The ending of Thor: Love and Thunder turns on one choice: Gorr uses his wish to bring back his daughter Love instead of killing the gods, and then he dies, asking Thor to care for her. Jane Foster dies in Thor's arms, and New Asgard raises a monument to her. Thor adopts Love, who fights alongside him with Stormbreaker while Thor carries Mjolnir.
So, is Thor's daughter his real daughter? No. Love is Gorr's daughter, and Thor takes her in.
In my opinion, the film is built so that Thor ends where Gorr began: a father figure answering the grief that Gorr could not bear. The key scene is at Eternity's altar, where Thor urges Gorr to wish for Love's return rather than the gods' deaths. Perhaps that is why Thor argues instead of simply finishing the fight, since the Necrosword is already destroyed by then.
It could be argued that Jane's death closes her arc as the Mighty Thor on her own terms. She learned that wielding Mjolnir was worsening her illness, yet she kept fighting beside Thor, Valkyrie and Korg, and she helped destroy the Necrosword. Compare that with Thor: The Dark World, where Jane was a scientist swept up in Malekith's Aether and carried to Asgard for help. Here she chooses the danger herself, which is a real change for a character Natalie Portman first played in Thor (2011).
Gorr is also a sharper mirror than most MCU villains. Thanos, in Avengers: Infinity War, hunted the Infinity Stones to wipe out half of all life. Gorr hunts gods after a personal loss, and the film lets his grief win a hearing before he dies. In that sense, he is closer to the wounded antagonists of Black Panther than to a conqueror.
Taika Waititi directed Thor: Ragnarok (2017) too, and the comparison explains the tone shift. Ragnarok was filmed in Brisbane at Village Roadshow, according to Screen Queensland, while Love and Thunder wrapped at Fox Studios in Sydney in early June 2021, as Te Ao News reported. Both films lean on a rock song to announce Thor, Led Zeppelin before and Guns N' Roses now, but this sequel ends on a quieter note than a battle.
The open thread is Zeus. He is wounded by his own thunderbolt in Omnipotence City after refusing to help, and his grudge against Thor remains unresolved, which the mid credits scene picks up. For where the saga goes next, keep an eye on our Avengers: Doomsday page.
