Thor: Love & Thunder's concept art suggests New Asgard has become a tourist attraction. The coronavirus crisis has forced Marvel Studios to push Thor 4 back to early 2022, but returning writer-director Taika Waititi has done his best to lessen the blow.
Waititi conducted an Instagram live broadcast in which he watched Thor: Ragnarok along with fans, and he shared a few brief samples of concept art from Thor 4. The images only appeared for a few brief seconds, but one showed a new design for New Asgard, the Asgardian refugee settlement at Tønsberg in Norway. This is just concept art, of course, and early in production artists tend to produce lots of ideas ahead of seeing the script. Still, Waititi has to be well aware the image would be pored over.
The shot is blurred and indistinct, but one striking detail in the background suggests New Asgard has reinvented itself as a potential tourism hotspot. There's a sign in the background referencing "Mjolnir Tours" of some kind. While it's difficult to say exactly what these tours are associated with, the fact they're happening is indicative of some sort of tourism industry centered upon Thor.
It seems the Asgardians haven't just settled on Earth; they're also living in community with humanity, which will no doubt cause some tensions. Spider-Man: Homecoming established a resurgence in Norse religion with a subtle Easter egg referencing the "Korean Church of Asgard," and worshipers will surely be a little aggrieved at New Asgard's choosing to create a tourist industry. Meanwhile, it's interesting to speculate whether the tours are just of the coast or are instead of sites of mystical power. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Waters of Sight - the pool Thor bathed in to commune with the Norns and receive a vision - were situated at Tønsberg, which was the center of Asgardian contact with humans millennia ago.
Meanwhile, notice Thor: Love and Thunder's New Asgard has blended Asgardian and human science with flying ships and terrestrial runways. This again hints at close cooperation, perhaps even technological exchange. In the first Thor film, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) claimed to originate from a world where science and sorcery were one and the same, and in Thor: The Dark World, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) was able to intuit secrets of Asgardian science based on her understanding of quantum physics. Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) could have allowed Asgard to share some of this advanced technology with humanity in exchange for their welcome.
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