The following contains spoilers for Thor: Love and Thunder, in theaters now.
When the Marvel Cinematic Universe began in 2008, the movies took place in a world that was quite similar to reality. This was one of the things that made the project unique: the contrast between elevated comic book characters and a familiar, relatable world. However, as the franchise has continued, its setting has had to contend with not only how the world has changed in real life but the increasingly bizarre events of its own story. This is why every post-Endgame Marvel movie has had to ask how real people would react to the specter of Josh Brolin's Thanos and an event as cataclysmic as "The Blip."
Thor: Love and Thunder features a montage of scenes exploring the reign of Tessa Thompson's Valkyrie as King of New Asgard. Valkyrie attends the grand opening of "Infinity Conez," an ice cream shop complete with a model of Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet holding an ice cream cone. A punny continuity reference for fans becomes a seriously dark joke for the characters within the world of the movie but resonates with people's tendency to meet tragedy with comedy. The scene also continues a trend of MCU characters reacting playfully to what must surely have been the defining tragedy of their lives.
This is not the first time MCU characters have treated the Titan's reality-altering snap lightly. In Episode 1 of Disney+'s Hawkeye, Clint Barton beheld some bathroom graffiti reading, "Thanos was right." It reinforced the sentiment introduced in Falcon and the Winter Soldier that many who survived The Snap felt displaced by the return of those who had previously turned to dust.
Fans might expect Clint especially to be outraged by this sentiment; after all, Clint's grief after Thanos killed his family led him to betray his own values as the brutal vigilante Ronin. However, a later scene showed Clint sipping casually from a "Thanos was right" mug. The mug may have been created by people who genuinely admire Thanos, but Clint can't be the only one who appreciated it ironically. Considering how deeply Thanos' snap affected Clint and how he played such a key role in reversing it, perhaps he felt he had a right to be in on the joke.
In the first episode of Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan wrapped an animated online video covering the fateful battle in which the Avengers defeated Thanos' past self and his army. Among Kamala's paper craft figures of the Hulk, Ant-Man and her favorite Captain Marvel is an equally stylized caricature of Thanos, wearing a cartoonish crown that pokes fun at his lofty aspirations. Captain Marvel is then shown handily K.O.ing Thanos in a way that makes him resemble a comic book henchman more than a main villain.
The way Thanos' crown flies off his head upon being punched serves to mock the figure who caused so much misery in the MCU. However, even though Kamala mainly created the animation to celebrate Captain Marvel, Thanos' caricatured appearance implies she also had fun recreating the unusual-looking Titan. This shows how a creative kid like Kamala uses her imagination and sense of humor to stand up to the legacy of Thanos and his failed single-minded plan for the universe.
Like Clint, Love and Thunder's Asgardians were particularly affected by Thanos, as he slaughtered many of them even before the fateful snap in the opening scenes of Avengers: Infinity War. The scenes of tourists exploring New Asgard could be seen as bittersweet; its artificiality is greatly removed from the grandiose secret kingdom Asgard once was, but the actors, for example, savor the opportunity to share Asgardian history with the world every day. Infinity Conez could be read either way: as Asgardians laughing in the face of their failed tormentor or as a representation of how tourism has led them to crudely diminish what happened.
Infinity Conez is not the only way characters defang and mythologize Thanos in Love and Thunder. While kidnapped by Gorr the God Butcher, Heimdall's son Axl (Kieron L. Dyer) tells the other children the story of how Thor beheaded Thanos. Similarly, the whole movie is framed as Korg's own campfire story. In this way, the ice cream shop becomes a microcosm of a recurring theme in the movie about the resilience of a community as it finds stories, lessons and even humor in its most difficult challenges.
Even though exploring various characters' reactions to Thanos is something unique to the MCU, it also continues the series' tradition of making its characters relatable. Even though there are factions who truly regret The Snap's reversal, there is also a lot of dark, tongue-in-cheek support of Thanos that feels like the kind of sarcastic meme someone would laugh at in the face of their own real-life struggles.
To see how New Asgard moves on after Thanos' destruction, Thor: Love and Thunder is in theaters now.