As if Natalie Portman as the new Thor wasn’t enough, Marvel has announced another piece of glorious news. Thor: Love and Thunder will feature the MCU’s first LGBTQ superhero: Valkyrie.
Tessa Thompson made the announcement herself during San Diego Comic-Con. “First of all, as new king, she needs a new queen,” she said, to thunderous squeals from the audience (god, we wish we were there). The news was later confirmed by Kevin Feige, who said Valkyrie will definitely have a queer storyline.
“The answer is yes,” he told io9. “How that impacts the story remains to be seen with that level of representation you’ll see across our films, not in just Thor 4.”
Previous attempts to represent Valkyrie’s bisexuality have been less than satisfactory, to say the least. Although Thompson has stated that Valkyrie is bi and Taika Waititi shot a scene in Thor: Ragnarok that would have had a woman coming out of her bedroom, according to io9, the scene was cut for being a “distraction.” (Big ugh.)
Still, it looks like Marvel knows what it did wrong and is taking some small steps to rectify its past screw-ups with queer representation. Until Thor: Love and Thunder comes out, we’ll keep our fingers crossed.
