One of the newest Marvel characters getting an introduction to the MCU is Gorr the God Butcher, who is going to be portrayed by Christian Bale. This character will see his time in Thor: Love And Thunder as quite possibly the movie’s antagonist. However, not a lot of people are familiar with this character, especially if they haven’t read the comics. So, who is Gorr the God Butcher?
Gorr was an alien that lived on a no-name planet, where he was forced to live a life of starvation. He saw his entire family dying under harsh conditions. Because of this, he became bitter towards the gods and swore revenge against them. He was essentially a serial killer that killed all gods one by one.
The reason why Gorr became quite popular was the fact that his life was a reflection of real society, where people were forced to go through extreme measures just to survive. As such, his bitterness towards the gods who couldn’t do anything to save his family was his fuel towards becoming the God Butcher. And getting to know more about him will allow us to shed some light on his character, motives, and abilities.
Gorr The God Butcher Origin
One of the most tragic characters in the Marvel universe is Gorr the God Butcher, who is set to make his MCU debut in Thor: Love and Thunder. However, one of the things that fans of the Thor movies should know is that Gorr didn’t start out as an evil creature that simply wanted to kill gods for the fun of it. Instead, he actually has a tragic origin that led to him becoming a villain.
Gorr was born on a nameless planet that wasn’t the most forgiving place to live in. Throughout his life on that planet, he struggled with starvation as he had little to nothing to eat. However, he was thought to put his faith in the gods because they would answer his prayers and would bring him out of the tough situation he and his family was in.
Nevertheless, Gorr saw his parents dying when he was at an early age, and that left him alone until he was able to find a mate. He fathered children, but his mate eventually died from an earthquake. Meanwhile, due to being a single parent that struggled to provide food for his children, his children died one by one. The last straw for him was when his son Agar died, as Gorr himself eased the child’s death and told him that he would never go hungry ever again.
The death of his family made Gorr bitter towards the gods, as he expressed his displeasure towards them, for which he was exiled by the people of his planet. He was left to wander alone in the desert, waiting for his death until he witnessed two gods in a battle to the death.
One god was a dark god named Knull. Meanwhile, the other god was a god in gold armor. The two gods crashed nearby, as the gold god saw Gorr and begged for him to help him. This was the first time Gorr saw a god, as he went on to realize that gods do exist but are not the benevolent beings that religion often describes them to be.
Gorr was enraged when the gold god asked him for help because neither he nor any of the gods were there to help his family when they were dying. That was when the dark god’s sword transformed into a mass of living darkness that eventually bonded with him to give him powers. Gorr now possessed the Necrosword All-Black, which he used to kill the gold god.
After killing the god with his new sword, Gorr promised that he would use his new power to seek vengeance against all of the gods that never answered his prayers. And he didn’t only promise to kill the gods of his planet but all of the gods in the entire universe.
Fueled by vengeance, Gorr became the God Butcher when he traveled across the cosmos to different galaxies and planets so that he could massacre entire pantheons of gods. He called all sorts of gods regardless of how strong they were, as All-Black only became stronger and stronger the more he killed different gods.
His quest to kill all of the gods in the universe brought him to Earth during the 9th century, as he was about to kill the gods of the planet. After Grogg killed a god from the Americas, Thor found the body in Iceland. The Norse god of thunder sought out the cause of the god’s death, as he found some Slavic gods dead in Russia.
Gorr ambushed Thor and nearly killed him had it not been for a timely thunder strike from the Norse god. Their battle brought them to a cave, where Gorr got the better of Thor but didn’t kill him because he needed to know where Asgard was.
Thor was tortured for 17 days but never revealed the location of his home. This was the longest that any god was able to survive Gorr’s torturing. Thor’s Viking worshipers found his location and distracted Gorr long enough for Thor to escape and cut Gorr’s arm. He believed that he had killed Gorr after that encounter with the God Butcher.
However, Gorr survived the fight with Thor and avoided going back to Earth while he was still trying to regain his strength. He spent centuries killing all sorts of gods in other worlds and galaxies to grow even stronger. At the same time, he was able to amass an entire army that helped him in his wars with the gods all over the universe.
When Gorr was growing stronger, Thor noticed him once again and began hunting him in a world without gods when the prayers of the people there were looking for a god that could possibly defeat the God Butcher. Thor immediately recognized Gorr’s handiwork when he got to that world as he sought out the dark entity once more.
Gorr The God Butcher Powers & Abilities
The truth is that Gorr was born a regular alien-like species with no superpowers. One could say that at his base form and without the help of his sword, he is just as powerful as any other regular human. He might even be weaker because he spent almost his entire life prior to him becoming the God Butcher malnourished and without any kind of training.
However, when Gorr became the God Butcher, he became more powerful because of the fact that the dark entity that soon became his sword had symbiote properties. Because of those properties, his sword was able to strengthen him to the point that he could slay gods with his own strength.
His Necrosword, All-Black, is capable of providing Gorr the strength he needs to kill gods, as his power increases to the point that he can lift up to 100 tons. It is said that his strength is at the same level as that of Thor’s and could even surpass it.
Of course, All-Black’s power also increases the more gods that Gorr kills. That’s why they have a symbiotic relationship. Gorr uses the sword to fulfill his revenge mission against all of the gods of the universe. Meanwhile, the sword benefits from Gorr because it can absorb the blood of the gods that he kills.
Aside from Gorr’s sword, which strengthens his physical capabilities, he is also a master combatant not only with All-Black but with other weapons as well. He is capable of using a lot of different weapons to full effect. Of course, considering that he spent 3,000 years fighting gods and other entities all over the universe, he became experienced enough to fight on par with Thor and some of the other more powerful gods.
Gorr The God Butcher Weaknesses
The problem with Gorr is that as powerful as he may be, he does have a few weaknesses due to the very fact that All-Black is a symbiote. As such, he can be vulnerable to fire and sonics, which are the only weaknesses of a symbiote. However, Gorr has been shown to be able to withstand fire and sonics better than any other symbiote in the Marvel universe.
But Gorr is still reliant on the power of his All-Black sword. Without it, he is basically powerless and isn’t capable of anything that’s beyond superhuman. On top of that, his sword is fueled by the blood of gods, as it constantly needs to fuel on the blood of a god so that it can provide the strength that Gorr needs to kill gods.
In a sense, Gorr’s abilities are not limited because he relies a lot on his Necrosword, which also relies a lot on him. That is why Gorr needs to constantly kill gods so that he can gain the strength he needs from the sword to kill other gods as well.
How Powerful Is Gorr?
Unlike some of the other godlike entities in the Thor storyline in the comics, Gorr has no powers of his own. He isn’t capable of manipulating nature or energy but is actually just very strong in terms of his physical capabilities due to the powers that his sword gives him.
As such, Gorr’s power is combat-based in the sense that he usually engages other gods in weapon-to-weapon combat instead of using energy constructs or any sort of powers that other gods have.
Nevertheless, there is a reason why Gorr was able to kill countless gods throughout the universe for 3,000 years, as his Necrosword is capable of giving him the strength, speed, reflexes, durability, and lifespan of a god as well.
Due to his sword, Gorr is at least just as strong as Thor without the god of thunder’s abilities to control thunder. On top of that, he is also just as experienced when it comes to combat as any god in the universe because he did spend 3,000 years fighting different gods.
How Is Gorr Connected To Venom
At this point, you have already noticed that we mentioned the fact that Gorr’s sword is a symbiote. That means that it is the same kind of entity as Venom, which is Eddie Brock bonded with a symbiote that allows him to gain superhuman strength and abilities. But how are Gorr and Venom connected to one another aside from the fact that they both rely on symbiotes?
Directly, Gorr and Venom are not connected. However, they are connected through Knull, who was the entity that created All-Black and the symbiote that bonded with Peter Parker and later with Eddie Brock to become Venom. But All-Black was the first symbiote that Knull created, considering that Gorr has existed for thousands of years.
Of course, Gorr’s symbiote is also stronger than Venom’s symbiote, considering that the God Butcher can actually kill gods, which are well beyond Venom’s reach. But the fact that All-Black requires the blood of gods is its biggest weakness, as Venom and the other symbiotes only need to consume meat to survive.
Is Gorr The God Butcher A Symbiote?
While Gorr’s sword may be a symbiote, he is not. He is merely the biological being that the symbiote All-Black bonded with. That means that Gorr is still just a regular alien being with no powers whatsoever. The only thing that is special about him is that he is bonded with a symbiote.
Who Killed Gorr The God Butcher?
In the comics, no god was ever able to come close to killing Gorr the God Butcher. In fact, the only god who has ever been able to escape him was Thor, who is also the one who killed him at the end of Gorr’s first life.
This means that Thor, and quite possibly some of the other Asgardian gods, are much more powerful than the other gods in the universe, considering that they didn’t come close to killing Gorr. Then again, as you will learn, it took more than just one Thor to destroy Gorr.
How Thor Killed Gorr
When Thor tried to look for Gorr, what he didn’t know was that the God Butcher had traveled back in time using the powers of the time gods at Chronux. He used his powers to travel back in time and kill the elder gods.
From there, he traveled several millennia into the future to enslave the gods over at Earth-14412 but could not capture the All-Father Thor of that universe. Still, he constantly tortured the All-Father Thor by taunting him of his failure to stop him. Meanwhile, he used symbiotes to recreate his family from the fragments of his memories.
However, the Thor from the Avengers’ universe of Earth-616 was able to chase Gorr into the other Earth. Meanwhile, Gorr retrieved the Young Thor he met back in the 9th century and brought him back to the future to enslave him and force him to build the godbomb together with the other gods he enslaved. The purpose of the godbomb was to annihilate all of the gods in the multiverse, including every single timeline.
Young Thor was catapulted into the galaxy when he tried to destroy the godbomb. He survived and met up with All-Father Thor and Avenger Thor. The trio of Thors decided to attack Gorr but was not capable of killing him because Gorr had become too powerful due to the blood of the gods that he had killed in the multiple timestreams he visited.
Gorr was about to set off the godbomb but was shocked when the construct of his wife called him a god due to his amazing powers. He ended up killing his wife after he was called the very thing he never wanted to be.
The Agar construct that he created realized that his father had become the very same thing that he wanted to stop, and that forced him to assist Avenger Thor in defeating Gorr the God Butcher. Agar prayed for Thor to stop Gorr, as the god of thunder was empowered by the prayers of not only Gorr’s son but all of the surviving gods from the different timelines and universes in the multiverse.
Using his strengthened powers, Thor was able to absorb the godbomb’s blast and the Necrosword’s powers. He redirected the power back at Gorr. Agar called Gorr the god of hypocrisy as he was in a weakened state after Avenger Thor used the godbomb’s powers against him. This allowed Young Thor to deal the final blow he failed to deliver centuries ago, as Gorr was defeated once and for all.
