Most of the original Marvel stars have started to pass on the baton to the younger generation of MCU superheroes. Robert Downey Jr. stepped down as Iron Man, Chris Evans passed on his Captain America shield to trusted friend Sam Wilson aka Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) has been staged as the new Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova took on the mantle of Black Widow after Scarlett Johansson bid adieu to Natasha Romanoff. This makes Chris Hemsworth the oldest of the legacy MCU heroes (barring Mark Ruffalo who replaced Edward Norton in 2012) still standing. But recently he has expressed that he would like to lay down his cape after Thor 5, if it happens.

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Even though initially Hemsworth, who has had four solo outings and over half a dozen ensemble ones as Thor, had said that he would come back as the God of Thunder to MCU as long as they want him to, in a recent interview with Vanity Fair, he expressed a change of heart.

After the lukewarm response the fourth outing Thor: Love and Thunder received, Taika Waititi’s favorite Chris also expressed his desire for a reinvention with a possible fifth outing.

“I feel like we’d probably have to close the book if I ever did it again, you know what I mean? I feel like it probably warrants that. I feel like it’d probably be the finale, but that’s not based on anything anyone’s told me or any sort of plans. You have this birth of a hero, the journey of a hero, then the death of a hero, and I don’t know—am I at that stage? Who knows?”

Thor 5: Should It Take a Different Direction?

     Marvel Studios

Comedy has become a defining trait that separates MCU from its counterparts. While DC leaned into an overall darker aesthetic with its storytelling as well as appearance (with its cinematography and lighting), MCU became more popular because it successfully married nerdy comic elements with a blithe sense of humor. It was a formula that only got elevated with the introduction of Waititi’s wacky comic timing in Thor: Ragnarok. But this very same formula that bolstered MCU’s success through Phase 3, which wrapped up the Infinity Saga to make headway into the Multiverse Saga, has started to feel stale.

While speaking with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast, Hemsworth said that the last two Thor outings were tonally different from the first two and a similar revival needs to happen again with the fifth film if and when it happens.

And he may be onto something here. This is not to say that MCU should stop relying on humor or move away from all that has made Thor who he is, but there is a lot more to explore. At a global press conference held in June this year, MCU boss Kevin Feige evasively spoke about Thor’s future in MCU by stating that the original comics have many more interesting Thor stories to provide fodder for a long time to come. Feige also hinted at the “plenty of other incarnations of Thor that we’ve yet to see.”

“You look at Thor 1 and 2, they were quite similar. Ragnarok and Love and Thunder are similar. I think it’s about reinventing it. I’ve had such a unique opportunity with Infinity War and Endgame to do very drastic things with the character. I enjoy that, I like keeping people on their toes. It keeps me on my toes. It keeps me invested. I’ve said this before but when it becomes too familiar, I think there’s a risk in getting lazy then because I know what I’m doing. I don’t know if I’m even invited back, but if I was, I think it would have to be a drastically different version in tone, everything, just for my own sanity… [laughs] Thor lost his mind that last one. He’s got to figure it out now.”

We have already been introduced to some of these incarnations. Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster appeared as the Mighty Thor in Love and Thunder. There was also the frog Thor in the Disney+ series Loki in a blink-and-you-miss shot. In the comics, this frog version of Thor is called Throg.

Thor Will Return… But Will Chris?

     Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Thor: Love and Thunder ended with the familiar words flashing across the screen: “Thor will return.” So the fourth Thor film is definitely not the last that we have seen of the Asgardian warrior. But Hemsworth’s Thor may have completed his arc. We might see Thor a few years into the future, having fulfilled his role as a good father by raising his adopted daughter Love (Gorr’s daughter).

The fourth installment of Thor also introduced Zeus, in addition to the Olympians and other pantheons from different cultures, leaving an opening for multiple directions for the story to take. The post-credit scene also reveals a petulant Zeus commanding his greatest fighter, his son Hercules, to take down Thor. Will Hercules be able to take out Thor? Will his end be his final humbling glory? Or will he get a more legendary exit?

Nevertheless, if that is how we see Hemsworth taking his bow from the MCU, he might end up reuniting with Jane and Heimdall in Valhalla at the end.