As I said last time, the next Thor
movie is subtitled “Love and Thunder” and they’ve already confirmed that
Jane Foster’s Thor form will play a large role. While the story is pretty much
all question marks at the moment, there is speculation as to whom the villain
of the story will be. Some have thought the Thors might face off against Jormungandr,
Loki’s colossal snake of a son. Others have thought either Ragnarok, an evil
robot clone of Thor, Gorr the God Butcher, or Ares the Greek God of War. Yes,
he is also a Marvel character. Or even the B-list team of Asgardian impowered
thugs, the Wrecking Crew. But personally, with a word like “Love” in the title,
I can think of only one villain of Thor’s that 100% should appear as she’s got a
variation of Love in her name, Amora the Enchantress. Let’s get to it.
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| Don't let the smile fool you, she's a viper. |
Amora’s origins are largely unknown.
She is an Asgardian by birth and has a sister named Lorelei who she is at odds
with. But other than that, not much is known about her until she hit her teens.
At that time, she ran away to the realm of the Nornheim. It’s a smaller,
independent nation that exists on the same landmass as Asgard proper. There, she
trained under Queen Karnilla, whom had mystic power to rival those of Odin.
Amora was an eager student and learn much in a relatively short time, but was
expelled from Karnilla’s teaching for being too undisciplined with the skills she’d
learned. Unfortunately, Amora was undeterred. She sought out pretty much all practitioners
of magic she could find on Asgard and typically seduced them into giving her
the training and power she needed. Her biggest accomplishments before the
common era was to form an alliance with Brunnhilde, aka Valkyrie, and then capture
the winged warrior in a cursed crystal when Valkyrie realized she was being
used, and seducing Skurge the Executioner a half Giant half Asgardian warrior.
Brunnhilde remained imprisoned until sometime after Thor started hanging out on
Earth again, and Skurge remained her loyal minion for centuries.
At some point in history, she met
and became obsessed with winning, or maybe more accurately taking, the heart of
Thor Odinson. Thor spurned her advances since she’s a crazy person, but that
didn’t seem to deter her. When Thor took up the human identity of Donald Blake,
she tried again, was spurned, so she ordered Skurge to kill Jane Foster. Thor
saved Jane, defeated the gruesome twosome and saw them tried on Asgard. But
since Odin’s favor form of punishment is Banishment, he just sent them right
back to Earth. I feel like no problem was actually solved with that sentence.
Over the next few years, Amora allied herself with the various villainous teams
that popped up to fight the Avengers, when she wasn’t hunting Thor on her own.
She was a founding member of Baron Zemo’s Master’s of Evil, and worked for the
Mandarin on several occasions. Some of her jobs were particularly petty, like
the time she agreed to disrupt the wedding of Reed Richards and Susan Storm for
Doctor Doom. Like, how low can one sink, Amora?
After years of doing his best to
serve her in the hopes of truly winning her heart, Skurge broke things off with
Amora and helped Thor on a mission to the realm of Hel in a bid to free some
captured souls from Hela’s realm. He sacrificed himself so that Thor and their
companions could escape. Much to everyone’s surprise, herself included, Amora
was stunned by Skurge’s death and seems to be still grieving his loss. On more
than one occasions she’s empowered a new lackey to act as her muscle, and they
have a tendency to resemble Skurge pretty obviously. She even outfits them in
his armor. The partnerships never last long, though, as apparently Skurge was
the only one that she could keep leashed for any length of time.
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| Yes, she is in fact sitting on a Throne of magical creatures with a collared Hulk at her feet. Sums up her ambitions nicely. |
Amora died like nearly all
Asgardian’s during the final iteration of Ragnarok. Thor had found a way to end
the cycle of death and rebirth that the Norse Gods had been locked in for time immemorial.
Thor was revived, however, and set about rebuilding Asgard. He restored Asgard
City proper as a floating island in central Oklahoma, and then went about
restoring his fallen kinsmen. The Asgard had been bonded to and were left
sleeping within the souls of various mortals after the Twilight of the Gods. He’d
intended to only awaken the most valiant of Asgardians, like Heimdall and the Warriors
Three, but Loki, shockingly, intervened. It seemed that while he was also bound
in a human body, he was more conscious then any other Asgard. He tricked his
brother into awakening all sleeping Asgardians, including Amora. She’s since
resumed trying to capture Thor’s interest and whatever part of the universe catches
her eye.
Amora the Enchantress has the
standard Asgard package. She’s incredibly strong, fast, dexterous and durable. She’s
also incredibly long lived, appearing to be only about thirty or so but her
actual years lived can probably be counted in millennia. Amora is an incredibly
powerful sorcerer, on par with other god-like magic users like Loki and the Sorcerer
Supreme. Her forte is mind control and enchantment, but she’s also skilled at
transmutation, regeneration, energy projection, teleportation, levitation,
shapeshifting and illusion. While she prefers to have a man on staff to do the
gruesome work, she’s not above dirtying her own hands if you catch her on a bad
day. She’s also incredibly intelligent and skilled at manipulating others even
without her magic.
The Enchantress has only been used
a handful of times outside the comics. Probably due to Thor only being used a
handful of times as well, at least until the MCU began. Interestingly, for me
anyway, Amora is like the Warriors Three, in that she is not directly inspired
by any known Norse Goddess. That being said, a LOT of Norse Mythology was never
recorded and has been lost since that craze of Christianity started. I wouldn’t
be shocked if there was a lost story or two about a powerful goddess trying to
woo the thundered but being spurned by him. It just sounds like the kind of thing
mythological Thor and comic Thor have in common.
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| Think Skurge ever complains that Amora never takes him anywhere nice? |
She was a major antagonist in The
Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. She was the right-hand woman of Loki,
helping him break free of the Isle of Silence in the first few episodes, and
then later helping Baron Zemo create the Masters of Evil after it was clear
that Loki’s initial plan of just freeing a bunch of bad guys wouldn’t cut it as
a distraction for the Avengers. She also used her magics to trick Hulk into
going on a rampage and then violently leave the Avengers, which inadvertently lead
to the group discovering Captain America. Unintended consequences, am I right? She
repeatedly tried to seduce and lure Thor away, much to the annoyance of Skurge
I’m sure, but was rebuffed each time. She even saved him for a blast from Ultron,
and tried to enslave him but he broke free. In the first season finale she
tried to double cross Zemo, but was betrayed herself. She’d have been enslaved
by Zemo if Loki hadn’t intervened. In season 2, she and Skurge went on a
rampage trying to get vengeance against the Masters of Evil. She finds creative
punishments for the ones she catches. Her threat causes Zemo and his surviving
team to seek aid from the Avengers. She still almost get’s Zemo, as the Skrull
posing as Captain America had no intention of helping Zemo, but the destruction
of the last Norn Stone blasted her to kingdom come. Or more accurately to Muspelhiem,
where she’s forcibly turned into an agent of Surtur, the king of the Fire
Giants. She tries to get Loki to join up too, but he bumbles a plan to destroy
Thor, Iron Man and Captain America, and is left to rot. This story was never
concluded, so we have no idea if she’d have survived Ragnarok this go around or
not.
She was one of the lieutenants of
Doctor Doom’s iteration of the Masters of Evil in the first Marvel: Ultimate
Alliance Game. She seemed to work directly for Loki and Doom, the groups
commanders. She’s defeated alongside Skurge in Asgard about 2/3rds
through the game.
She hasn’t appeared in the MCU as
of yet, but as I said at the end of the last post and the start of this one, there’s
some hope she may appear in the next Thor film in some capacity. But we can
only wait and see.
Amora the Enchantress is a pretty
standard villain. She’s powerful but vain, as well as vengeful. She has the power to get just about whatever she
wants, money, power, fame, but it’s the things that she can’t have that she
desires. Heck, I bet if Thor had shown any interest early on, she’d have given
up and moved on ages ago. Sure, the whole Villain ‘loves’ hero thing has been done
a number of times before but it’s done well with Amora. And her dynamic with
Skurge is interesting. I dare say you won’t find many henchmen that are in love
with their boss and are yet still cool with watching them attempt to woo
someone else. Skurge was someone for her to play with and tease but not one to
put too much thought toward in a romantic sense. Or so it seemed. Hell, she
didn’t seem to get that she actually liked and relied upon Skurge until the big
lug up and died on her. In a more recent story, she went so far as to try and
destroy Yggdrasil the world tree to try and bring him back from Valhalla, but
was talked down by Thor and others, whom reminded her that doing such a thing
would be an insult to Skurge’s memory even if she could bring him back. Figures
she’d only realize who her one and only was after he kicked the bucket, am I
right? Her filmography is somewhat lacking, but she’s interesting enough to warrant
exploring more in films and shows to come. Especially if they play up the angle
of her desire for Thor stemming from wanting to possess his power in a way
rather than an actual romantic attraction. I always prefer that kind of villainess
to the one that is too stupid to realize that if you want to be WITH a good
person, you should try to be a good person YOURSELF. Or at least I think so. Next
up, we’ll talk about Skurge.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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