Warning: Contains spoilers for Avengers #7!
Thor is one of the mightiest Avengers ever among the team’s ranks, and one of the most powerful beings alive in the Marvel Universe. Among his long list of incredible abilities is one gift he isn’t keen to have, however. As long as the Asgardian Avenger has been alive, he has always known how reality ends, and that he will be there to die along with it.
Avengers #7 – by Jed McKay, Carlos Villa, and Federico Blee – finds many of the Avengers trapped in simulations showing them their own demises, along with the end of everything they’ve known. In addition to an exhilerating and tense situation for the team to fight their way out of, this provides an apt moment for some insight into the team’s current roster.
The heroes have no idea they’re experiencing a terrible dream, and in their desperation to avenge their world, they reveal critical things about themselves. For Thor, that means facing the Anti-All with full awareness that he won’t survive – and neither will anything else.
Thor’s Knowledge Of His Own Ending Is A Curse
The God of Thunder is no stranger to the end times. He’s dealt with Ragnarok, the mythological end of Asgard realized, in addition to countless threats against the cosmos, Asgard, and Earth. Yet Avengers #7 reveals that he has always known there would eventually be a threat so large that it consumed him, and that he would still be there to fight and fall at the end. The knowledge and tactics the Avengers use in their nightmares reflect what they’re capable of in the real world, which means Thor really does carry that awareness with him at all times, and it is a heavy burden on his shoulders.
His knowledge that the world will end sets him apart from the other Avengers, and it is something that Thor himself has attempted to escape. Although he’s had long centuries to accept what he knows, it never happened. He entered every battle with a determination to see the other side of it and even made the first strike against the Anti-All. He puts as much force and fury into that battle as he would in any other (perhaps even more). It isn’t enough, and he’s both the first to attack and fail, as there was no hope of beating the nightmare.
Not Even The Avengers Can Escape The End
When the team breaks free of the dream they’re trapped in, that won’t change anything for Thor. He’ll rise with the same knowledge he’s always carried. One day, none of them will wake again. There will come a conflict when neither the Avengers nor any other hero can save the world. Thor knows that he will see “the end of this reality” – and it could come at the hands of the real Anti-All. Even if the destruction of reality is certain, it doesn’t slow him down. When the end comes, Thor will still fight alongside the Avengers to try to stop the inevitable.
Check out Avengers #7, available now from Marvel Comics!
