We’re officially in the fourth phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the upcoming lineup is going to extend the comic book-based universe further than we ever imagined it would. Thor: Love and Thunder, the fourth installment in the Asgardian hero’s layered story, will take the franchise to new heights with the addition of another notable superhero: Batman.
Well, kind of. After a host of rumors swirled around the internet about the bad guy that Thor, Jane Porter, and Valkyrie would confront in the next film, Tessa Thompson confirmed that Christian Bale would be joining the cast of Love and Thunder as its lead villain.
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"Christian Bale is going to play our villain, which is going to be fantastic," Thompson told Entertainment Tonight. "I've read the script. I can't tell you much. Lots of exciting text messages exchanged between Natalie and I. We're going to have fun. Taika is writing [and] directing. Some familiar faces. Some new people coming into the mix."
No word yet on which big bad he will be portraying in the blockbuster, but the fact that Bale signed on to the cast is epic in itself. The 46-year-old famously played Bruce Wayne in three Batman films, taking on Heath Ledger’s Joker as well as Tom Hardy’s Bane from 2005 to 2012 (paving the way for both Ben Affleck and Robert Pattinson). It obviously isn’t Bale’s first rodeo where superhero films are concerned, but it is his first time playing a supervillain.
Also featured in the film are the Guardians of the Galaxy. Following the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, Thor has established quite the rapport with the space rangers, so much so that they’re going to play an important role in the god's next chapter. While promoting his movie Bloodshot, Vin Diesel (who plays Groot in the MCU) accidentally revealed that director James Gunn personally told him that the Guardians of the Galaxy would somehow be incorporated into Love and Thunder.
Both of these fun surprises — plus the fact that Natalie Portman's character Jane Porter will literally become Thor, and we might be seeing our first trans superhero — are part of director Taika Waititi's plan to make sure that the film is the wildest ride that Marvel fans have been on thus far.
"If you take Ragnarok, which I feel was a very outlandish and big, bombastic film, we're trying double down on everything we did with that," Waititi explained to ET in 2019. "And create something that is even more crazy and even more of a big adventure."
You got Batman to switch sides, sir — we're already onboard.