Thor: Love And Thunder Features The Marvel Cameo We've All Been Waiting For
There are few things the Marvel Cinematic Universe loves more than cameos (and maybe money). Though they often are very little more than fan service, seeing characters overlap from one film to the next is what helped establish the interconnectivity of the MCU and turn it into the juggernaut cinematic experiment it is today.
Sadly, all the attention is usually given to the big celebrity, or the big new superhero that will appear in the next entry, rather than to the ordinary citizens that are just in the background trying to live by while the gods fly around the city punching giant beings in the face.
Indeed, as the roster of heroes in the MCU grows, so does the franchise's cast of ordinary citizens. For every Doctor Strange, there's a Pizza Poppa, for every Spider-Man, there's a Delmar or a Ned. And when it comes to "Thor: Love and Thunder," the greatest cameo does not involve a god or a superhero, or even an alien for that matter, yet it is still the Marvel cameo we have all been waiting for.
Heavy spoilers ahead for "Thor: Love and Thunder."
Team Thor returns
In the film, New Asgard has become the talk of the town, going from essentially a refugee camp to a huge tourist destination complete with Mjolnir's debris on display, a magical Asgardian Viking ship ride, an "Infinity War" themed ice cream parlor, branded collaborations with Old Spice, and more. No longer the drunk former Valkyrie, Val is now a proper king of the Asgardians, involved in diplomatic relationships with other nations, and getting quite bored of it. Working for her are Meek, and as /Film reported last year, we also get the return of the treasure of a character that is Darryl, the human — played by Daley Pearson (who also works as a producer on "Bluey").
You might remember Darryl from the hilarious one-shot short films "Team Thor" directed by Taika Waititi in the lead up to "Thor: Ragnarok." The shorts, shot mockumentary style, followed the God of Thunder as he decided to try and live a normal human life by moving to Australia with a human roommate — Darryl. There, Thor did mundane human activities like go to a kindergarten classroom to talk about how he executed alien beings after huge battles, sulk about not being invited to participate in "Civil War," and generally avoid paying Darryl for his share of rent.
The shorts were mostly a proof of concept for the vastly different humor of Waititi's "Thor: Ragnarok" compared to the rest of the MCU, and not only did it convince fans that this could work, it humanized Thor and also introduced one of the best characters in the MCU.
The hero we need
Darryl is essentially the MCU's counterpart to Stu from "What We Do in the Shadows," a regular, kind of boring human office worker who is not that impressed by the fantastical things happening around him. He does not care that Thor is a god or an Avenger, but he does care that his roommate is trying to pay rent with Asgardian coins that are not accepted as currency on Earth, and he seems quite annoyed by Thor's disregard for housework.
Last we saw of Darryl, he took a job in Los Angeles, and moved in with Jeff Godblum's Grandmaster, who turned Darryl into his personal assistant. He would later survive the Snap, as shown in a birthday message Darryl sent to Thor, but because a lot of his coworkers didn't make it, he was forced to work weekends and got into huge debt after Thanos wrecked the global economy (where was that Marvel movie?).
Though he only appears briefly in "Love and Thunder" and sadly doesn't get to interact with his former roommate, it appears his time spent living with Thor helped make Darryl the right man to work as a tour guide in New Asgard. He seemed much happier than last we saw him, and who knows, maybe he uses his intimate knowledge of Thor to spout some hot gossip about the god.
Darryl will return?
The "Team Thor" shorts were indispensable in humanizing the God of Thunder, but also in introducing his deep and weird romantic relationship with Mjolnir, as we saw Thor treat the hammer like a baby at times, and a partner at others. As for Darryl, we need more deadpan comedians in the MCU, just ordinary people who stare at the face of total annihilation, at ancient gods and mystical creatures, and just wonder about how they'll pay rent the next month. You can keep your Young Avengers theories, or your wishes for the entire cast of "Ted Lasso" to appear in the next "Spider-Man," meanwhile I'll stay here hoping for Darryl to get his solo trilogy.
And, if it was up to Chris Hemsworth, we'd get a streaming series of Team Thor, as he said in 2019 that he'd like to see a show where Thor and Darryl go "Surfing, fishing, we'd go to a pub. It'd be good fun."
"Thor: Love and Thunder" is now in theaters. All three "Team Thor" shorts are available on Disney+.