Thor Does The Impossible In War Of The Realms #6
Marvel's latest event just reached a thunderous conclusion, but what exactly went down?
After years of build-up, Marvel's War of the Realms is finally at an end. Jason Aaron, Russell Dauterman and Matt Wilson have been working on Thor for around half a decade now, and the pay-off just arrived. With that amount of build-up you can probably imagine the gravity of the conclusion on hand, and it's a biggy.
The War of the Realms came to Earth a few months back, and so far the fight has been stacked heavily against Midgard's favour. Malekith had procured the symbiote, captured Odin and Freyja, and Laufey and the rest of his cabal had Earth within their grasp. All out of luck and quite literally all out of time, Thor travels to the World Tree with Daredevil - the God Without Fear - to devise a solution.
Old myth had it that Odin once pinned himself to Yggdrasil to gain knowledge which he sought, which is also where he lost his eye. Thor does just that, sacrificing both his eye and Mjolnir to uncover a way to defeat Malekith. Meanwhile All-Mother Jane Foster, the Mighty Thor of a few years back, reforges the War Thor's Hammer and once again becomes the Goddess of Thunder. With the Odinson realising that he has to unite Thors past and present to put an end to the conflict, he recruits the King Thor version of himself from the future and his Viking self from history to fight together. All four then head to Stone Henge to free Odin and Freyja, kill Malekith, and end the war once and for all.
Also, Daredevil goes up against Laufey - King of the Frost Giants - all by himself, so it has that going for it too.
At some point in the battle Malekith steals Thor's hammer and imbues it with the symbiote, turning it onto the Black Hammer of the Accursed. Things start to seem hopeless, and then Thor reveals that he's reforged Mjolnir in the sun, several years after Jane had launched it there along with the Mangog.
Thor and his allies then overpower Malekith, who then gets torn to shreds by his own dogs. Loki emerges from the stomach of Laufey with Heimdall's sword (that Daredevil threw), the last remnants of the War Thor's hammer attach themselves to Jane (setting her up to be Valkyrie) and then - in a moment seemingly unbecoming of the All-Father - Odin decrees his son Thor should replace him in the role.
You won't find a conclusion more epic than this, but it's not over yet. Aaron still has King Thor to come which will see him conclude his run on the character later this year. The writer will also collaborate with Al Ewing on the new Valkyrie comic, so fret not if you thought War of the Realms would be the last we see of the writer in Asgard.
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