In news sure to confuse the classics scholars in your life, Russell Crowe has unveiled that he’ll be playing the Greek deity Zeus in Marvel’s Norse mythology romp Thor: Love and Thunder.
Crowe made the announcement in an appearance on JOY 94.9, an LGBTQA+ radio station based in Melbourne, Australia. The veteran actor called in to help with a fundraiser and talk about some of his appearances in movies with queer characters, 1994’s The Sum of Us and 2018’s Boy Erased. At the end of the short interview, the Oscar-winner dropped a bomb the size of Mount Olympus.
“I’m gonna get on my bicycle,” he said. “I’m gonna ride up to Disney Fox studios, and round about 9:15, I shall be Zeus. It’s for Thor. It’s my last day of Zeus-ing about and I’m going to enjoy it.”
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While Zeus’ appearance in a Thor story might be mythologically challenging, it will make perfect sense to longtime students of Marvel. To start, we reported back in December that Christian Bale was joining the film and had been linked to the villainous Gorr the God Killer. The Asgardians are all well and good, but with a character named “The God Killer” running about, it’s nice to have a broader selection of heavenly victims.
Besides that, as soon as Marvel introduces Zeus, characters like Ares and Hercules can’t be far behind. That could have potentially huge implications for Phase 4 and 5 storylines, with arcs like Dark Avengers and Secret Invasion (which Marvel is adapting into a Disney+ limited series) looming on the horizon. There are also canonical links between Ares and Shang-Chi, which makes this a perfect time to revisit the trailer for September 3rd’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Thor: Love and Thunder is expected to strike on February 11th, 2022. As for Crowe, his next project finds him starring alongside Zac Efron and Bill Murray in The Greatest Beer Run Ever.
