thorkizilla:

Thor (2011) + Thor: Ragnarok (2017):

Thor: There won’t be a kingdom to protect if you’re afraid to act! The Jotuns must learn to fear me, just as they once feared you!
Odin: That’s pride and vanity talking, not leadership. You’ve forgotten everything I taught you about a warrior’s patience.
Thor: While you wait, and be patient, the Nine Realms laugh at us. The old ways are done! You’d stand giving speeches while Asgard falls!
Odin: You are a vain, greedy, cruel boy!
Thor:  And you are an old man and a fool!
Odin: Yes, I was a fool to think you were ready. Thor Odinson, you have betrayed the express command of your king. Through your arrogance and stupidity, you have opened these peaceful realms and innocent lives to the horror and desolation of war! You are unworthy of these realms! You’re unworthy of your title! You are unworthy of the loved ones you have betrayed. I now take from you your power! In the name of my father and his father before, I, Odin Allfather, cast you out!

WHOEVER HOLDS THIS HAMMER, IF HE BE WORTHY, SHALL POSSESS THE HAMMER OF THOR.

Hela’s use of Mjolnir once upon a time lends a whole new context to what Thor’s arc over his movies + the Avengers movies already was–his story is one of an immensely powerful god who must either learn to wield it with care towards others or be lost to evil and violence and cruelty, not only himself but everyone else around him.  It lends an entirely new context to Odin’s reaction to Thor’s fight on Jotunheim and his words–words that must have been so much an echo of what Hela may have said once upon a time.

The realms must learn to fear her, just like her father.  That he only sits there now and is a fool not to bring the other Realms under the hell of Asgard.  And, just as he did with such a heavy heart, he had to cast her out, her violence and cruelty and vanity too much to bear.

Then again he must do the same with Thor.

Where Thor is different (and we do not know how many chances Odin gave Hela, though, she would not have wanted them or used them) is that he finds the strength to look around him when he’s pulled up short.  That he becomes worthy of the hammer, that he becomes the great man and great king that his people need him to be.

He rules without Mjolnir, because his power is not sourced to it, his power comes from the same place Hela’s does, it comes from within himself and his people, it’s on the same level as hears.  Thor is the redemption of Odin’s line, Thor is the inverse image of Hela and she of him.  Where her greed and cruelty only grew, his was erased and nobility grew in its place instead.

I love the ending of Thor: Ragnarok, that Thor may not want the throne, but it only makes him all the more suited to it.  That it’s the next step on the journey his story has taken over the course of these movies, that his people need him and he will sacrifice what needs to be, in order to lead them.  Not because he wants power or fame.  But because it’s right.  It’s finally right.

Thor doesn’t need Mjolnir to show that he is worthy in and of himself.  It was a beautiful weapon, it was more akin to a friend for all the years he had it with him. But it was still ultimately a weapon and Thor does not need it to remind himself to be a good man or a good ruler.  He just simply is.