The Untold Truth Of Jane Foster

If you had to place a bet on which character from the earliest days of Marvel Comics would grow to become one of the most important heroes on the company's roster, there's a good chance that Jane Foster would've had the longest odds of the entire bunch. Originally introduced in 1962 as the most minor of supporting characters, she started out her fictional life as little more than a mandatory love interest for Thor.

Cut to 2019, however, and she's about as far from that one-dimensional romance as she can be, but it's been a pretty strange road to get there. From seeming so unimportant that she was written out of the book to proving herself worthy to carry the title of the Mighty Thor — and plenty of comics-worthy twists and turns over the decades in between — here's the truth behind Jane Foster.

Eventually, Thor and Jane's romance got to the point where they wanted to be married. If you're familiar with how superhero comics in the '60s regarded the concept of marriage, though, it probably won't surprise you to learn that it didn't exactly work out. The major obstacle for this set of lovebirds came in the form of Thor's father, Odin, who forbade the marriage on the grounds that Thor was an immortal Asgardian thunder god, and Jane... was not. There's a pretty simple solution that problem, though: just go ahead and make Jane a goddess. 

That's what happens in 1967's Thor #136, when Thor takes Jane home to Asgard to meet the family. Odin, in a seemingly benevolent move, uses his considerable power to turn Jane into a goddess, granting her a wild new costume and the power of flight. Unfortunately for Jane, this gift comes with a few strings attached. She has to prove that she had "the courage of an immortal" in order to stay in Asgard, and Odin decides that the best way to test Jane's bravery is to lock her in a dark room with the Unknown, a Lovecraftian horror that can only be summoned by a gigantic magic tuning fork. This is all pretty weird, but to be fair, it's no weirder than actual Norse mythology, in which the universe comes into existence by being licked out of a glacier by a cosmic cow.

Needless to say, Jane freaks out upon being confronted with the Unknown, and declares her desire to "escape from this world of fear and madness!" With that, Odin declares her unfit, strips her of her short-lived powers, and boots her back to Earth without any of her memories of Thor. Instead, she's given a job with hunky doctor Keith Kincaid, with whom she immediately falls in love. This is definitely Jane's least successful experience with godhood, but it would not be her last.

From the very beginning of Marvel's Thor saga, the creators, particularly Jack Kirby, made it clear that this wasn't just a modern hero who was inspired by the legendary Thunder God. This was literally Thor, who lived in Asgard, had been worshipped by the Vikings, fought Frost Giants, commanded lightning and storms, had a shape-shifting, troublemaking half-brother named Loki, and all that good stuff. He just happened to be bound to the very human Don Blake, who was, in essence, a different person who tied Thor to Midgard (or, as we usually call it, Earth) with more human concerns as a result of them having a time-share on the same consciousness. As time went on, however, the stories gravitated to those more epic, fantastical adventures in the realm of gods and giants. Unlike, say, Peter Parker, whose real-life concerns balanced out the superheroism and formed the action-packed soap opera that was the Spider-Man saga, Don Blake felt more and more like an unnecessary element of Thor comics.

It had been revealed several years earlier that Blake was not, in fact, a real person, but an identity that Odin created in order to teach his son humility, so when Walt Simonson arrived to write and draw a five-year run that would become the definitive take on Thor in 1983, one of the first things he did was ditch Blake entirely, reasoning that he'd outlived his purpose. The stories were then refocused on those fantastical, mythological elements, and Thor even got a new "secret" identity in the form of Sigurd Jarlson, a construction worker who was literally just Thor wearing glasses. Don't worry about Blake's friends at his medical practice, though: in Thor #354, Fandral the Dashing dropped by to give his nurses and staff a bag of Asgardian gold as their severance pay. 

With that, Thor's romantic life was recentered around Sif. While Jane did appear late in the Simonson run, it was only briefly, and revealed that she and Keith Kincaid were happily married and expecting a child. It seemed like Jane Foster would forever be consigned to Thor's past, but in the world of superheroes, nothing's ever gone forever.

While they would eventually draw inspiration from more contemporary comics like Planet Hulk and Civil War, the earliest entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe drew pretty heavily from the first few years of Marvel Comics. Iron Man, for instance, brought in Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan, who hadn't really been featured in the comics for a while, and 2008's Avengers were brought together to face down a threat from Loki, just like the originals had been back in 1963. 

2011's Thor was no exception in that regard, and in addition to the fantastic realms of Asgard and Jotunheim, land of the Frost Giants, it included Jane Foster as Thor's very human love interest. Jane this time around was played by Natalie Portman, and instead of being a nurse or a medical doctor, she was an astrophysicist studying phenomena like, say, a wormhole in space that was actually the mystical rainbow bridge between the dimensions of the Nine Realms. 

Portman's version of Jane was a key element in blending the fantastical and sci-fi elements that made Thor such a distinct character in the Marvel Universe, and in the following film, The Dark World, she got a trip to Asgard herself. Sadly, by the time we caught up with Thor again in Ragnarok, she had dumped him — or, as Thor put it, they had mutually decided to break up — probably due to Thor's insistence on spending two years flying around in space and decapitating fire giants instead of spending any time on their relationship. Those aren't the kind of boy problems you hear Carly Rae Jepsen singing about, but it's still a pretty valid reason to end a relationship.

Recently, Jane appeared in War of the Realms, a massive Marvel crossover in which all of Asgard's enemies united under the direction of Malekith and laid siege to Earth, dividing it up amongst themselves. At the end, she briefly returned to the role of Thor, wielding a Mjolnir from another dimension and fighting alongside three other versions of Thor from different points in his immortal life. If that sounds a little complicated, that's because it is, but it ended with Jane's hammer shattering, and revealing itself to be Undrjarn the All-Weapon, a mystical metal capable of shaping itself into whatever weapon she needed.

Another major consequence of War of the Realms was the death of the Valykirior, including Brunhilde, who has been known as superhero Valkyrie since she debuted in 1973, and inspired the MCU character of the same name who debuted in Thor: Ragnarok. When Jane visited Brunhilde in the morgue to pay her final respects, Brunhilde's spirit charged Jane with "standing between the worlds of the living and the dead," "as feared as death, as needed as rest, as strong as grief." 

Jane, realizing that there was a job to do in the absence of the Valkyries — just like she had when there was no Thor — agreed. With that, she took on her latest identity as Valkyrie, was launched into a new series, and continued her ascendance as one of Marvel's most prominent heroines.