While Thor is believed to be a mighty god who can break any opponent foolish enough to challenge him, that preconception couldn’t be further from the truth as the God of Thunder’s final weapon confirms the one villain who can truly break him.
Throughout his Marvel Comics history, Thor Odinson has proven to be a true cosmic hero–a journey he began when his father, Odin, presented him with a single challenge: become worthy enough to wield Mjolnir. Mjolnir is a hammer that holds immense power as it was forged from Uru and enchanted by Odin himself. Per the enchantment, only those who the hammer deems worthy will be able to wield it and harness the power it offers, which is something that even Thor has to abide by. Eventually, after accomplishing a series of increasingly difficult tasks, Thor proved his worthiness and immediately set off to do his part to fight for the realms that Asgard has under its protection. In that effort, Thor becomes the official protector of Midgard, or Earth, and even teams up with some other heroes who also committed themselves to ensure the safety of the planet, the Avengers. While Thor’s commitment to the Earth, its people, and his fellow Avengers was initially a good thing, over time it became twisted and corrupted. Before long, Thor’s duties began to conflict with one another, and he slowly started to lose himself–and upon losing himself, Thor also lost Mjolnir, and it’s all thanks to one villain: Ultron.
In Avengers Vol. 5 #31 by Jonathan Hickman and Leinil Yu, the Avengers are caught in propelling time-skips that systematically whisk them away to increasingly further points in the future. The reason this is happening is the Avengers used the Infinity Gems to keep a number of worlds from colliding and decimating all reality, but in the fallout of that event, the Stones were all destroyed–all, except for the Time Gem. However, the power of the Time Gem was released and engulfed Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, which is how they found themselves in this unfortunate time-sliding predicament. In this issue, one of the futures the Avengers end up in is that of an Earth fully encomed in metal and totally controlled by machines–specifically, Ultron. In this future, none of the original Avengers are alive except for Thor, though it seemed as though he’d rather be dead.
Thor Became Unworthy of Mjolnir in His Misguided Commitment to Midgard
When the Thor of the past encounters this future version of himself (a little over four-hundred years in the future), he is utterly disgusted by what he is seeing. Not only does this Thor work alongside Ultron’s ‘Avenger-bots’, but Thor has also become unworthy of Mjolnir, instead carrying a large sword as his weapon. As the past-Avengers soon learn, Ultron took complete control of practically everything, including Asgard, as future Thor confirms that Ultron is now the All-Father–a position previously held by Odin. So, since Ultron essentially conquered the Marvel Universe, Thor had no choice but to fight by his side. Thor made a commitment not only to Asgard, but to Midgard as well, no matter who sat on the throne. Unfortunately, Mjolnir’s morals weren’t as malleable as Thor’s as there was no amount of justification that could cleanse Thor of the cosmic sins he commits every second he doesn’t try to do something to stop Ultron–therefore, the Thor of the future became unworthy.
Thor has vanquished countless villains in the name of heroism, and with every evildoer he defeated, he only continued to prove how worthy he was to wield the weapon that empowered and inspired him to keep fighting–and out of all of them, it is Ultron who finally breaks him, and the fact that Thor’s final weapon is a sword, and not Mjolnir, confirms this to be true.
