Thor: Love And Thunder introduced many new characters into the MCU and especially many new gods. The film’s plot follows Thor Odinson (Chris Hemsworth), Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), and Korg (Taika Waititi) on their journey to defeat the vicious God Killer, Gorr (Christian Bale). On their journey, one of the stops they make is at a place called Omnipotent City, the home of all the gods of the universe with the Greek God Zeus as their head, played by Russell Crowe. Thor asks Zeus for his help but Zeus is not as benevolent and great a God as is advertised and they end up fighting each other. In the fight, when it appears Zeus has killed Korg, Thor ends up killing Zeus. Or so it seems.
In the post-credits, scene Zeus is seen alive and well and tasking his son Hercules played by Brett Goldstein to punish Thor for his actions.
The choice to cast Brett Goldstein a Hercules by Marvel was an interesting one. Although Goldstein has revealed that it was a rather last-minute decision and he hardly had any time to get in the god-level physical shape that the character of Hercules is famously known for. Being a God that will be going up against Chris Hemsworth’s Thor in future projects, Goldstein certainly has his work cut out for him as far as getting in shape goes as Hemsworth got ever more bulkier for the latest installment of the franchise. However, even in this film for his 5 seconds cameos, Brett Goldstein has revealed he was desperately hitting push-ups after push-ups on set on the day of the shoot to try to look anything close to the Hercules-level fitness that is expected of him.
His exact quote on the matter is as follows:
“Yeah, when I spoke to Taika, I said, ‘You know I’m basically like a skinny comedian?’ I said, ‘When is this filming?’ It was like in two weeks, and I was like, ‘I mean, I’ll do my best, but two weeks feels …’ I said, ‘He doesn’t have to be as big as Thor, does he?’ And look, on the day, I mean, I’m doing 400 pushups that day. I was fit to explode. I did the best I could on that day, yeah.”
Goldstein appeared to look quite well for someone who was only given 2 weeks to get in shape and fans are looking forward to when he makes his formal, non-cameo debut in the MCU with hopefully ample time to develop his God Bod.