One of the few things MCU fans might not know about Thor is that, in the comics at least, he had a secret identity.
Banished from Asgard in much the same way he was in Kenneth Branagh's original Thor flick, the Odinson's consciousness is transported into the body of Donald Blake, a medical student preparing to embark on a trip to Norway, of all places.
Almost by coincidence, Blake stumbles upon Mjolnir (projected as a walking stick) and hits it against a rock, transforming him into the Thor we all know and love. It was a gimmick Marvel followed for a while in the comics (a whole #159 issues in fact), until it was later retconned that Blake had always been Thor and that Odin, being the mischievous All-Father that he is, had made it so that he'd merely forgotten his Asgardian origins.
They opted to avoid this origin onscreen, and while the Thor films haven't always stood out as being the best in the MCU, you can't knock them for ignoring this particular part of the character's story.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
