2.3. Thor: Exile
We open in flashback. In Odin's Vault, the All-Father shows his sons one of the artefacts stored there; the Casket of Ancient Winters. He tells them a heavily edited version of how he defeated the Frost Giants during the Aesir-Jotun War.
In the present, Prince Thor enters the Valaskjalf Throne Room. The room is filled with dignitaries from around Asgard, interspersed with Vanir in their furs, slender Light Elves and blue-skinned Ice Elves, towering Red Dwarves, and their diminutive dark-haired brethren. Down the centre of the room runs a carpeted aisle, which is flanked by an Einherjar honour guard, leading to the dais where Odin and Frigga are sitting in state.
Thor, dressed in shining mail, with Mjøllnir at his hip, walks down the aisle and kneels before the throne.
Odin stands and strikes the ground with the butt of Gungnir, and the fanfare and cheering cease instantly. Into this reverent silence, he announces that today is the day of Thor’s coronation. In preparation for his eventually becoming All-Father, Thor is to be made King of Asgard, taking on the governing of Asgard, with Odin’s guidance.
Just as Odin is about to place the crown on Thor’s head, the alert is raised by the guards - three Frost Giants have infiltrated the palace and broken into the vault to reclaim the Casket of Ancient Winters.
The Destroyer, an enchanted suit of armour that acts as the guardian of the vault, kills them, but in light of the threat, the coronation is delayed until the situation can be resolved.
Thor is furious, insisting that the break-in constitutes an act of war by King Laufey of Jotunheim. He advocates for military retaliation, but Odin overrules him, insisting they need to avoid escalating the situation.
Thor gathers his closest confidants, Siff, Fandral, Hogun, Volstagg, and his sibling, Loki, to discuss the attack (and throw a tantrum about his cancelled coronation). Encouraged by Loki, Thor persuades his friends to accompany him to Jotunheim to strike back against Laufey.
With the sunset at their backs, they cross the rainbow bridge to the Himinbjörg, the gatehouse of the Nine Realms. Heimdall, the guardian of the Bifrost, agrees to send them to Jotunheim so that they can discover how three Jotuns had entered Asgard without his seeing them.
He transports them to the ruins that surround the Royal Palace of Jotunheim. They are greeted by Laufey and his troops, but, seeking to avoid war, Laufey offers them one chance to retreat and avoid bloodshed. However, Thor’s quick temper overcomes him, and he attacks.
During the battle, Loki finds that, while the touch of the Frost Giants burned his companions with the extreme cold, when they touched him, the frozen skin turned the same blue as the Frost Giant’s skin, before returning to its normal colour unharmed.
Seeing the battle is going badly for them, Thor and his companions retreat to the spot where the Bifrost had deposited them, but when they call for the Heimdall, there is no answer. They kill a gigantic Frost Troll awoken by Laufey, but more and more Frost Giants are gathering, having heard the battle.
Finally, the Bifrost activates, not to collect the warriors, but to deposit Odin, clad in full armour and mounted on his war-horse, Sleipnir.
Odin tries to negotiate with Laufey, arguing that Thor’s actions were those of a child, and should be treated as such, but Laufey will not forgive the insult. Left with no other choice, the All-Father channels the Odin-force, blasting Laufey away with his power, and summons the Bifrost, transporting the Asgardians back to the Himinbjörg.
There, Odin sends Siff and the Warriors Three away. Furious, Thor rages at his father, believing he is endangering the peace by showing mercy. Loki tries to calm their father, but Odin proclaims Thor Unworthy of his titles, his hammer, and of the Realm Eternal. In the name of Bor and Buri, he banishes Thor to Midgard.
Then, taking Mjøllnir in hand, he places on it an enchantment - “Whosoever wields this hammer, if they be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor” - and sends it through the Bifrost after his son.
In the New Mexico desert, physicist Jane Foster, with her mentor Erik Selvig and their intern, Darcy, are storm-chasing, trying to take readings from the strange, aurora-borealis-like lights in the sky.
They’re arguing about whether to go back, as the storm is getting closer and fiercer, when suddenly a man appears out of the storm, too suddenly for Jane to avoid hitting him.
As he falls, the storm dies. They all bundle out of the van to check on the man, and Jane sees a strange pattern has been etched into the sand where the man was standing.
Astonishingly, the man is conscious but appears to be insensate, yelling words she doesn’t understand, until Darcy decides she’s had enough and tases him, finally knocking him unconscious.
They load him into the back of their van and drive him back to Puente Antiguo, where they deliver him to the hospital.
Seeing how worried Jane is, Selvig dismisses Thor as a mentally ill drifter, trying to reassure her they’d done all they could, but that’s not what troubles Jane. She admits to Selvig that the mysterious grant which had funded their research had come from Tony Stark, and it had come with a condition she’d dismissed at the time as insanity. Before he handed over the money, he’d made her swear that if she ever ran over a handsome man in her car, she was to call Stark.
Selvig is as baffled by this as Jane, but advises her that unless she wants to return all the equipment the grant had paid for, she needs to abide by the terms. Obediently, she attempts to call Tony, but there’s no answer (because he’s busy starring in 2.1 Iron Man 2).
In the desert, close to where Thor landed, a man discovers a massive crater. Lying at the centre, completely unharmed, is Mjøllnir.
The physicists return to the lab to study the photographs they’d taken of the magnetic storm. Jane is elated, certain that she finally has proof of the existence of Einstein-Rosen Bridges because her photographs of the night sky above the storm show stars that should not exist.
Darcy reviews the photographs she’d taken and notices what appears to be a human figure in the very centre of the storm.
As Thor seems to be both the key to Jane’s funding, and an eyewitness to a possible wormhole, they return to the hospital to find him, which they do, albeit because Jane manages to run him over again as he’s escaping from the hospital.
Although it’s been only a few hours, a minor tourism industry has already grown up around Mjøllnir, with locals gathering to try their hand at lifting the hammer. This impromptu fair is broken up by S.H.I.E.L.D who cordon off the area and begin erecting a field base around the hammer.
Jane gives Thor some clothes to wear, and they take him out for breakfast. While they’re eating, some locals who’d been at the crater come in, and Thor overhears them discussing a ‘satellite’ that had crashed in the desert.
Thor offers Jane all the answers she seeks in exchange for her driving him to the crater, but Selvig has begun to connect Thor’s stories to the legends of the Norse gods, and convinces her not to go, believing Thor to be dangerously insane. Reluctantly, she says goodbye to him, and the physicists return to their laboratory.
On Asgard, Loki enters Odin’s vault and places his hands on the Casket of Eternal Winters. As touching the Frost Giants had done, touching it turns his skin blue, and the longer he stands there, the more the blue spreads, until not only is all his skin blue, but his eyes have turned the deep red of a Frost Giant’s as well.
Odin finds him there, and Loki confronts him. Odin is forced to admit the truth; that Loki is not his biological son, but the son of Laufey and Farbauti, exposed at birth because of his small size. Odin had found him among the ruins of one of the Frost Giant’s temples in the aftermath of the last battles of the Aesir-Jotun War and had taken the baby as his own. Loki, possessing the shape-shifting magic common among Frost Giants, had shaped himself to his new parents, disguising himself without even knowing it.
Odin tries to reassure Loki that he loves him, that although his reasons for adopting the child had been political, that no longer matters to him, but Loki is too overwhelmed with shock and grief to hear him. As Loki rages at him for the years of lies, Odin is overcome by age and strain and falls into the Forever Sleep.
Back on Earth, Jane, Erik, and Darcy return to their lab to find it being ransacked by SHIELD. Phil Coulson attempts to mollify Jane by offering her a cheque to cover the confiscated equipment, but she rejects it out of hand, pointing out that it’s not just equipment but her life’s work they’re taking. Coulson, unmoved, apologises for the inconvenience and leaves with her research.
Although Selvig warns her about how dangerous SHIELD can be, Jane leaves to try to reclaim her research. As she is leaving town, she finds Thor trying to purchase a horse, and offers him a lift.
Siff and the Warriors Three decide to petition Odin for Thor’s return, but when they enter the throne room, they find not the All-Father, but Loki. He explains that Odin has fallen into the Forever Sleep, and Frigga will not leave his side, meaning there is no one but Loki to take up the throne until Odin awakens, if he ever does.
They ask Loki to lift the banishment, but he says that his first act as king cannot be to undo the last decree the All-Father made and refuses them.
Thor breaks into the SHIELD base, promising Jane that he will retrieve her research once he has reclaimed his hammer. Realising he intends to fight his way in single-handed, Jane calls Selvig and tells him that if they don’t return, he should look for them at the crater.
Clint Barton, who had been summoned straight to New Mexico from the Stark Expo, watches as Thor fights his way through an army of SHIELD security, but Coulson tells him not to shoot - he wants to know what Thor’s going to do next.
Thor makes it to Mjøllnir but finds that the enchantment Odin has placed upon it has rendered him unable to lift it, as he remains unworthy.
Utterly defeated, Thor makes no move to defend himself when SHIELD cuff him and place him in a cell. While imprisoned there, Loki appears to him. He tells Thor that Odin is dead, that a truce with Jotunheim has been signed but is conditional on his banishment, and, most hurtful of all, that their mother has forbidden his return.
Selvig and Darcy create a fake ID for Thor using one left behind by one of Jane’s ex-boyfriends, and though he is fully aware it’s fake, Coulson decides to let them take Thor because he’s still interested in knowing what Thor will do next.
Selvig takes Thor out for a drink, intending to persuade him to leave town and keep away from Jane, but he finds once they start drinking and talking that he actually likes Thor, and instead they end up bonding.
King Loki travels the Jotunheim, and offers Laufey a deal - he will conceal them and a group of their warriors from Heimdall’s gaze, so that they can enter Asgard and kill Odin while he sleeps, making Loki the rightful king of Asgard. In exchange, Loki will return the Casket of Ancient Winters to its rightful owners. Laufey, realising Loki was the one who had brought the Frost Giants into the vault during Thor’s coronation, accepts the deal.
Late at night, Thor carries an extremely drunk Selvig back to Jane’s trailer. After putting them to bed, they stargaze, and Jane begins to make the connections between the legends of the Norse gods and the physics she studies, theorising that the Bifrost is an Einstein-Rosen bridge, harnessed to the Asgardians' control.
While they’re talking, Jane’s phone rings. Checking the number, she realises it’s Tony Stark, returning the missed call, and rejects it. She’s starting to suspect Thor might genuinely be an alien, but he’s also a nice guy, and she’s deeply suspicious of what a billionaire arms dealer might want with an alien.
Siff and the Warriors Three decide that even on the orders of their King, they cannot leave Thor in exile. They ride out to the Himinbjörg, where Heimdall, who suspects Loki of being the one to allow Frost Giants to pass unnoticed under Heimdall’s gaze, begins his proud tradition of committing treason whenever he feels like it by activating the Bifrost to send them to earth.
Seeing the light of the Bifrost, Loki guesses what has happened, and dispatches the Destroyer to kill Thor.
As Thor and Jane are making breakfast for Darcy and an extremely hungover Selvig, Jane gets another call from Tony, but again rejects it.
As Siff and the Warriors Three reunite with Thor and reveal the extent of Loki’s lies to him, the Destroyer arrives, cutting a swathe of fire and destruction through the town. Recognising that he is no use in mortal form, Thor sends his friends to battle the Destroyer, while he and the physicists work to get as many civilians out of harm’s way as they can.
However, even Asgard’s finest warriors are no match for the Destroyer, as it shakes off every attack they make.
Barton arrives and joins the battle, and then Tony Stark, concerned about the repeated missed calls, arrives, but they are no more able to make a dent than the Warriors had been.
Seeing there is no other choice, Thor asks his allies to focus on protecting the civilians while he faces the Destroyer alone. Thor, guessing Loki is the one controlling the armour, tries to appeal to Loki for mercy, but the Destroyer blasts Thor, sending him flying and apparently killing him.
However, by sacrificing himself, Thor has proved himself worthy once more, and Mjøllnir returns to his outstretched hand, returning him to full power. Raising the hammer, he summons a lightning storm, destroying the armour.
He pauses briefly before leaving, to thank Tony and Clint for their intervention. He then says an emotional goodbye to Jane, promising to return to her as soon as Asgard is safe.
On Asgard, Loki freezes Heimdall and opens the Bifrost, allowing Laufey and his guard through. After they have left for Valaskjalf, Heimdall hears Thor and the Warriors calling for aid. Summoning all his will, he breaks out of the ice, kills the Frost Giants left to guard him, and opens the bridge, returning Thor and the Warriors to Asgard.
Laufey and his men enter Odin’s chambers. Frigga draws her sword, killing Laufey’s guard, but Laufey knocks her away. Just as Laufey raises his knife, preparing to kill the All-Father, Loki uses Gungnir to kill his biological father.
Thor arrives to challenge him, but Loki blasts him away and makes haste to the Himinbjörg, where he prepares to use the power of the Bifrost to destroy Jotunheim. When Thor tries to stop him, Loki freezes the Bifrost controls and the siblings battle.
Thor pins Loki using his hammer, but discovers he cannot get close enough to the Himinbjörg to disable the controls. Instead, he takes the only option left to him - using Mjøllnir to shatter the rainbow bridge which anchors the magic of the Bifrost, destroying it and saving Jotunheim, and cutting off his only means of reuniting with Jane.
The Himinbjörg falls away into space, and Thor and Loki would follow it, but Odin arrives in the nick of time, catching them. Loki, realising he would never be worthy in his father’s eyes, chooses to let go, plunging into deep space.
In the post credits scene, Selvig arrives at the Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility to meet with Nick Fury. Fury shows him the Tesseract, and Loki watches from a reflection as Selvig accepts the position.
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