The following contains spoilers for The Mighty Thor at the Gates of Valhalla written by Jason Aaron, drawn by Jen Bartel and Ramón Pérez, and colors by Matthew Wilson.
The Mighty Thor is dead. After wielding the power of Mjolnir for years, Jane Foster's thunderous persona met a heroic end while Jane was allowed to live and recover from her cancer. But while Jane defeated many enemies of the Goddess of Thunder, there's one she wasn't quite able to put down, and that's the Dark Elf Malekith, who's been waging war across the Ten Realms since she first grabbed the hammer.
Mighty Thor at the Gates of Valhalla sets the stage for the war to begin in earnest, through two stories that complement one another. The first tale, “The Tomorrow Girls,” is a time traveling journey involving the future grandchildren of King Thor. In actuality, we've seen Frigg, Ellisiv, and Atli before, back when Thor had to fight the God Butcher Gorr and accidentally met his future self and incoming descendants. The trio of thunder goddesses, using time diamonds stolen from their sleeping grandfather, wish to be taken back to the "Golden Age of Thor," but since the name of "Thor" has typically meant the Odinson, they accidentally wind up billions of years in the past... and get into a fight with some trolls.
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Hopping through time, the girls stumble across various moments of their grandfather's youth, from one of his many failed attempts to pick up Mjolnir to the Thor of the 26th Century--they briefly make eye contact with him, much to his confusion--and even to Odin's time as a prehistoric Avenger, and we all know how that will turn out. Their time hopping even takes them to a moment that we haven't seen yet: an older King Thor decked out in silver armor with Mjolnir and fighting Loki, who is covered in all black and using an unidentified power. It's the future of the granddaughters, but before they can help their grandfather, they're whisked away to present day New York. And it's there where they meet the Thor they've been looking for all along: Jane Foster.
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As you might expect, Thor's granddaughters are all big fans of Jane's time as the Goddess of Thunder; in fact they learned a lot about how to be Goddesses by studying her exploits. Though they aren't able to divulge her future -- save for a hint that she'll have her powers again and will punch Odin through three planets during a fight -- they give her the opportunity to feel like a hero one last time before she officially goes in for treatment. Upon their return home, the story shifts to something much more darker and ominous for not just Jane, but all of mankind.
If the first story serves as a tidy and true closer to Jane's journey, the second story, “The Lord of the Realms," shows the trouble that's to come for the Odinson. Switching perspectives over to Malekith, we watch as he hypes up the dark faeries of Svartelheim for their upcoming conquest. Similar to Loki, Malekith's true power lies in his words and personality; with the right amount of bravado and swagger, he's able to convince a downtrodden family to take pride in the fact that their son had to be killed by fellow Dark Elves in the heat of battle and use that pride to cannibalize their neighbors. Using the Black Bifrost, the Dark Elf continues war in the Dwarf realm of Nidavellir, kills a baby Giant in Jotunheim, and gets Roxxon CEO Dario Agger to send a platoon of mercenaries to wipe out the Old Gods of Vanaheim.
The reason for Malekith's actions is soon laid bare: he struck a deal with the Angels of Heven to wipe out their enemies in exchange for their powerful troops. Not only has he been waging war, he was present to witness Jane sacrifice her life to end the Mangog on the remains of Asgardia, he knows that there's no Thor to protect the Earth. "These mortals like to think they're the center of all the Realms?" he muses to himself. "Then so be it. I will bring the Realms to them!" The final page concludes with the promise that the War of the Ten Realms will be waged on Earth.
Between the two of them, "The Tomorrow Girls" carries more substance. Jane's past and present have been so fraught with chaos, it's easy to forget that for the most part she didn't really have a lot of Asgardians in her corner. It's touching to see the gods come back around to her and choose to immortalize her through page, and even more so that the Odinson would pass her story down to his granddaughters. For so long, the Odinson's been a jerk to Jane, and this shows that he will really follow through and do what he can to honor her and her actions. More importantly, it provides more solid hints that Jane's time as a hero isn't completely over.
In the Asgard of their time, the granddaughters discuss how they could still feel the Thunder brewing inside of her and lament that they couldn't give any details on her fate. She has a part to play in the War of Ten Realms, and one imagines that it'll mark the return of her powerful alter ego. With the promise of the War beginning in 2019, a year or so of time would be long enough for Jane to go through her treatments and then discover that she's not quite done with godhood as she thought. The War of the Ten Realms is bringing plenty of trouble to Earth's doorstep, and it only makes sense for Thor to have some backup to bring an end to it all.