Warning: contains spoilers for Thor #19!
In Avengers: Infinity War, the Mad Titan Thanos quickly cut a swath through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, grabbing all the Infinity Stones before using the Infinity Stones to murder half of all sentient life. However, a small mistake made by Thanos led to his undoing at the hands of Thor – in both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. But Thanos learns from his mistakes – and in Thor #19, both Thor and Odin witness his deadly revenge.
Midway through Avengers: Infinity War, Thor travels with Guardians of the Galaxy Drax and Groot to Nidavellir to obtain a powerful weapon to replace Thor’s destroyed hammer Mjolnir. Eitri the dwarf reveals that Thanos ordered him to create the Infinity Gauntlet…then killed all the dwarves working on the forge surrounding the dying star. But Thanos made a terrible mistake: he not only let Eitri live, but he left the mighty forge completely untouched. Thus, Eitri was able to form Stormbreaker, an axe that eventually took Thanos’ head at the beginning of Endgame.
In Thor #19, Thor’s hammer has gone missing – and since Mjolnir isn’t acting like it used to (Thor has difficulty lifting it but Loki of all people can do so with ease), anyone could have stolen the weapon. Both Odin and Thor travel to Nidavellir…but to their horror, find all the dwarves dead, the victims of a lightning-fast slaughter by an unknown assailant, and the forges destroyed. Thor examines the bodies and deduces they were killed by only one weapon: Mjolnir itself.
This is a terrifying prospect for Thor, mostly because one of Thor’s greatest fears is Thanos getting ahold of his weapon along with the Infinity Stones. This was not a worry in the past, since few people other than Thor could lift the hammer. But with recent events, Thor has no doubt considered the possibility that if Loki can lift Mjolnir, someone else can too – perhaps even someone as evil as Thanos. Unlike Thanos in the MCU, the comics version is quite thorough and made absolutely sure that Thor couldn’t get another weapon from the forge.
If Thanos does indeed hold Mjolnir, Thor faces one of his toughest opponents by far. Even without the Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos is incredibly powerful – but with Mjolnir, he can essentially rule whatever domain he wanted unopposed. By destroying the forge at Nidavellir and killing all the dwarves (instead of sparing one), Thanos in the comics has effectively corrected his mistakes from the MCU, and is now Thor’s deadliest (and smartest) new foe.
