At the end of Avengers: Endgame, Thor passed rulership of the Asgardians on to Valkyrie and set off to have some fun adventures with his new buddy Rabbit, a.k.a. Rocket Racoon, and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Chris Hemsworth will be back for the next Thor movie, but not necessarily in the title role. Revealed at Marvel’s San Diego Comic-Con panel, Thor: Love and Thunder will see Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster taking on the mantle and wielding the unstoppable flying hammer Mjolnir.

Expected to release November 5, 2021, the film is based on Jason Aaron’s The Mighty Thor run, where Jane is chosen to wield Mjolnir after Thor becomes unworthy. Jane getting the weapon might require some time travel shenanigans since it was destroyed in Thor: Ragnarok, but Thor borrowed a version from the past in Endgame to pass it off to Captain America so there’s certainly precedent. The real question is who this new Thor will be using Mjolnir against. Here are our top picks.

Dario Agger

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Image via Marvel Comics

Introduced by Aaron in his Thor: God of Thunder run, Dario is effectively a Captain Planet villain. As CEO of Roxxon Energy Corporation, his goal is to amass as much money and power as possible through schemes that have included genetically engineering super-hungry bears to devastate ecosystems so he can sell food and polluting water so he can make money off of ice mined on Europa. That’s pretty cartoonish, but what makes Dario really scary is that his army of lawyers and lobbyists makes it very difficult for Thor to deal with him without being legally the bad guy. Dario also sold his soul to a dark god as a child after his parents were killed, gaining the ability to turn into an ultra-strong minotaur that can go toe to toe physically with the god of thunder. That means he can spend most of the movie sparring with Jane in human form and still provide a satisfying climactic battle.

Roxxon was the bad guy of season one of Hulu’s Cloak & Dagger, but the evil megacorp hasn’t been used in the MCU proper. During Endgame, Captain America mentions that there was less pollution following Thanos’ snap and Roxxon could undo that progress in the name of producing enough resources to support the half of the population that Tony Stark returned. It’s the sort of conflict that Jane would be better at navigating than Thor and would allow the writers to explore some topical issues about climate change and corporate influence. It’s also a conflict that the Asgardians would have to deal with since they’re now stuck on Earth with the rest of us. Dario was one of the primary villains of The Mighty Thor, teaming up with the Dark Elf leader Malekith to exploit the resources of all the Nine Realms. Malekith was killed in Thor: The Dark World, so he’s unlikely to make an appearance in Love and Thunder, but one of Dario’s other allies could.

Loki

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Image via Marvel Comics

The god of mischief has been in every Thor movie and there’s no reason to stop using him now. He shouldn’t be the primary villain, but would be perfect as a supporting antagonist. In Endgame, the team's time travel antics resulted in a younger version of Loki, who hasn’t gone through the redemptive arc and brotherly bonding, escaping arrest. So he’s likely to be up to some version of his old tricks, made even stronger by having the Tesseract. He’s also getting his own Disney+ show in spring 2021, so an appearance in Love and Thunder would help bridge the gap between the show and the MCU.

There’s just no way Loki wouldn’t want to both make fun of Thor for being unworthy and want to test the mettle of the new wielder of the hammer that’s given him so much trouble over the years. The shapeshifting trickster has sometimes taken on female form in the comics, which has made the character something of a genderfluid icon. Having a female Thor would provide a great excuse to explore this aspect of the character. It could also allow Marvel to use Loki if actor Tom Hiddleston’s too busy with his show to be in much of Love and Thunder. Of course, Loki isn’t the only iconic female Thor villain that could make an appearance.

Enchantress

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Image via Marvel Comics

Not to be confused with DC’s Enchantress, who served as the main villain for Suicide Squad, Marvel’s Enchantress is Amora, an Asgardian with a variety of mystical abilities including mind control. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. introduced her sister, Lorelai, who used her similar powers to wreak havoc on Earth when she escaped from Asgard during the prison break in The Dark World. The fact that the show didn’t use Amora herself makes it clear that the character was being reserved for bigger things.

Enchantress is one of Thor’s greatest enemies, using her powers to seduce him, which has led to him abandoning his duties. This could be the reason why someone else needs to take on the mantle of Thor and provide a particularly tangled conflict for Jane as Thor’s ex-girlfriend. It would be especially easy for Amora her to exert influence over Thor and the other Asgardians now that they’re all living on Earth.

Her mind control powers might seem too similar to what Loki was doing with the scepter in The Avengers, so the writers could also take a more subtle approach by having Amora serve as a sort of Asgardian demagogue, questioning the leadership of Thor and Valkyrie and gathering allies who might feel more than a little upset that they’ve gone from living in magical splendor to fishing in Norway. Surely not all of the godlike beings are satisfied to spend their immortality wearing cable-knit sweaters.

In the comics, Jane’s Thor comes into huge conflict with Odin, who views her as a usurper and even send the Destroyer to try to kill her and take back Mjolnir. With Odin dead and Valkyrie much less likely to have such a negative view of a new Thor, Amora could serve the same role of rallying Asgardians against Jane and forcing her to fight people she’d rather be helping. Enchantress is often assisted by Skurge, but he took that role for Hela in Ragnarok and then died. Still, there are other Thor villains she could recruit.

The Wrecking Crew

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Image via Marvel Comics

This is definitely one of the weird possibilities, but Marvel has shown an uncanny ability to make great use out of extremely lame villains (like the Vulture) with some significant changes. The Wrecking Crew is a team of construction-themed Thor villains led by Wrecker, a robber and demolitionist who wound up with an unbreakable crowbar and a bunch of other powers that were meant for Loki due to a case of mistaken identity. Let’s just imagine that in Love in Thunder his power instead comes from finding or stealing an Asgardian artifact and sharing some of it with his similarly stupidly named friends: Piledriver, Bulldozer, and Thunderball.

These guys mostly serve as a threat for Thor when he’s been powered down in some way like in the Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes episode where they attack after Thor, Iron Man and Captain America are stripped of their powers due to a scheme involving Enchantress and Loki. With Thor being unworthy and Jane learning how to use her new abilities, they could provide a fun early conflict that would be a nice nod to comic book fans without hinging a major blockbuster on a crowbar vs. giant hammer fight.