Editor's Note: The following contains Thor: Love and Thunder spoilers.Thor: Love and Thunder is here and the second Chris Hemsworth and Taika Waititi team-up is well worth the wait. A fun family adventure is made all the more necessary by the inclusion of Gorr's daughter, Love. But you may have finished watching the movie wanting to know who is playing the new sidekick to our beloved Thor. And the answer? Hemsworth's own daughter! In the context of the film, Gorr's daughter, Love, dies at the beginning of the movie. Her death launches Gorr on his quest to kill the gods and get his revenge on them for abandoning his people when they needed help most.
What Happened to Gorr's Daughter?
Her death is the main catalyst for him becoming Gorr the God Butcher. Played by Christian Bale, we only get to see Gorr interact with his daughter as the two are struggling to find water and food in the desert. We see Gorr praying to the gods to help them and to bring them food and sustenance for just his daughter, not himself. She dies, and after he buries her, he discovers a sanctuary where the god he spent his life worshipping is lounging after having killed a person who tried to kill him with the Necrosword. Overwhelmed with a sense of vengeance, Gorr declares that all gods must die, takes the Necrosword, and chops off the god's head.
In the comics, Gorr suffers not only the loss of one child, but of his mother, father, and then his wife and son. He is not the last of his kind, but the change in the film offers a more satisfying conclusion when Love returns at the end of the movie. She represents Gorr's humanity and the part of him that has not been eroded away from the corruption of the Necrosword.
Who Plays Love?
Gorr's daughter is played by India Rose Hemsworth, the daughter of Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, and actress Elsa Pataky. Hemsworth has talked about how his children are in the movie, saying "...Taika had his children in there. Christian Bale had his. Natalie had...her kids as well. That's my daughter...as well. She plays the character of Love..." Hemsworth's sons play Thor as we see a montage of him aging through the years. Waititi's daughters are featured as the Asgardian children who get kidnapped by Gorr. In fact, Waititi explained in a Marvel interview that having kids in this chapter of Thor's story was in the cards for the project from the very beginning. He recalled of the development process, “trying to figure out what does the villain want and why do we care about villains anymore? What's a new way of doing a villain? The idea that he takes the kids came about when thinking like, what's a thing that we really want audiences to worry? Because no one cares anymore about someone who's going to blow up the universe, you know?” But of all the kids involved, Love plays the most important role in the future for Thor and where we can expect him to go next.
How Does Love Return From the Dead?
While it seems as if Love is gone after the opening scene, we get to see her again when Thor uses what he knows of Gorr to get him to make a different wish when he reaches his goal. Once he reaches Eternity, as the first person to get there, Gorr gets one wish and Thor surmises that Gorr's wish would be the death of the gods like he stated all those years ago. But, when Thor finishes reasoning with Gorr, he points out that Gorr could wish for his daughter to have another life. Quickly, Gorr tells him that she'll be alone because he's dying after the use of the Necrosword has poisoned him. Jane Foster (played once again by the amazing Natalie Portman) tells him that she won't be alone, hinting that Thor will take care of Love.
This is made all the cuter by the fact that it is Hemsworth's own daughter who is playing her. At the end of the film, Thor and Love are now living together, and she refers to him as Uncle Thor. Through raising Love, Thor is able to find purpose in his life - a life riddled with so much loss. It's a delight to see Hemsworth with his daughter, making an already heartwarming scene that more meaningful as he hands Love a hammer and the two go off to fight an alien horde somewhere on another planet after enjoying their flapcakes.
Thor: Love and Thunder is now streaming on Disney+.