Taika Waititi Gets Real With Fans Who Want These MCU Characters To Hook Up In ‘Thor: Love And Thunder’

During San Diego Comic-Con in July, the return of Natalie Portman as Jane Foster in Thor: Love And Thunder eclipsed a quote from Tessa Thompson, who declared that Valkyrie’s “first order of business” will be that “[a]s new king [of Asgard], she needs to find her queen.” Plenty of hints have been dropped about Valkyrie’s sexual orientation already, and a deleted Ragnarok scene even revealed her bisexuality. Well, Thompson’s quote served as fodder for a whole legion of MCU fans to start ‘shipping the possibilities of who could be Valkyrie’s queen.

The lead contender in the fandom’s mind Captain Marvel, and both Brie Larson and Thompson endorsed the idea at a subsequent appearance at Chicago’s ACE Comic Con in Chicago. According to Comic Book, they were enthused. “We’re here to ship, ya’ll!” Larson declared. “We can dig into it, I’m just telling you we’re shipping.” And Thompson added, “Brie is my real-life queen, [and] If it becomes canon, that’s cool, too.” Well, Taika Waititi appears to be fully up to speed on the matter, but he’s telling everyone not to hold their breath on seeing this relationship in Love and Thunder. Here’s how he explained the situation to Wired:

When reminded that he could melt the internet by making this dream a reality, Waititi demurs. He acknowledges that he’s seen the chatter on Twitter but may not want it to be in his movie. “The thing is, I think it’s dangerous for people to say too much about what they want with Marvel, because then they will tend to go the other way,” he says. “You want to listen to the fans to a point. But also you don’t want to have a completely fan-made film because then it doesn’t feel like there’s any point. You want to have people surprised.”

Waititi makes a decent point, that fans shouldn’t expect to write a movie — that’s what the plentiful supply of fanfiction is for — and being pleasantly surprised is more satisfying, anyway. “Pleasantly surprised” is how everyone felt when realizing that Marvel Studios made a fan theory come true when Nick Fury really did lose his eye because of a cat/flerkin, and then Captain America paid tribute to “America’s Ass.” In other words, whether folks like to admit it or not (looking at you, Martin Scorsese), Marvel and Disney know what they’re doing, and Waititi’s in on the game, so patience is a virtue and all that, and Valkyrie will (probably) eventually get her (mystery) queen.