Thor: Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi recently dashed hopes that the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster will include multiverse-hopping shenanigans.
Waititi discussed the Thor sequel's lack of cross-dimensional plot points and characters in an interview with Total Film. "We’ve got nothing like that in this film," he said. "This is the singular-verse." This puts Thor: Love and Thunder at odds with other recent big-screen MCU outings like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness which revolve around the multiverse concept introduced in Disney+ series Loki.
Although Waititi was quick to rule out the multiverse, Thor: Love and Thunder will nevertheless feature at least one alternate version of the God of Thunder, in the form of Natalie Portman's Jane Foster/Mighty Thor. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige recently confirmed that this won't be the last Thor variant to appear in the MCU either. "There are these things called comic books that have a lot of stories in them. And that's where all of our stories come from... And if we look at the comics as our guide, there are plenty of other incarnations of Thor that we have yet to see," he said.
Portman herself recently revealed that Thor: Love and Thunder's scope is impressively sprawling, despite taking place in one universe containing only two Thors. The Oscar-winning actor confirmed that huge amounts of material were excised from the final version of the film, with entire worlds winding up on the cutting room floor. "The joy and the sorrow of a Taika Waititi project is that he creates so much brilliance and so much material that the movie could be like an infinite number of things," she said. "And it like inevitably means that incredible, hilarious, moving comedy and drama ends up not there. So, there's a lot. I mean, there's full planets that are not there anymore."
Waititi and star Chris Hemsworth discussed the original, 4-hour cut of Thor: Love and Thunder in a recent interview, which contained much of the deleted content Portman was referring to. Waititi explained that many of the scenes that he removed from the theatrical cut were taken out because they played well on set but didn't fit well within the movie itself. For his part, Hemsworth likened that initial cut to a Monty Python sketch and labeled it "Batshit crazy, wild."
Thor: Love and Thunder arrives in theaters on July 8.
Source: Total Film