The Thor franchise is feeling better than ever before thanks to Thor: Ragnarok, a movie that moves the franchise in a new (and funnier) direction. While the movie is near universally loved, the Thor series has not always been looked at so favorably and it may be telling that it abandons many of the side characters from the previous two movies. One of these characters was Jane Foster, played by Natalie Portman. Portman had something of a falling out with Marvel Studios after Thor: The Dark World and while that experience was not so great for her, she's still open to coming back to the MCU down the road.
I'm completely open to everything, but I have no news about that.
Short but sweet! In an interview with ScreenRant, Natalie Portman was asked if she'd be open to reprising her role as Jane Foster in a Marvel movie in the future. Portman briefly answered that, yes, she's open to anything, but she has not gotten any calls about coming back.
Natalie Portman was reportedly not happy with the production of Thor: The Dark World. She was a big supporter of Patty Jenkins as director of the sequel, and she was apparently not happy when creative differences led to Jenkins leaving the project (she bounced back pretty well, I'd say) and Marvel hiring Alan Taylor instead. In addition, Jane Foster's role in The Dark World felt out of place among the high-fantasy concepts of the film and she never quite gelled with the Asgard setting. Even though she had no place in the story of Thor: Ragnarok, she was still written out of the movie through an arguably unceremonious throwaway line.
I think the bigger question here though is not will Jane Foster return, but do we want her to? She has never been a particularly big character and I can't say that her presence has been entirely missed in all this time. The main argument to bring her back is that Jane Foster becomes Thor in the comics, and while that is a really awesome storyline with lots of meat for an actress like Natalie Portman, I think that ship may have already sailed. It doesn't feel like Portman and Marvel are at the point where the studio would just make her the lead of her own franchise. Plus, with Tessa Thompson's fan-favorite Valkyrie now a part of the franchise, Marvel has perhaps a better option for a female franchise lead.
Maybe Jane Foster doesn't get to show up in Avengers: Infinity War, a movie almost everyone else gets to be in, but Natalie Portman will be starring in Annihilation, a really heavily buzzed sci-fi movie, opening in theaters on February 23, 2018.
