Don’t mess with Natalie Portman.

She might have played the sidekick and love interest in the first two Thor movies — and she might have been left out of the third film, Thor: Ragnarok, completely — but in the upcoming sequel, Thor: Love and Thunder, Portman becomes a version of Thor herself, wielding Thor’s hammer Mjolnir and getting her own suit of armor and buff arm muscles.

A new photo from the film revealed by Empire Magazine shows Portman in costume as Thor standing besides the original Thor, Chris Hemsworth, and she looks surprisingly tall and superheroic beside him.

Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi also spoke with Empire about the film, and explained how Jane getting superpowers, which is inspired by a recent comic book series called The Mighty Thor by writer Jason Aaron, came about. He said he didn’t plan on including Jane’s Thor until he “started working out the actual story” at which point he realized it would be “kind of cool to bring Jane back into the storyline.”

Rather than just rehash her part as the beautiful scientist with the hots for Thor, Waititi felt...

You don’t want Natalie coming back and playing that same character who’s walking around with science equipment. You know, while Thor’s flying around, she’s left on Earth, tapping her foot going, ‘When’s he going to be back?’ That’s boring. You want her to be part of the adventure.

And now she is. Marvel also released a nice new photo of Hemsworth from the film:

THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER
Marvel
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Thor: Love and Thunder is scheduled to open in theaters on July 8.

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