Matthew Fox

In a rare turn, The Dark World stops punching things long enough to explain itself, giving us cosmic lore, unreliable royal narrators, and the return of the Asgardian DMV: the Book of Yggdrasil. It’s high fantasy meets hard sci-fi, delivered via one king’s snarky goat analogy and a surprising number of mythological side-eyes.

This week, Jane becomes an accidental conduit for cosmic sludge, Darcy delivers the MCU’s best thirst compliment, and Thor gets romantically assaulted with nuance. We ask the big questions: is the Aether sentient, and if so, why does it hate the rain?

Jane Foster falls into the Aether, and Pete falls for the cinematography—while Matthew wonders if someone accidentally put Twilight in his Thor. This episode dives into horror pacing, Infinity Stone inconsistencies, and the infinite dramatic range of Stellan Skarsgård (who, mercifully, isn’t in this scene).

Jane Foster says “seabass” 12 times, and somehow that’s not even the weirdest scientific revelation in this episode. From naked Selvig at Stonehenge to phase meters and the newly coined “Patagonian toothfish of plot devices,” Pete and Matthew explore Thor’s most reality-bending five minutes yet.

Thor pouts, Odin plots, Lady Sif thirsts, and Jane Foster attempts to move on by dating the human embodiment of wallpaper — until Darcy crash-lands their lunch like the beautiful social wrecking ball she is. Also: a surprising amount of time spent discussing space laser tag.

In this episode of Marvel Movie Minute, Pete and Matthew dive into minutes 6 through 10 of Thor: The Dark World, and what begins as a simple dissection of god-fighting and family drama soon unfurls into something more curious: a Shakespearean family tragedy masquerading as an action sequence.

Is Thor: The Dark World misunderstood? Or is it, as some claim, a cinematic black hole, sucking the very life out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Matthew Fox and Pete Wright return to Asgard to begin their coverage of the eighth film in the MCU. They ask the big questions, like: why is there so much exposition? Is Odin a big fat liar? And most importantly, why does the Aether scream?

In 2013, Marvel Studios released Thor: The Dark World, the eighth film in what was, at the time, a still-experimental attempt to build a unified cinematic universe. The film made nearly $650 million at the global box office, was a technical success by virtually any Hollywood standard, and yet—if you ask the average Marvel fan today to recall its plot, you’ll likely be met with a long pause, followed by something like, “Was that the one with the elves?”