One of the greatest decisions that the MCU took was turning many of the powerful artifacts from Marvel comics into Infinity Stones. In the comics, the Infinity Stones are different. They didn’t exist in relics like the Eye of Agamotto, the Tesseract, the scepter, the orb, or the Aether. At least 3 of these relics are different entities altogether. And all three of them are extremely powerful. The Tesseract was inspired by the cosmic cube, the eye of Agamotto is its own thing in the books and the Aether has been an inspiration from Rokkva.
We didn’t get to hear or see a lot about the Aether. Yes, a whole movie was devoted to it, but we didn’t really get a lot of information about the Aether like we got for the Tesseract, the Scepter, or the Eye of Agamotto. But now we know how powerful the Aether could be, through its comic book counterpart, the Rokkva. In Jason Aaron’s latest arc “At The End Of All Things,” of the comic series, Jane Foster: Valkyrie, Rokkva has proven to be a major threat.
Thor’s brother Tyr has been quite troublesome in the recent times. He tried to lay his claim to the throne of Asgard, but failed. Because he betrayed the crown, he was given the punishment of serving drinks at Valhalla. But this duration of his punishment allowed him to learn ancient secrets of certain powerful objects, forgotten magic and sacred places. And one of the powerful objects he learned about was Rokkva, that exactly resembles the Aether in the MCU. Tyr learned how to use Rokkva, its hidden location, and he even devised a plan to take over Asgard once again using the mystical relic.
In one of the flashback sequences of the comic, Odin gave a description of Rokkva just as he told us about the Aether in the beginning of Thor: The Dark World. He said – “As life flourished in the Nine Realms, so did the Rokkva. It had no will, no want, but wherever it moved, death would follow.” Rokkva is exactly the opposite of life & soul. Hence, death follows it everywhere. It is a darkness that only exists to consume and possess. It doesn’t have a willingness to reproduce, but rather expand by ending all of creation itself. Once it possesses someone, it doesn’t just take over their body, it also begins to consume their soul. Remember who was possessed by the Aether in Thor 2?
One of the first kings of Asgard, Øde thought that he could harness the power of Rokkva, and he became quite powerful with it. But his reign was temporary because the Rokkva ultimately consumed him. His body was then hidden deep in the Jotunheim mountains within a vault. The look of this vault is actually quite similar to where Jane found the Aether in Thor 2.
We didn’t see the full potential of the Aether in Thor 2 as it only came back as the Reality Stone in Infinity War and Endgame. But the Rokkva goes on to prove how crazy the Aether could’ve been. Tyr finds it and tries to take over Asgard thinking that his knowledge about the object will allow him to control it. But obviously, he is duped and the Rokkva takes over, unleashing itself on Asgard. We’re yet to know how it will be stopped, but this story gives us what Thor 2 only hinted at. Let’s wait and see how the Rokkva will be stopped.
Jane Foster is returning to the MCU, and with her, we might get to learn about a few more implications of the Aether. She was possessed by it temporarily, and it probably changed her physiology. Hence, it is what might lead her to become the mighty Thor. Thor: Love and Thunder arrives on February 18, 2022.
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