2018’s God of War was one of the fastest selling games of the last generation and a huge hit for Santa Monica Studios. The teaser for the next game promises that “Ragnarok is coming,” while the last game’s secret ending showed Atreus having a vision of Thor arriving to confront him and Kratos at the end of Fimbulwinter.
The actor who played Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2, Roger Clark, is rumored to be taking on the role of Thor. Over the course of the last God of War game, Thor, though largely absent, was shown to be a very different character from Arthur – at least in most Red Dead playthroughs. Nonetheless, there are some great reasons that Clark could do fantastic work as the god of thunder in God of War’s Ragnarok sequel.
The Thor of God of War is, by all accounts, a brutal monster. He personally killed almost all of the giants in Midgard when Odin was banished from Jotunheim for attempting to steal the giants’ knowledge of the future. Of his sons Magni and Modi, Thor clearly favors the former, and when Modi escapes Kratos’ wrath and Magni does not, Thor badly beats his surviving son. He’s even cruel to his worshippers – Kratos and Atreus meet a spirit who hosted Thor in his house once, only for the god to get outrageously drunk and kill the man’s wife in a rage.
Arthur Morgan is a far more sympathetic character, even if the player goes down the Low Honor route. However, there are a few similarities between the characters’ stories that show why Roger Clark may be a good fit. For a start, both Arthur and Thor are subordinate to an increasingly unstable leader in a dying world.
Arthur is the third-in-command to Dutch Van Der Linde as the concept of the Wild West comes to an end and the last American frontiers close. Thor is the second to Odin as Ragnarok itself, the death of the Norse gods, approaches. Roger Clark has already proven his strength at playing characters as they grapple with the impending death of their world and disillusionment with their leaders.
It seems very unlikely that God of War’s Thor will show the same reflection and guilt that Arthur experiences over much of Red Dead 2’s story. Thor’s fear, however, could be a very interesting route to explore. If God of War’s secret ending is anything to go by, Thor won’t exactly be accepting of his fate in Ragnarok. If he was, it wouldn’t make sense to try to take revenge on Kratos and Atreus, especially if Thor knows that Atreus is Loki and has his own fate in the Ragnarok prophecy.
Thor likely knows he is going to die, and over the course of God of War’s Ragnarok sequel, he will either likely choose to go out fighting or to truly accept his fate. At face value, this is a very similar dilemma to Arthur’s as he finds out that not only is Dutch’s idea of the west dying, but so is Arthur himself. Clark’s casting could risk feeling a little meta in this sense, but it’s more important that he has experience engaging with these kinds of themes than it is that players make the association between Thor and Arthur outside of the story.
It’s likely that Thor will be a larger than life character – if nothing else, the scale of violence he has perpetrated eclipses Arthur’s. However, just as the gods in many pantheons represent single exaggerated ideals, Thor could be an opportunity for Roger Clark to explore some of the themes handled with Arthur and to realize them through a heightened character who may handle his fate in a very different but equally fascinating way.
God of War‘s sequel is set to launch in 2021 for the PS5.
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