Few weapons in the MCU have changed as much as Thor’s hammer. It has changed hands, it has changed shape and it has changed what it means. That makes it harder than it looks to say who Mjolnir belongs to. The question is back now because “Avengers: Doomsday” arrives on December 18th and its official trailer from July 20th has Thor (Chris Hemsworth) holding the hammer out to a familiar face.
Here is a guide to the three lives Mjolnir has lived on screen and what each one cost. The first is the easy one. The second is the one the films never fully explain. Each time the hammer changed hands, the rules around it changed too. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “Thor”, “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, “Thor: Ragnarok”, “Avengers: Endgame”, “Thor: Love and Thunder” and the “Avengers: Doomsday” trailers.
Each time the hammer changed hands, the rules around it changed too.”
The first life belongs to Odin (Anthony Hopkins). At Thor’s coronation in “Thor” he describes the hammer as “Forged in the heart of a dying star.” Thor then sparks a war on Jotunheim, and Odin banishes him to Earth. He sends the hammer after his son with a rule attached: “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.” Syfy says Mjolnir ends up fifty miles from where Thor lands in New Mexico, and S.H.I.E.L.D. builds a perimeter around it. Thor cannot lift it and gets it back only after he faces Loki’s Destroyer unarmed and offers his life for his friends. Then the hammer flies to his hand. The lesson is plain. Strength does not move Mjolnir and neither does a crown.
The party in “Avengers: Age of Ultron” turns that rule into a game. After a few drinks the Avengers take turns at the hammer, and Looper says Hawkeye, Iron Man, War Machine and Bruce Banner all fail. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is the only one who gets it to budge, and Thor notices. Then Thor announces, “You’re all not worthy.” Later in the film Vision (Paul Bettany) picks the hammer up and hands it to Thor, Yahoo reports. The scene is played for laughs. It also plants a promise that the story keeps for years.
The second life starts with a loss. In “Thor: Ragnarok” Thor throws Mjolnir at his sister Hela (Cate Blanchett). She catches it and crushes it in her hand, as ComicBook.com describes the scene. Odin visits Thor afterward and asks, “Are you Thor, the God of Hammers?” He tells his son the hammer was never his source of strength. Den of Geek says that pep talk is what lets Thor summon the lightning without it. The hammer only ever helped him focus.
That should have been the end of it. “Avengers: Endgame” brings a hammer back anyway, and it is not the one Hela broke. Thor and Rocket travel to the Asgard of “Thor: The Dark World” to fetch the Aether, and Thor summons Mjolnir. “I’m still worthy,” he says. Den of Geek calls it a past version of the hammer, and Looper says Thor carries both Mjolnir and Stormbreaker into the final battle. Co-writer Stephen McFeely told an interviewer, ComicBook.com reports, “When you took Mjolnir, we accept that that movie happened. Because time is irrefutable.”
The hammer’s biggest moment comes in the final battle. Thanos (Josh Brolin) has Thor pinned, and then Steve lifts Mjolnir. “I knew it!” Thor shouts. Steve fights Thanos with the hammer and, Looper says, calls down lightning. The people who made the films still disagree about the party scene behind it. Kevin Feige said in a Reddit AMA, “We think he was always worthy and was being polite in Age of Ultron.” Anthony Russo said on Reddit that Steve “quickly chose not to, because he didn’t want to embarrass Thor.” Writer Christopher Markus wrote during a watchalong, “I’d say he’s not completely worthy yet.”
What happened to that hammer afterward is the open question. SlashFilm says Steve goes back into the past with “a suitcase full of stones and Mjolnir in his hand” to return them. He is due back in about five seconds and never arrives. Den of Geek says it is unclear whether he finished the job, and that he no longer has Mjolnir when he reappears. The rule spoken in the film covers the Stones, which must go back “at the exact moment you got them.” Nobody says what that means for a hammer Thor took out of another year.
The third life starts from the pieces. In “Thor: Love and Thunder” Looper says the broken shards of Mjolnir sit on display in New Asgard. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) has stage four cancer, and she has heard the hammer calling her. It reassembles for her, and Disney’s synopsis says she “inexplicably wields” it as the Mighty Thor. The film does offer a reason, in a flashback that Korg narrates as a legend. Thor tells the hammer, “I need you to promise me you’ll always protect her.” GamesRadar says the film never makes it explicit but points to that vow as the reason the hammer answers to her. Thor himself tells Jane, “it chose you because you’re worthy.”
The hammer also costs her. Thor warns that every time she uses it, it drains her mortal strength and leaves her body “unable to fight the cancer.” She lifts it one last time and helps destroy the Necrosword of Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale). Then she dies. GamesRadar says her body turns to dust. A post-credits scene shows her in Valhalla with Heimdall (Idris Elba). The hammer stays with Thor. In the closing scene he and his adopted daughter Love head into battle, he with Mjolnir and she with Stormbreaker. Den of Geek adds that the rebuilt hammer can split apart, strike several enemies and reform. It is the same hammer Hela broke, rebuilt around a promise instead of a test.
That brings the hammer to “Avengers: Doomsday”. In a May 2025 tribute Hemsworth wrote that he has held “Mjolnir and then Stormbreaker as the God of Thunder”, and the July trailer shows him with both. Disney’s page lists him in the cast and shows a press photo of Thor beside Steve Rogers. A December 30th teaser had Thor asking Odin for help, with his daughter Love at the center of it. Near the end of the July trailer a voice off screen says, “Hey, pal.” Thor answers, “It’s not possible,” then holds Mjolnir out and the hammer flies to Steve’s open hand. Marvel has not said whether the hammer in that scene is the rebuilt one or a version from another timeline. Disney’s synopsis promises “beloved heroes from three distinct universes” on “a deadly collision course.” A hammer that has changed hands this often will not sit still for that.
Set side by side, the three lives make one argument. In the first, the hammer tests a person. In the second, it is carried out of the past like a borrowed tool. In the third, it keeps a promise. “Avengers: Doomsday” now has to pick one of those rules. Steve ending up with the hammer in the trailer points to the test, since worthiness is the only rule that explains it. Jane’s story points to the promise. The loan from “Endgame” is the loose thread, and nobody has tied it off.
What Do You Think? Did Steve really put the hammer back? Is Jane’s Mjolnir the same weapon Hela broke, or something new? And who should be holding it when “Avengers: Doomsday” ends?
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