In praise of Tes­sa Thompson’s Valkyrie, Marvel’s long-await­ed saviour

There’s no wind machine or rous­ing sound­track to sig­nal Tes­sa Thompson’s entrance in Thor: Rag­narok. At first her Valkyrie is intro­duced nei­ther as Thor’s neme­sis nor his ally. She strides into the scene pow­er­ful­ly for all of two sec­onds, before top­pling over into a pile of garbage. She’s blind drunk. This wel­come moment of com­ic relief pro­vides the first real clue as to how Valkyrie is going to change the game for women in Mar­vel movies. Bal­anc­ing self-aware humour and vul­ner­a­ble sin­cer­i­ty, Thompson’s per­for­mance has brought sal­va­tion to the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse just when it need­ed it most.

Ever since DC impressed us with the first ever Won­der Woman movie ear­li­er this year, the clock has been tick­ing for Mar­vel to reassess its own female sta­ble. Stretch­ing all the way back to 2008’s Iron Man, women have tend­ed to act either as febrile love inter­ests or gener­i­cal­ly ​“strong” char­ac­ters with­in the ever-expand­ing MCU, char­ac­terised by their super-strength or force­ful pow­er to coun­ter­act stereo­types of female weak­ness. But Marvel’s Strong Female Char­ac­ters™ are rarely imbued with real emo­tion­al nuance and as a result often come across as two-dimensional.

Thank­ful­ly, change is on the hori­zon, with Brie Lar­son poised to lead the studio’s first female-led movie, Cap­tain Mar­vel, in 2019, and Thomp­son show­ing her how it’s done in this sec­ond Thor sequel. While she kicks ass on-screen, off it she’s a vocal advo­cate for an all-female super­hero movie. ​“As much as we want, right­eous, fan­tas­tic, strong char­ac­ters”, Thomp­son has said, ​“we also want weak ones and bad ones and shit­ty ones, we want all kind. Rep­re­sen­ta­tion means the spectrum”.

The Amer­i­can actor has pre­vi­ous­ly earned praise for her scene-steal­ing per­for­mances in 2014’s Dear White Peo­ple and the fol­low­ing year’s Creed. Out­side of cin­e­ma she has dab­bled in var­i­ous forms of visu­al media, from mak­ing her onstage debut with the Los Ange­les Women’s Shake­speare Com­pa­ny in 2002, to star­ring in pop­u­lar TV shows like Veron­i­ca Mars and West­world. In 2018 Thomp­son will appear in Alex Garland’s sci-fi thriller Anni­hi­la­tion, and reprise her role as Valkyrie in Avengers: Infin­i­ty War.

Her char­ac­ter has long exist­ed in Marvel’s comics, but the Valkyrie we see in Thor: Rag­narok is brand new. Asgard’s most com­plex war­rior is based on Brunnhilde, a fierce female sol­dier and leader of the Valkyrie tribe who served as Odin’s spe­cial force. Since the Valkyries’ down­fall, Thompson’s binge-drink­ing boun­ty hunter now roams around the garbage-heap plan­et of Sakaar, cap­tur­ing prize-fight­ers as they fall out of the ether onto her land. She toys with play­ing Thor’s adver­sary, side­kick and even poten­tial love inter­est, all while intro­duc­ing a whol­ly new agen­da to the MCU.

In con­trast to her car­toon­ish­ly mas­cu­line, con­stant­ly-clown­ing-around male coun­ter­parts, Valkyrie is a no-non­sense force of nature who sub­verts the expec­ta­tions of a female com­ic-book char­ac­ter. She eas­i­ly match­es our epony­mous pro­tag­o­nist both in terms of pres­ence and pres­tige, but what makes Valkyrie so com­pelling is that her jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery, in which she must bat­tle her inner demons and con­front her painful past, feels just as emo­tion­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant as Thor’s.

On top of this, Thomp­son has respond­ed to rumours regard­ing the ambi­gu­i­ty of her character’s sex­u­al­i­ty in the comics, con­firm­ing that Ragnarok’s Valkyrie is bisex­u­al. The chem­istry between Valkyrie and Thor is unde­ni­able, but gone is the out­dat­ed set-up in which the girl next door (or you know, next plan­et over) lusts after the unat­tain­able Real­ly Attrac­tive Male Super­hero. Valkyrie is Thor’s equal, if not supe­ri­or: in his own film, she is the hero he aspires to be.

Thomp­son has also stat­ed that in rein­vent­ing the char­ac­ter, she and direc­tor Tai­ka Wait­i­ti set out to design a hero that a wider demo­graph­ic could root for. It’s not just about tick­ing a diver­si­ty box – Thomp­son is rat­tling the box, bust­ing it to pieces and form­ing a new world with­out it. In chal­leng­ing the blonde, sex­u­alised image of Valkyrie from the comics, Thompson’s char­ac­ter devel­ops her own pre­rog­a­tive. ​“The one-dimen­sion­al girl­friend or the sassy black friend – those weren’t going to work for me,” she told Elle in response to the con­ven­tions often employed when cast­ing women of colour. In a way, Thomp­son par­al­lels her char­ac­ter by refus­ing to be defined by what pre­cedes her and break­ing a cliché-rid­den mould.

Thomp­son has cre­at­ed a new super­hero for younger view­ers to aspire to. She is urg­ing the women of Mar­vel to move past the bina­ry rep­re­sen­ta­tion that has plagued them for too long: Valkyrie is nei­ther a token roman­tic acces­so­ry, nor the tired ​“strong female char­ac­ter” that Mar­vel has been super­fi­cial­ly fan­ning the flames of fem­i­nism with in recent years. Valkyrie is a bound­ary-break­ing sym­bol of what a female char­ac­ter in a super­hero movie can and should look like.