If you ever seen the classic Marvel cartoon Avengers: Earth s Mightiest heroes, I m willing
to bet that one of the things you remember best is how well that show handled Thor, the
God of Thunder, and just how much fun this character was. For me, Thor s always been
one of the most intriguing Marvel characters to me, and I honestly hold the adaptation
we see in Avengers: EMH to be perhaps the definitive interpretation of the character
and in this video I want to talk about why that is.
I ve made a bunch of videos on what made this show great, and what made its characters work,
and with the release of Thor: Love and Thunder imminent, I thought it was about time I made
a video on goldilocks himself. Because in a show packed with standout characterisations,
this guy somehow manages to be a consistent highlight
I make a lot of deep-dives on this channel. My last video was a 22 minute video essay
on the hidden links between the MCU Captain America franchise and real-world American
Exceptionalism. This video isn t going to be anything quite so complex, though. Instead,
I m just going to be exploring a couple of reasons I ve picked out for why this version
of Thor works so well. Before we get started, though, I wanna share
the reason I m making this video. Don t worry, this isn t an ad, so just hear me out. You
probably clicked on this video because you remember this show, and you remember how good
it was how it blended decades of comic-book inspirations together, deftly balancing worldbuilding,
character, and storytelling, to produce a vision of the Marvel universe that was compelling
to fans of all ages. Well, if that s the case, you re not alone there s a whole community
of Avengers: Earth s Mightiest Heroes fans still out there, and their goal is to get
this show revived. To make that third season happen, to resolve that cliff-hanger we were
left with all those years ago. This video is two things: it s my latest attempt to promote
this cause, the #SaveTheYostVerse campaign, and it s also my entry in a project I ve put
together called Earth s Mightiest Playlist. I ll explain both of these more at the end
of the video, and you can also find all this information in the description and the pinned
comment. But for now let s get back to Thor! The first point to make about this God of
Thunder is that he s the God of Thunder. There s no beating around the bush here with regard
to Thor s divinity. Earth s Mightiest Heroes never tries to shy away from the fact that
Thor is an ancient, godly being, from a mythical realm suffused with magic. And that might
sound obvious, but it kinda isn t. You have to remember that this show, this version of
Thor, was developed in the late 2000s. Around the time EMH was being put together, the biggest,
most culturally significant new adaptations of the Thor character were probably Ultimate
Thor first seen in 2002 - and MCU Thor, who d show up on the big screen about 6 months
after EMH premiered. Both of these versions, initially at least, tried to walk back the
magic and the divinity of the character. At the start of Ultimate Thor s story, there
was this whole mystery about whether the hero really was a god, or whether he was an artificially
enhanced environmental activist, and the first MCU Thor film went to pains to establish that
in this world, the Asgardians weren t gods, merely long-lived, powerful aliens worshipped
as such In both cases, these reservations were eventually
relaxed, with the narratives increasingly willing to treat Thor as a god as time wore
on. It s hard to say why precisely such a reluctance existed in the first place. This
was the age of the gritty reboot perhaps both stories were attempting to ground this fantastical
figure with an extra veneer of something approaching realism. After all it s awfully 60s. It s
very Jack Kirby a realm of mythical gods coming into contact with modern humanity, with feathered
helmets and cod-Shakesperean dialogue. Who d take that seriously in the 21st century?
Well, Earth s Mightiest Heroes did. From his first appearance, the show s never afraid
to embrace the full mythical, magical angle of this character campy or cheesy though it
may have seemed in an age of Dark Knights and Civil Wars.
And this faith in the source material paid off. Some of this characters best moments
come as a result of this decision; moments where voice actor Rick D Wasserman really
hammers home the power, haughtiness, and authority of this mythical, godly character felt your
wrath now you shall feel mine, intro episode It s the same with Thor s environments, too.
Take Asgard for instance. The rainbow bridge isn t a crystalline roadway linked to a teleportation
chamber, it s a rainbow bridge. A rainbow that you walk across, straight out of a fairytale,
or, you know, the Eddas. One of the highlights of the entire show is the sequence of episodes
where the Avengers save Asgard and these normally earthbound figures are thrust headfirst into
this world of gods and monsters. This decision, then, to go all-in on the hyper-stylised divinity
of classic Thor, facilitates not only cool moments, but also cool stories. This is what
happens when you re not embarrassed by the sheer comic-bookyness of a character like
Marvel s take on Thor but instead you embrace it.
The next idea I want to explore is that this Thor, this God of Thunder, is allowed to feel
like a God. He isn t nerfed more often than not, the narratives are written and the fight
scenes are choreographed around this character in a way that never feels cheap, never feels
like Thor s just another heavy hitter. I don t really ever talk about power levels
or power scaling on this channel, even when discussing superhero media, because A: I m
more interested in the stories and themes than the fights, and B: I m aware that 90%
of a character s strength level depends on who s writing the fight. But I think it s
worth pointing out that while Thor s role in this Avengers team, from an archetypal
point-of-view, is the warrior, the Big Guy, he s very rarely taken out of the conflict
in the contrived types of ways typical for characters in this role. In this show, the
ways Thor gets defeated or doesn t get defeated, for that matter nearly always consider his
Asgardian nature. In the episode the Masters of Evil, it takes an entire supervillain squad,
including two other Asgardians, to even knock him out. And a whole bunch of times some supervillain
or other has a gimmick which incapacitates the human Avengers, but Thor remains unaffected.
See the skrull failsafe in Season 2, or the way the Thunderer is unaffected by the Leader
s Gamma dome. The one time he is nerfed, it s the whole plot of that episode. These stories
don t just treat Thor as the muscle stories are written around his character, his nature,
not merely the archetypal role he fills. It isn t just that Thor s a strong hero, so you
need really strong villains to beat him throughout these stories, Earth s Mightiest Heroes never
loses sight of who this character is, and that he should *feel* different, and play
a different role in the story, to his mortal teammates. And, if nothing else, that just
makes for a more satisfying watch. You buy into this world more, the magic, the mythical
settings, when the show you ve been watching has taken care to ensure that it all feels
consistent. And it does remain consistent, across 2 seasons,
and over 50 episodes. If nothing else, it s impressive that this show s writers managed
to nail this characterisation straight away, and pretty much stick to it throughout, especially
given how much MCU Thor s changed since his introduction. I m not saying that s a bad
thing, mind you, and I think the main reason for THIS Thor s many changes are due to the
specific challenges of the movie format. In fact, that would make for an interesting video
topic sometime in the future. But for now, we re not talking about it. We re talking
about what made THIS Thor so great. And I hope you agree with the reasons we ve briefly
explored in this video. But can I tell you a secret? They re not my
reasons. I mean I wrote this video, I explored, developed, and contextualised the things we
ve talked about but the skeleton for this video, the core ideas which I wrote around
aren t from me. They re from a comment I got, way back on one of the first few videos I
made on this channel. Back when I was just starting my long-running video series analysing
this show. A viewer wanted to help out with a Thor video, should I ever make one, and
suggested these basic reasons. So when I was figuring out my video schedule for this month,
I thought hey, why not finally make that video? Because, while I m probably the guy who s
spent the most time making videos about this show on YouTube, I think this demonstrates
that I m far from the only person who understands it well enough, or is creative enough, to
do so. And that s why I felt making this video, with the help of this old comment from Arthur
Mingo was the perfect way to launch Earth s Mightiest Playlist. In a nutshell, when
I learned that the folks behind the #SavetheYostVerse revival effort were planning another digital
trend event in May to try and go trending, to try to get Marvel s attention, I thought
the best way I could help out was to reach out to a bunch of other YouTubers, big and
small, and put together a collaborative playlist of videos about this show made by a whole
bunch of people all with the idea of getting as many viewers as possible to log into Twitter
and tweeting with the hashtag SaveTheYostVerse one week from the time this playlist s going
live May 21st at 12PM UTC. So if you re watching this please come and help out with the trend
attempt. I m no expert at Twitter analytics, and I ve no idea how this video will do, but
I m guessing that if even say 1% of the people who see this video in the first week joined
the movement and Tweeted with us on May 21st, that may well be enough to get the hashtag
trending. And in the meantime, you can check out the
rest of Earth s Mightiest Playlist, which should be linked onscreen now, as well as
at the end of the video, and in the description and pinned comment. I reached out to quite
a few channels about this, and I heard back from fewer than I d have liked , but I m relatively
confident there ll be some pretty fire content already in the playlist as this video launches,
or shortly thereafter for instance, I believe Super Frame s releasing a video on Avengers:
Earth s Mightiest Heroes to coincide with the Playlist though I don t know precisely
when it s coming out. I also know that some of my regular viewers are making content for
the playlist, so I m really excited to check out the rest of it myself, and how it grows
in the next few days. And if anyone watching now wants to put something together over the
next week or so a video essay, a theory video, a review, anything about Avengers: EMH or
the other related shows of the Yostverse please do, send it my way, and I ll put you in the
playlist too. And to everyone else, thanks so much for watching,
and make sure you check out this playlist, and check back again in a couple of days,
as more and more content trickles in. Because more views means more Tweets which means a
bigger chance we get finally get a third season of Earth s Mightiest Heroes. So remember to
tweet #SaveTheYostVerse in a week s time, and big thanks as always to my Patrons onscreen
now, particularly Kevin Douglas and Ian Fyfield.