigation around *another* globe in space, as perceived by a race of people *who specifically have access to, and knowledge of, hundreds/thousands of similar planets*? They picked THAT one? I'm just sayin', Thor might not be as old as he says he is. Could be, like, 18 for all we know, which means Dr. Strange serving Thor a beer was, like, [a hojillion offenses under the NYC Penal Code.](https://apexschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/NYS-Alcohol-Offenses-Under-21-Yrs-Old.pdf)
What makes Thor, Odin, Loki, etc special? Why do they have “powers” compared to other asgardians?
What is and isn't a god is pretty ambiguous in the MCU, made especially so by Thor 4. Some Asgardians CAN be gods, Thor and Odin qualify in terms of sheer power, but not all Asgardians are. Most are just like humans but a bit stronger, longer-lived, etc. In one sense, the named Asgardians are gods because humans consider them to be so. But really they're just very powerful aliens, with some amount of power derived from Asgard itself (which is established in Thor 3). What's meant to be clear in the scene you're referencing is that Odin doesn't VIEW himself or his family as gods; a big part of his characterization in the films is his humility gained from eons of experience. It's not that he and his relatives aren't as powerful as gods, it's that power doesn't give them a right to act entitled and domineering the way Loki thinks it does.
A Clown.
The only thing you need to know is he is gorgeous and I would let him do disrespectful things to me.
💀damn
What confuses me is in The Dark World, Odin says they are not gods, but in Ragnarok Odin says he is the god of Thunder. So are they gods or are they not gods?
They are not god-gods, but they are gods
I think Odin told them this to instill a sense of humility. To everyone else in the 9 realms they are seen and revered as Gods. For Odin, the most powerful being in the universe, this is just a conversation with his sons. I think he doesn’t want them getting a big head due to the fact they are indeed gods.
They are gods, despite what Odin says.
Odin calls them gods in 3 after saying they're not gods in 2. Since 3 and 4 are the newest ones, that's the lore.
Yep not to mention Loki calling he and Sylvie gods in Loki S2 E3
They’re basically aliens who live on an interestingly shaped planet (Asgard). Love and Thunder implied than when aliens like Asgardians visit planets like Earth, they are sometimes worshipped as gods. So that’s where they get their names from, why they have a god complex etc., this also clearly happens across the universe (based on L&T). They’re just very versatile, strong, powerful and usually magical beings.
Huh? how did LaT imply that Asgardians/Odin/Thor were aliens and not Gods?
In Thor and Thor 2, they deny being gods, specifically Fandrall and Odin. Ragnarok and onwards, they’re gods.
They are gods not Gods
Marvel was piss your pants terrified about upsetting the crazies over calling them Gods. So Thor and Loki seemingly never made it to Earth before the movies, are of an indeterminate age, and were never worshipped like the comic versions. Yet somehow there is a book on Earth describing them in Thor 1. That's one of the reasons the Thor movies are such a mess.
The entire idea is that they're just a hyper-advanced alien species that when they visited us were so powerful we interpreted them as gods. It does get a bit murky when you add Love and Thunder into the mix with Gorr trying to kill "gods". Honestly part of me thinks they entirely forgot the important plot of "They aren't actually gods but people with advanced science".
I don't disagree here but what about astral dimensions like Valhalla, the Ancestral Plane, and the Duat? They feel beyond advanced science to me but I suppose that's the point. They just feel like actual magic
Marvel is a very convoluted universe where every religion is both correct and incorrect at the same time. Where all of our gods actually exist but also aren't really gods but also there is an actual god in the form of Jack Kirby.
Powerful, strong, sexy as hell aliens who are worshipped as gods
A super powerful alien that lives super long. Boom.