Thor is often a troublesome character to write because there is the problem of building tension when your hero is a physical god. As Thor is a living god, he is both powerful and immortal making defeating him quite a hard task for any villain. One way to create tension in a Thor storyline is to give him a weakness.
These weaknesses can go from ones that exist for only a storyline to more permanent weaknesses. This article will examine ten weaknesses that Thor used to have or currently has. What these weaknesses share is that casual fans would be unfamiliar with them.
10 Feeling Unworthy
It is a well-known fact that Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, can only be wielded by individuals that the hammer finds worthy of wielding it. What is not as well known is that if Thor feels that he is no longer worthy to wield Mjolnir, he can no longer lift the hammer.
This feeling of unworthiness happened to Thor during the Orginal Sin crossover when Nick Fury revealed to Thor that he secretly agreed with the Gorr the God-Butcher's belief that gods were selfish and uncaring towards a mortal. This revelation caused Thor to start feeling unworthy of his godhood and thus unable to weld Mjolnir.
9 Warrior Madness
While Thor is well-known for being a short-tempered warrior, there is a point that Thor himself can be overwhelmed by his anger and enter a state of warrior madness. When Thor enters this state, he becomes stronger than he was before, but at the cost of his sanity.
This ability is a weakness as it easier for Thor to enter this state than to get out of it. There is also the problem that if Thor uses this ability too much, he could become permanently insane. Thor overusing his warrior madness lead to the crossover Blood and Thunder, where Thor was corrupted by a manifestation of his warrior madness threatening the universe and was only stopped by the combined effort of several major Cosmic heroes.
8 Life Bound to Mjolnir
Thor's battle with his grandfather Bor, who was manipulated by Loki, left Mjolnir with heavy damage. To repair Mjolnir, Thor worked with Doctor Strange to repair the hammer. The solution to repairing Mjolnir was to infuse it with some of Thor's life force.
While Thor's life force infusion repaired Mjolnir, it left him with new weakness. That weakness is that Thor's life was now bound to the Mjolnir. This binding of Thor and Mjolnir meant that was that if Mjolnir was damaged or destroyed, Thor would die.
7 Thorsleep
The conclusion of the recent crossover War of the Realms saw Thor succeeded Odin as the All-Father of Asgard. This allows Thor to access the Odin-Force, which is the cosmic and magical energy of Asgard. While this power has made Thor even more powerful, it has also given him a new weakness.
That weakness is that if he used too-much of the Odin-Force in a short amount of time, he will enter the state of Thorsleep. Thorsleep being a coma-like sleep where Thor is completely asleep and unaware of his surroundings until the Odin-Force within him replenished.
6 Could Not Stay Thor While Separated from Mjolnir
Thor during the Silver Age was very different from the Thor we knew today. One particular thing was that instead of being a god all the time, he would be the mortal Donald Blake and transform into Thor by lifting Mjolnir. A weakness that Thor had during the Silver Age was that if he was separated for Mojlnir for around a minute, he would transform back into Donald Blake.
This weakness made defeating Thor during the period less about overwhelming Thor through pure force, but by trying to separate Thor from his hammer. Thor would lose this weakness when Odin transferred the power of transformation to Beta Ray Bill's new hammer.
5 Bound To Galactus' Will
Thor has recently gained a weakness during Donny Cates' current run on Thor. In the run's first issue, Thor decides to become Galactus' new herald to take on the universe destroying Black Winter. While his herald status grants Thor the Power Cosmic, it grants him a new weakness.
As Galactus' current herald, Thor is bound to Galactus's will and that if Thor displeased Galactus, he could lose his powers. This is a problem as Thor and Galactus disagreed about his method of eating planets.
4 Beings Associated With Ragnarok
A weakness to many of the Asgardians is that they are bound to the prophecy of Ragnarok. Thor is no exception to this prophecy about his races' destruction. One way that Thor is bound to the prophecy is that beings associated with the destruction of Asgard can kill Thor a lot easier than Thor's other foes.
This leads to villains like Surtur and Jormungand having an easier time taking on Thor as their weapons can easily hurt Thor compared to other weapons. This can be seen in how Surtur's Twilight Sword does the amount of damage a regular sword would do to a mere mortal.
3 Determined To A Fault
While Thor's short temper has been well-documented, his determination is also a major weakness. Thor's determination is a weakness in that he keeps throwing himself at an adverse situation to the point of threatening his life.
This can be seen by Thor's efforts to lift Mjolnir after losing his worthiness, these many failed attempts drained Thor of his strength. Despite being weakened by his effort at lifting the hammer, Thor decides to stop a frost giant invasion of Midgard. This determination to fight after losing his hammer and exhaustive effort to wield it again, lead to him losing his arm in the fight.
2 Immortal Without Any Healing
A temporary weakness that Thor had that brought him to the point of death was the result of a curse placed on him by Hela. That curse being that Thor would be immortal without the ability to heal any of his wounds.
Initially, this curse leads Thor to wear magical armor to protect himself. Word of this curse would spread, however, leading to him being attacked by various foes wanting to take advantage of Thor's new weakness. These attacks would soon render Thor's body broken and after a fight with Jormungand, unable to use his physical body. Thor was only able to survive this curse by possessing the Destroyer Armor and attacking Hela's realm until she agreed to reverse the curse.
1 Can Be Magically Charmed
Like most Asgardians, Thor is vulnerable to particular types of magic. One type of magic of Thor finds himself particularly vulnerable to that magic meant to charm an opponent. This makes Thor vulnerable to foes like Enchantress and her younger sister Lorelei.
This weakness leads to many storylines where Thor was turned against Asgard and his fellow Avengers. An example of this type of storyline can be seen midway through Walter Simonsons' run on Thor when Thor is charmed by Lorelei to aid Loki in his plan to succeed Odin as All-father.