Character Highlight: Hela (Thor)

*Spoilers for Ragnarok.*

In this, the most important month on the Calypsan calendar, it’s not exactly a surprise that I rewatched Thor: Ragnarok recently. And while there will be some good opportunities for new Marvel stuff to talk about on the horizon, I’m currently biding my time waiting for season 2 of Loki to finish and The Marvels and Echo to come out. So, let’s get our villain on with Hela!

In the first two Thor films, Loki is framed as the black sheep of the family, the one with scheming tendencies and a fraught relationship with Odin. All that’s certainly true. He’s quite devious, with complex plots that get slowly revealed layer by layer. And he’s always resented Odin because he feels that Thor is treated better than him, but that animus gets cranked up to eleven after he learns that he’s really a Frost Giant that Odin took from Jotunheim when he was a baby. Finding out he’s part of the race that’s Asgard’s sworn enemy doesn’t go well for him, and he shifts from mischief to Machiavellian villainy.

It turns out, though, Loki isn’t Odin’s only messed-up kid with a lust for power and intense father issues. In Ragnarok, it comes out that Odin has a third child Thor and Loki never knew about: his oldest, Hela. Before either of them were born, Odin cast his daughter out, sealing her in Hel for millennia. It’s only minutes before his death that he’s able to warn Thor and Loki about her, and once he’s gone, there’s nothing holding her back. Hela emerges from her prison and immediately sets about reclaiming Asgard, which she feels is hers by right.

Over the course of the film, it’s revealed that Hela once served as Odin’s bloody right hand. She was the Goddess of Death, and together, she and her father conquered and killed across the Nine Realms. In present-day Asgard, this history has been painted over, hidden by Odin when he decided he wanted to reinvent himself as a benevolent king. He covered the frescoes much like he hid Hela away. “Where do you think all this gold came from?” she sneers at Thor, all too happy to twist the knife as she disillusions him of his view of their late father. Asgard’s wealth was built on the blood of civilizations, and once it had been won, Hela was discarded as an inconvenient reminder of Odin’s sins. She also notes, regarding Asgard’s riches, that Odin was “proud to have it, ashamed of how [he] got it.”

But while it’s certainly gross that Odin tried to erase all memory of his daughter, this doesn’t make Hela a sympathetic character. She’s not as complex as Loki, who does some wildly terrible things for nuanced motives but ultimately decides to stand with his brother before the end. She’s a being of rage with conquest in her heart—the moment she’s freed, all she wants is to tear down the façade Odin draped over Asgard and get back to subjugation, more than willing to start by subjugating her own people.

Honestly, Hela herself isn’t as interesting a character as either of her brothers, just because she’s pretty cut and dried. But I think her story, and its implications for Asgard’s history, are very interesting. (I love that Taika Waititi directed a colorful, kooky Thor movie that also has such a strong anti-colonial message.) Her look and overall vibe is really neat as well. I love her ostentatious, malevolent headdress. And the moment during her first confrontation with Thor and Loki, where she stops Mjölnir in midair and shatters it, is cool as hell.