

Hela ended up banished by Odin, whose very presence kept her from returning. Hela planned to continue her megalomaniacal quest, which included killing all of the Valkyrie, except for one who escaped and went into hiding. At one point, Odin decided to become a more benevolent king and ruled with peace, which dismayed Hela. She stood by her father's side as he conquered the Nine Realms with bloodshed, killing many who stood in their path. Hela's backstory revealed that she served as Odin's strongest warrior - Hela herself stated that she was the executioner. She was portrayed by the two-time Academy Award winning actress Cate Blanchett, who also played Lady Galadriel in the Middle Earth Saga, Irina Spalko in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Marissa Wiegler in Hanna, Lady Tremaine in Cinderella, Penelope in Family Guy and will later voice Kaa in Mowgli. She was the revealed first born offspring of Odin, and the older sister of Thor and Loki. The smell is a small touch but adds a great deal, making the figure more than just a giant animal and closer to the elemental forces she is intended to represent.Hela Odinsdottir was the main villainess from the 2017 film, Thor: Ragnarok. Fenris is only one embodiment of that but an important one - connecting both Thor and Hela to their mythic roots while also embodying the wolf's formal purpose, albeit with a few MCU wrinkles thrown in. The smell simply comes as a final touch for the wolf as she fulfills her destiny.įor all of its comedic elements, Ragnarok is essentially a tragedy, as Asgard comes to its long-foretold end and the survivors have to find a new place to start again. That comes on top of her close association with Hela herself and her previous status as a dead creature until her resurrection. As a herald of death, it would make sense that she would smell of the concept she embodied, even if she lacked the rotting appearance of the rest of Hela’s army. Fenris isn’t simply a giant wolf, but a divine creature in and of herself. It made her a terrifying adversary against Thor and his friends, in keeping with the mythic notion of the character.Īnd her smell ties into that superbly. Hela used the power of the Eternal Flame to bring Fenris back to life, along with the rest of her army, but while the rank-and-file troops were undead essentially zombies, Fenris retained her intelligence and cunning. (Though Fenris’s gender is unstated in the film, the MCU wiki refers to her as female.) As Hela’s mount and loyal companion, she was the one minion the Goddess of Death wanted resurrected the most. The MCU tweaked the character's story slightly, though, starting with his gender. RELATED: Eternals Producer Explains What Brought the New MCU Heroes to Earth Fenris also came with that package, debuting early in Thor’s comic-book run in Journey Into Mystery #114 in 1965. If the idea was to eliminate the differences between ancient gods of myth and modern superheroes with similar abilities, it stood to reason that Thor’s appearance would include the same pantheon of figures, such as Loki, Heimdall and Frigga.

When Thor first appeared in the Marvel Universe, most of the other figures from Norse mythology came with him. Lewis used the name "Fenris" for the canine head of the White Queen’s intelligence forces in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, while Fenrir Grayback - the villainous werewolf from the Harry Potter novels - was similarly named after the mythic beast. Common fairy tale tropes of the “big bad wolf” type tie into that concept, and numerous modern fantasy works have subsequently made use of it.

Spawned by Loki and the frost giant Angrboca, he was destined to slay Odin before being killed himself by Odin’s son Vioarr. In Norse mythology, Fenris was the wolf who devoured the world during Ragnarok.
