Does New Avengers: Infinity War Footage Confirm A Huge Theory About Hela?

Is Thor actually going to lose Ragnarok?

By Simon Gallagher / July 18, 2017

Marvel Studios

This weekend saw the debut of the first Avengers: Infinity War footage at Disney's annual D23 convention, with an inevitable tidal wave of hype following it and suggestions that the studio have "done it" and succeeded in making the epic everything fans want. Quite how that was sold on a few minutes of montage footage remains to be seen, but it's all terribly exciting.

There was also a surprising amount of detail in there that can be extrapolated out to offer a shape of some pretty key scenes, as well as some more vague hints that could change the entire MCU. We know Spider-Man will be badly injured, that Vision will be apparently captured, that Thanos throws an actual planet/moon at the Avengers and Guardians Of The Galaxy and that Black Widow has a new blonde haircut. Not all of it was entirely revelatory...

One of the most interesting things about the entire thing, though, was the way the footage opened, with Thor unconscious and floating through space and bumping into the Guardians Of The Galaxy. Like, literally bumping into their ship. He's apparently wearing his gladiator costume from Thor: Ragnarok and is badly injured, which should set off all sorts of alarms about the end of Ragnarok, which we know immediately sets up Infinity War.

So, the key thing to draw from that is that Thor does not win at the end of Ragnarok. Even though he clearly escapes the Grandmaster, he doesn't get far enough to even change his outfit and since he's not cozily sitting in the Asgardian throne room, something pretty bad must have gone down.

There are a number of possibilities here, obviously. Thor could beat Hela and apparently "die" of his injuries, at which point he's left to float away peacefully (that doesn't really fit the Asgardian model for warrior death). Or with Infinity War jumping off Ragnarok directly, Thanos could show up after Thor has beaten Hela and destroy Asgard entirely to take the Tesseract? That would make a lot of sense, if Loki wasn't shown in the footage with the Tesseract on Earth.

Could it be that Hela triumphs when Thor returns from his prison and stays on Asgard's throne? It's almost the only possibility, and intriguingly, it would set up a meeting between her and Thanos, when he attempts to recover the Tesseract. Given that she's shown her immense powers in conquering Asgard and ousting Thor, you'd have to assume that Thanos would be impressed.

Could he be impressed enough to court her affections? You know, as he did with Death in the Infinity Gauntlet comics arc... What with Hela being the Goddess Of Death and the unlikeliness of Marvel introducing an actual personified Death to the MCU, it fits that she'd take on that role (just as she has recently in the comics), and that Thanos would ultimately use the Gauntlet to try and impress her.

And now that we know something of the way Thor: Ragnarok will end, it does look far more likely that this is possible.

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