WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Thor #22, on sale now from Marvel Comics.
Plenty of heroes in the Marvel Universe have issues stemming from their respective dynamic with their fathers but none are perhaps more pronounced and prominent than the contentious relationship between Thor and his father Odin. While Odin has begrudgingly admitted Thor is his favorite child and abdicated his throne as the Ten Realms’ All-Father so Thor could succeed him, the Asgardian father and son’s dynamic has often been deeply estranged and only growing worse as Thor endured the pressures of being king. However, for as back-and-forth as Thor and Odin’s relationship has been over millennia, Odin finally makes a major admission that shakes the God of Thunder to his very core.
Following his abdication of the Asgardian throne, Odin went on a self-imposed exile to the more unruly parts of the cosmos, losing himself in a bottle while Thor quickly found himself cleaning up after his father’s mistakes. This began with Thor’s human alter ego Donald Blake learning his was a false individual created by Odin simply to teach Thor a sense of humility, causing Blake to go rogue and nearly destroy Asgard as he attacked anyone, culminating in an attempt to chop down the World Tree. Later, Thor learned that Odin imprisoned a sentient being into what became his trusty war hammer Mjolnir as part of its magical enchantment. And in Thor #22 vol. 6 (by Donny Cates, Nic Klein, Matt Wilson and VC’s Joe Sabino) Odin does the unthinkable by actually admitting to his son that he is wrong and has made mistakes his whole life — except for Thor himself.
Historically while king, Odin was a more brusque figure who insisted in every decision he made, including the most morally ambiguous ones, were in service towards Asgard and the Ten Realms’ greater good. This justification informed Odin in launching countless wars and engaging in underhanded acts like trapping beings in hammers or lie to his family about virtually every aspect of his life for millennia. In his own mind, Odin was always in the right but needed to reach his personal rock bottom in a cosmic dive bar before seeing the carnage that his lies inflicted on Asgard before he could come clean about himself and his bloody history.
For all of Odin’s faults and questionable parenting decisions, Thor has quietly also done much in his life to earn some semblance of paternal approval, whether conscious or not. Odin and Thor’s feuding left a father-sized void in Thor’s life as he has grown older and is an intensely sensitive subject for the God of Thunder, even among those that know him the best. While Thor testily kept Odin at a distance when addressing the disasters his father left behind for him to deal with, Odin’s confession that he screwed up in his responsibilities as the Norse All-Father is one that Thor isn’t ready to hear as the two Asgardians face the sinister God of Hammers, underscoring how complicated their relationship has been all along.
The emotional core of Cates’ run on Thor has been the unresolved issues between the God of Thunder and his father, with the two Asgardians not quite able to articulate how they truly feel about each other as they face a series of Odin’s mistakes come back to haunt him. Judging by Odin’s fate, this admission by Odin in taking responsibility for his shortcomings and failures comes too late for the two men to finally reconcile their relationship fully, perhaps one last mistake, in regards to timing, made by Odin that will haunt his son moving forward without him.
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