Characters / God of War Series - Freya

God of War characters index
Protagonists: Kratos | Atreus
Greek Era: Gods (Zeus) | Titans | Mythology's Heroes | Other Beings | Normal Humans | Characters from Comics
Norse Era: Gods (Odin | Thor | Mimir | Baldur | Heimdall | Freya) | Jotnar | Other Characters (Sindri and Brok) | Monsters

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Disclaimer: All spoilers for God of War (PS4) will be unmarked.

Freya / Frigg / The Witch of the Woods / Vanadis

"I know the truth isn’t simple… but nothing is when it involves your child."

^{Click here to see her appearance in God of War: (2018)}

Voiced by: Danielle Bisutti (English), Kikuko Inoue (Japanese)^{additional VAs}Beatriz Villa (Brazilian Portuguese), Julia Churakova (Russian)

"What you were before doesn't matter. This boy is not your past, he is your son. And he needs his father."

The exiled Vanir goddess of love and war (and, due to being a Composite Character with Frigg, presumably marriage, motherhood and prophecy), former Queen of the Valkyries and of Asgard, Odin's ex-wife and Baldur's mother.

Having initially married the All-Father in an attempt to secure peace between the Aesir and Vanir, Odin's cruelty, obsessiveness and misuse of Freya's magic ultimately brought their marriage to ruin, but not before they had Baldur together; in a desperate attempt to prevent a prophecy where her son would die a pointless death, Freya "gifted" Baldur with complete invulnerability and immortality at the cost of feeling anything whatsoever, driving him mad.

In the present, Freya is cursed to spend the rest of her life in Midgard by her ex-husband, unable to harm a single thing, not even in self-defense. She initially appears as a solitary but friendly witch who lives in the wilds, and meets Kratos and Atreus when they wander into her territory hunting a magic boar (which happened to be her friend). Throughout the game, she occasionally provides healing and support for the duo as they continue on their journey.

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A-D

• Abusive Parent: Not in the violent manner, rather in the over-protective variety; when she learns that her son, Baldur, will die a meaningless death before Ragnarök, she curses him with Nigh-Invulnerability to ensure his survival. This has the side effect of basically subjecting him to sensory deprivation torture (in this case, no senses but sight and hearing, for 100 years straight), and yet she still outright refused to lift the curse no matter how much Baldur begged, even telling him that he'd thank her later and that it was for his own good and lying about the curse being unbreakable, though she could've broken it at any time. It really takes a special kind of person to break the Geneva convention with one's child. The Norns later call her out on this.
• Actual Pacifist:
  • It is her nature not to hurt anyone or anything. She drops the pacifism when Kratos kills her mad son Baldur, and she wishes eternal vengeance and to inflict every pain imaginable. This is partially explained by Mimir as a side-effect of her exile by Odin where he somehow removed her warrior's spirit and cursed her to be unable to harm another even in self-defense. In a very easily-missed piece of dialogue in the post-game, Mimir mentions that Freya visited him in the Realm Travel Room while Kratos and Atreus were spreading Faye's ashes. She asked for the location of her Valkyrie Wings, which are the source of her Warrior's Spirit, so she can avert this trope and fight Kratos directly.
  • In spite of the above, she does use some Loophole Abuse to remain a pacifist only by a technicality. In the final boss fight, she can bind Kratos and Baldur because it's not actually hurting them, and controls the corpse of a long-dead giant to try and stop the fighting, which appears to be allowed from her curse since it isn't her directly attacking anyone.
  • At the start of Ragnarök, she averts this by attacking Kratos with a blade: Kratos just manages to catch Freya's blade in the edges of his retractable shield. This confirms that by this point in the game, she's found her Valkyrie wings. Dialogue implies that at that point Freya has been trying to kill Kratos on a semi-regular basis.
• Adaptational Badass: She's said to be the leader of the Vanir, when in the mythology the most significant of their number was Njordr. She was also Queen of the Valkyries before Sigrun took over.
• Adaptational Heroism: Depending on whether you're of the opinion Gullveig and Freyja are the same being, she was a greedy, hedonistic, deceitful woman in the mythology who also managed to ignite a terrible war between the Aesir and Vanir. Aside from that, the Freyja of the mythology is hardly an honourable woman either. She's portrayed as rather selfish and flighty in Thrymskvitha, and her constant promiscuity meant that she habitually cheated on her husband Odr.
• Adaptational Modesty: While Freya was a goddess of war and death, she was also associated with love, beauty and sexuality the same way Aphrodite was and had a reputation for being promiscuous. While being attractive herself, this aspect is completely absent, focusing more on her magical abilities which were also under her domain.
• Affectionate Nickname: As Odin's wife, she had received the "pet name" of Frigg ('beloved'), as Mimir tells it. However, as things turned sour, Odin began to use it as a way to twist the truth. He didn't want a Vanir goddess getting credit for all the good deeds she'd done, so anything worthy she accomplished was attributed to "Frigg" while Freya became a separate character. As shown in Ragnarök, Freya really hates the nickname she got from Odin, as he used it to separate her Vanir lineage in the eyes of the Aesir.
  • Frey refers to her as "Nað".
• All for Nothing: All of her attempts to protect Baldur come to nothing when he picks a fight against Kratos and gets killed, because Kratos knew from hard experience that even letting him kill her would ultimately change nothing; he'd just go back to attacking Atreus and Kratos would have to kill him anyway.
• All-Loving Heroine: A deconstructed case. She doesn't hold a grudge against Kratos and Atreus for harming a magic boar that happened to be her friend, nor her own son Baldur, who hates her for giving him invulnerability to protect him, with the unexpected side effect of taking his sense. In fact, she is okay with him killing her if that makes him feel better, even after the spell had been lifted. The death of her son, however, proves to be her breaking point whereupon she swears vengeance against Kratos for killing her son. Mimir does mention shortly after that he believes she's kind-hearted enough to come around to accepting them again after she’s given time to cool off, though actually coming near Freya’s old cottage will have both he and Atreus get nervous and worry that she’s likely inside plotting their death for the time being. Ragnarök proves Mimir right, as while she does try to kill Kratos at the beginning of the game, she eventually forgives him, admitting that he is not completely responsible for Baldur's death.
• Animal Motifs: She's associated with hawks. Her sword is called "Sparrow's Bite" (in reference to the sparrowhawk) and has a hawk head decoration on the handle. Her hair is decorated with hawk feathers and in the final encounter, she transforms into a hawk. Sigrún reveals that Freya was the previous queen of the Valkyries, so her hawk motif coordinates with the Valyries own bird motif.
• Anti-Villain: She is for the most part a very kind woman, always treating Atreus with kindness and Kratos with more patience than he probably deserves whenever they meet her. She also deeply loves her son. However, she has a deeply selfish blindspot in regards to her son, as she cast a spell of invulnerability upon him that has the side effect that he can't feel anything, and this side effect has slowly driven him mad over the years. And no matter how much he begs her to undo the spell or tell him how to do so himself, she refuses out of a selfish fear of losing him. But despite this, she would let him kill her if he felt it would make him happy after what she did to him, and she swears vengeance on Kratos for killing her son to save her, a threat she attempts to make good on in Ragnarök. Even there, where she spends the first third of the game seeking Kratos' death, Freya isn't without standards, never harming Atreus despite her intense hatred for his father. Once she and Kratos declare a truce, Freya, despite not relenting in her anger and insisting that Kratos owes her, is clearly moved by hearing his own story of life-ruining choices and self-destructive revenge, culminating in her Heel–Face Turn after their mission in Vanaheim.
• The Archmage: There is no one more knowledgeable and skilled with magic in all the Nine Realms than Freya. Not even Odin, as while he may be more powerful than her even he cannot replicate certain spells that she is capable of such as her making Baldur invulnerable. Freya's refusal to teach Odin her magic is a major reason behind their falling out.
• Assist Character: At some points in Ragnarök, she will replace Atreus as Kratos's go-to archer. And including post-game where Atreus decides to go searching for more hidden giants.
• Barred from the Afterlife: Of a sort, considering the Norse culture. Valhalla reveals that she cannot join Kratos and Mimir in their exploration of the titular realm because unlike the two of them, she's never actually died, which is a prerequisite for accessing it. She does stay outside the gates to offer them moral support and advise though.
• Barefoot Sage: Freya is knowledgeable of all sorts of old magic. She also goes barefoot, even when walking through ankle-deep snow.
• Being Good Sucks: Mimir says as such in the story of Thrym. All the good Freya does will always do more harm than good. She helps Kratos and Atreus but her help eventually leads to the death of Baldur, she made Baldur immortal in an effort to save him from a needless death but he grows to murderously resent her and finally, she married Odin to protect the Vanir but he manipulated and abused her. Then traps her in Midgard with an irredeemable and irreparable reputation in Vanaheim.
  Mimir: For Thrym, the lesson would be to keep his priorities straight. For Freya, it's that doing good has a price.
• Berserk Button:
  • Weapons made out of mistletoe. Seeing Atreus carrying mistletoe arrows causes her to become uncharacteristically angry and agitated, throwing them into her fireplace, declaring them wicked and extracting a promise from Atreus to destroy any others he may find. This is because they are the only weapons capable of harming and breaking the spell of immortality she placed on Baldur.
  • She also really doesn't like Mimir. The first thing she does, after reviving him, is to spit on him before telling him straight out that she only revived him because Kratos and Atreus asked her to. Mimir himself believes her dislike is justified and it's implied that he was the one who had indirectly gotten her into her current situation by convincing her to marry Odin. Then she places a spell on his decapitated head so that he won't be able to reveal the secret of Baldur's weakness.
• Big "NO!": She shouts this upon seeing Baldur stung with mistletoe. Later evolves to Rapid-Fire "No!" when he dies by Kratos's hands.
  • And again in Ragnarök, when she saw her Norn-induced hallucination of herself break Baldur's neck the same way Kratos did in the previous game while exclaiming that nobody hurts her son but her.
• Bling of War: Her strongest and final obtainable outfit in Ragnarok, the Queen's Armour, is an ornately designed suit made of gold and other high-quality materials, befitting its name.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Despite her reaction to Kratos killing her son, Kratos and Mimir don’t seem to disagree with her completely. She still cared enough about him to accept being killed by him rather than Kratos save her, like any normal parent would. She also brings up to Kratos that he still hasn’t told Atreus about the truth of his past, which is what Kratos immediately does, in order to explain that there’s still a chance for gods to learn from their mistakes. Kratos and Mimir already knew that killing her son against her pleas was a risk that they would have to take, and then deal with the consequences later. So long as it keeps her alive in a world that may still need her.
  Mimir: Well, guess we’re the bad guys now.
  Kratos: In her eyes, yes. But she could never make that choice.
  Atreus: I don’t understand... I know saving her was the right thing, but she seemed all evil at the end.
  Mimir: Not evil. You killed her son, lad. Her son. The death of a child is not something a parent gets over so easily.
  Atreus: But he was gonna kill her!
  Kratos: She would have died to see him live. Only a parent could understand.
  Atreus: So you’d let me kill you?
  Kratos: If it meant you would live... Yes.
  Mimir: Look, there was no easy choice, for anybody, brother. But I think we can all agree you did the right thing. The world’s a better place with Freya in it. Just... Give her time lads. She’ll come around.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: After regaining her warrior spirit she wields a sword in tandem with the ability to conjure a bow with rapid fire magic arrows.
• Bragging Rights Reward: In Ragnarök, Freya can gain a new outfit and a powerful new runic attack once you beat Gná... who can't be fought before the Playable Epilogue and is the strongest enemy in the game (so the player may already have done everything else in preparation), meaning that outside the Muspelheim arenas and maybe the hidden labour bosses, there will be few targets to use the move on.
• Character Development: While kind when Kratos and Atreus first meet her, Freya's unhealthy overprotectiveness towards her son Baldur leads to her being consumed with revenge against Kratos after he's forced to kill said son to save Freya's life. It takes getting trapped in her falcon form, then working with Kratos to free the part of her that Odin had trapped via Yggdrasil's roots, and finally a visit to the Norns for Freya to realize her faults, learn to let go of her hatred, and turn away from her self-destructive path to rekindle her friendship with Kratos.
• Composite Character: Her name is Freya, but she incorporates several traits of Frigg, such as her marriage to Odin and Baldur being her son. Mimir explains the confusion is on purpose: "Frigg" was Odin's pet name for Freya, and later he began to attribute her heroic deeds to "Frigg" as a way to conceal the fact a Vanir was behind those deeds. This is a case of Shown Their Work — there is real-life scholarly debate based on linguistics over if Freya and Frigg could just be the same deity distorted over time and retellings of the stories. "Freyja" is less a proper name than it is Old Norse for "the lady" (cf. modern German "Frau")—and note the similarity between Freyja's husband Odr and Frigg's husband Odin. There are also direct analogues to Frigg in other Germanic and Proto-Indo-European-descended pantheons, while Freyja only exists in Scandinavia. During the lead up to the final boss fight with Odin in Ragnarök, he still calls her "Frigg."
• Contrasting Replacement Character: To no fewer than four goddesses from the Greek era:
  • To Hera, who was likewise a queen among gods and married to her pantheon's Top God; unlike the non-combative Lady Drunk who used her stepson Hercules to do her dirty work, Freya is willing (if unable before Ragnarök) to fight and loves her biological son (albeit not entirely to either of their benefits).
  • To Aphrodite; both women are goddesses of love and sexuality, but unlike the promiscuous and undiscriminating Aphrodite, Freya is much more modest and expresses some surprise and awkwardness at being flirted with. Also, while Aphrodite lusted after Kratos, Freya's relationship with him is platonic.
    • Ultimately Freya seems to embody the motherly and protective aspects of being a Love Goddess, whereas Aphrodite exclusively represented the carnal and sensual side.^note Though Aphrodite was implied to be infected by the evil of Lust
  • To Athena, who was also a goddess of war and Kratos' ally turned enemy. Athena never presented herself as anything but a god, and she had Kratos' trust, whereas Freya initially hid her godly nature and was distrusted by Kratos because of it. Athena only got involved in battle as a last resort, while Freya proves in Ragnarök that she's a more than willing warrior. Athena was accidentally killed by Kratos when she intervened to save her father Zeus, while Freya's son Baldur was deliberately killed by Kratos when he tried to kill her. While Athena's turn to being Kratos' enemy was permanent, driven by selfish ambition, and arguably a sign of her true nature, Freya's was motivated by grief for her son, and she eventually accepted that Kratos wasn't truly responsible and reconciled with him; Athena's last appearance has her as a shadow of Kratos' past, but Freya's has her as an ally for the future.
  • To Persephone; both are powerful, intelligent goddesses who experienced unpleasant marriages to gods, but while Persephone's husband was genuinely loving (albeit misguided and oblivious to her feelings), Freya's was an abusive tyrant. Also, Persephone sought to cope with her problems by bringing down all of creation, Freya, though flawed, is much less self-centered and more compassionate. While Freya, not unlike Persephone, became Kratos' enemy outside of his primary conflict with their pantheon, Persephone used Kratos' daughter Calliope to manipulate him and died his enemy, while Freya was convinced to reconcile with Kratos partly due to hearing about Calliope.
• Crazy-Prepared: She has no idea until their chance meeting in the endgame that Kratos and Atreus are being menaced by Baldur, her own son, but still sees fit to destroy Atreus' mistletoe arrows on sight since they can harm Baldur. She also cursed Mimir to never speak of Baldur, either when Kratos brought his head to her or way back when Mimir learned Baldur's weakness (his memory gaps involving Baldur before the resurrection imply the former).
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Her Nice Girl tendencies don't stop her from mouthing off to Kratos.
  Kratos: [irritated after revived Mimir's head] We are leaving, boy. Now.
  Freya: [as Kratos and Atreus leave] You're welcome!
  Freya: [when Kratos later returns pounding at her door] I’m still a God, go away!
  • Ragnarök expands this side of hers, her sarcastic humor being particularly used on Mimir.
• Deuteragonist: Or more accurately, Tritagonist. Freya's character is given much more in-depth exploration in Ragnarök, eventually joining Kratos and Atreus in their quest after she lets go of her animosity towards them for what happened to Baldur. She then becomes a secondary AI-controlled partner for Kratos, switching places with Atreus at regular intervals for the rest of the story before permanently replacing him in the post-game after Atreus bids his father goodbye to set off on his own journey.
• Dying Declaration of Love: She attempts one as she allows Baldur to kill her before Kratos intervenes.

E-I

• Earthy Barefoot Character: Doesn't wear shoes at all and is shown to be quite in tune in nature.
• Exact Words: Tells her son when he begs for her to relieve the curse that "it doesn't work that way", knowing full well how to end the curse but not telling him.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Discussed during the Playable Epilogue if the player visits the underground passageway to Freya's house. Atreus asks Mimir if Freya may try to resurrect Baldur the same way she resurrected Mimir. Mimir notes that he's technically "not really alive" and expresses doubt that Freya would subject Baldur to such a state of undeath even to have him back.
  • Despite how ruthless she is in trying to kill Kratos and more than willing to push aside Atreus when he tries to get in the way, as Atreus notes, Freya could have actually easily killed him in the numerous times she attacked Kratos, which would have given her at least a measure of vengeance, but she never really followed through with it, even sparing him when he is alone, and it's actually seeing Atreus so angry he transformed into a bear that snaps her out of her vengeful wrath towards Kratos, having a visible look of concern as she watched Kratos struggle with Atreus to calm him down. She may hate Kratos, but the idea of killing Atreus just for the sake of spiting Kratos is too much even for her hatred. She also stops short of her rant at Kratos for believing he knew what was best for her when he reveals that he had a daughter before Atreus, even more so when he later reveals he killed her and his own family with his own hands.
  • In the beginning when she was trying to kill Kratos, her target was only Kratos and nobody else. She could've easily killed Atreus to get some manner of payback, yet ignored him, only defending herself against his attacks. She could’ve easily killed the wolves that were driving their sled to slow them down and making it easier for herself to kill Kratos, but went after him instead. Even when Atreus visits her on his own later on to try to recruit her, the worst she does is restrain him with her vines and while she threatens to kill him it's transparent that she can't bring herself to do so, she even patiently hears him out and, despite declining his offer, eventually lets him go without harm.
  • She expresses pure disgust at Ares' role in tricking Kratos to kill his wife and daughter when Kratos tells her about his past. At the point Kratos tells her this, she is still furious with him and using him as her personal killing machine until Kratos repays his "debt" to her. Notably, when Kratos first revealed that he had a daughter, she notes the past tense and refuses to dig deeper until he chooses to open up to her.
    Freya: [audibly shocked and sickened] That's... I can't imagine...
• Evil Costume Switch: Downplayed in Ragnarök. She still looks largely the same as she did in the 2018 game, according to a promotional poster of her. However, her arms are covered in wraps that hide her tattoos, her hair is more unkempt, and she has dark rings around her eyes. This signifies her Face–Heel Turn while also showing the depths of her despair from what happened after Kratos and Atreus killed Baldur.
• The Exile: Freya has been confined to Midgard because of the gods and when she momentarily entering Alfheim, she's forcefully brought back via a spell. The reveal of her deific nature means that she's been exiled from Asgard.
• Face–Heel Turn: She goes from being a friend and ally to the duo to their enemy after Kratos is forced to fight her son. When Kratos kills Baldur, Freya swears vengeance on him.
• Face Death with Dignity: When Baldur is choking her to death, her only response is to try to hug him and tell him that she loves him.
• Failed a Spot Check: She instantly notices and recognizes the mistletoe arrows in Atreus' quiver and burns them, but missed the mistletoe arrowhead Kratos used to bind Atreus' quiver strap tighter after it got loosed during the ogre fight up the mountain, which is visible right on his chest throughout the conversation, but she was clearly too distracted with the mistletoe arrows in his quiver to notice that smaller piece of it remaining. This ends up costing her dearly, as when Baldur tracks down the duo, there's a source of mistletoe present that he accidentally stabs himself with attacking Atreus, breaking his spell and rending him mortal just before a fight to the death between them.
  • An added layer is that Freya never notices the arrowhead a second time when Kratos brings Atreus back to her home when he falls ill. Kratos is gone for quite a while, but Freya again never notices the arrowhead despite Atreus being the focus of her attention the entire time and it being plainly visible on his chest, arguably making it a worse miss than the first time!
• Fallen Angel: In a sense, as she used to be Queen of the Valkyries before her exile. When Sigrun describes her fall, she says Odin took her "wings", adding more to the angel imagery. Ragnarok reveals that the loss of her wings was very literal, though they seem to have been sealed away as opposed to cut off.
• Fatal Flaw: Selfishness. She appears to be an All-Loving Hero at first, given how she has a lot of animal friends and helps Kratos and Atreus in return for nothing at all. However, learning about her backstory and the reasons she has for doing what she does shows that her real motives are anything but selfless. She made it so her son Baldur could Feel No Pain, but this caused severe Sanity Slippage in him when he grew desperate to feel something again. And even though he literally begged her to remove the curse, Freya refused, lying to him that there was no way to remove it when there really was a way — getting stabbed with something made of mistletoe. Freya did all of this claiming that she knew what was best for her boy. This comes back to bite her when Kratos intervenes to save Freya from Baldur's wrath, which gets him killed despite Freya's efforts.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Kratos and Freya start off on the wrong foot, although they do become friendlier with each other after she heals Atreus. Despite the violent turn their relationship takes at the end of the game and into the start of Ragnarök, Freya and Kratos, over the course of an alliance of first convenience, then against their mutual enemy Odin, find common ground and both grow as people to the point that, by the game's end, they're firm friends and even partners on the road to rebuilding the Nine Realms.
• Foil:
  • To Kratos; Freya is everything Kratos is not. She's a loving and warm woman, a powerful magician to Kratos's dour and somber male, as well as a pure warrior. Unlike Kratos who kills anyone willing to disrupt his and Atreus' path, the Freya is also an Actual Pacifist who wouldn't harm anything as she is Freya, the Vanir goddess of love. But the real disparities become apparent at the end. While both are loving parents to their respective children, her protectiveness toward Baldur compelled her to "bless" him with invulnerability, turning him mad and extremely resentful toward her while Kratos decides to give his son credit and entrusts him with the truth, leading Atreus to stop resenting Kratos. And finally, at the very end of the game, Kratos has tamed his former blinding rage while Freya succumbs to her wrath after her son is killed by Kratos.
  • In Ragnarök, she becomes hellbent on killing Kratos, and he is all too familiar with her situation. She lost her child, out for vengeance for the one responsible, and views their alliance as a Teeth-Clenched Teamwork at best. When Kratos tells her about Calliope is when she realizes Kratos had lost everything before heading to Midgard. However, she decides to temper her own anger towards Odin, which she does in the final battle against him.
• Friend to All Children: She has a soft spot for Atreus, whom he treats with something akin to motherly affection. Even after Kratos sours himself to her, she ignores their grudge when Atreus falls ill. Even after she develops a lethal hatred of his father, she still is fond of him in Ragnarök, though her motherly warmth is long gone. Though after letting go of her anger, her motherly attitude towards Atreus also returns. She even says to Kratos he reminds her of her own son and that he’s the best of the both of them. Kratos agrees.
• God Was My Co-Pilot: She seems like a normal witch that helps the heroes in their quest, but it's eventually revealed to be the Vanir Goddess Freya.
• Good Costume Switch: A subtle case. After reconciling with Kratos and joining him as an ally, Freya can continue to wear the same outfit, switch back to her original outfit, wear armor or Aesir robes if you want. The only defining difference is she loses the running makeup around her eyes and she looks a bit healthier.
• Green Thumb: She can summon roots to tie up enemies, and makes spells from plant ingredients in her home.
• Heel Realization:
  • In Ragnarök she's shocked a few times out of her desire for revenge. First the fact that Kratos refuses to fight her puzzles her. Later when he explains that fighting her leads to two outcomes he does not desire - either his death, or him having to live with the guilt of killing her, shakes her. Earlier seeing Atreus turn into a bear to save Kratos only for Kratos to jump and stop Atreus from harming her shocks her enough to knock the fight out of her.
  • Kratos telling her his past and the actual lengths he went through out of revenge is what helps solidifies Kratos' unwillingness to fight her and their ultimate reconciliation.
• Horrible Judge of Character: A rather tragic example in the first game's climax. Her attempt to reconcile with Baldur starts with telling him not to run from her, when he intends to do nothing of the sort. She's also adamant that she can reason with him and convince him to stop his attack, when it's very clear to everyone involved that he wants her dead. She even tries pleading with Atreus to stop Kratos, when Atreus is if anything encouraging him to fight for Freya's sake. Even when she allows him to strangle her, it's clear that she thinks allowing him to kill her will make him stop wanting to kill others. Kratos ends up having to step in and kill Baldur because he realizes that Baldur was too far gone and wouldn't stop with her death.
• Hot Goddess: Certainly easy on the eyes. Mimir even makes a point that, during the days when she was still the leader of the Vanir, she was renown throughout the nine realms for her "fertile beauty" and it's noted that part of the reason Odin agreed to the marriage was because he was taken with her looks.
• Hypocrite: She chastises Kratos for not grooming his wolves and letting their fur get matted, yet this is coming from the woman who let her pet tortoise Chaurli nearly starve and freeze to death during her Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• I Call It "Vera": Freya's sword is called "Sparrow's Bite". Her second sword that you can obtain in her Ragnarök sidequest "Freya's Missing Peace" is called Mardöll.
• Ignored Epiphany: Twice over.
  • She talks to Kratos about how she made serious mistakes when it came to her son and warns him not to repeat her mistakes with Atreus. However, she consistently acts as though her actions were still the right thing to do. Despite having the means to break the spell on Baldur, she refused to do so and immediately burned the mistletoe arrows that could have broken it for him. When the one arrow she missed does end up breaking the spell, she gives a Big "NO!".
  • And when her fears are eventually realized — her son dying a "needless death" — she doesn’t recognize that the needlessness of Baldur’s death is entirely her fault, as her constant meddling in his life drove him to the insanity that necessitated Kratos to kill him.
  • In Ragnarök she indicates that she wasn't wholly ignorant of Baldur's many shortcomings, but chose to ignore them because he was her son and layed all the blame Kratos when those shortcomings got Baldur killed. She finally accepts the truth once she speaks to the Norns, and they throw the fact that they gave her a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy due to her paranoia leading her to her controlling "help" of Baldur. By the end, she admits culpability in her son's madness.
  • In Ragnarök, she talks about how Odin had at one point asked her to put the same invulnerability spell on him, refusing after seeing what it did to Baldur's mind. This suggests she did at some point realise that what she did was wrong, but refused to undo the spell anyway.
• I Have Many Names: Introduced as the Witch of the Woods, she's soon revealed to be the goddess Freya, also known as "Frigg" by the Aesir. In Ragnarök, while attacking Kratos as a Valkyrie, she uses the alias "Vanadis", and her brother Freyr is revealed to call her "Nað" as an Affectionate Nickname.
• I'll Kill You!: After the final boss fight, she doesn't take it well when Kratos kills Baldur by snapping his neck, even though it was to stop Baldur from choking her to death.
  Freya: I will rain down every agony, every violation imaginable, upon you. I will parade your cold body from every corner of every realm, and feed your soul to the vilest filth in Hel! That is my promise!
• Immortal Immaturity: Lacks the empathy to comprehend that her overly-desperate attempts to protect her son only drives him further away from her, and that any kind of parental love she tries to express to her son falls flat on its face thanks to her refusal to even listen to her boy or recognize his pain.
• Ineffectual Death Threats: Though she promises to inflict every possible violation on Kratos and parades his corpse for all the Nine Realms to see in retribution for Baldur's death, she really isn't capable of carrying out such a threat due to Odin's curse preventing her from harming or killing anyone under any circumstances. As such, she leaves with Baldur's body in her arms rather than do anything at the moment. However, a postgame conversation reveals she used to the be the Queen of the Valkyries, and that she's looking to retrieve her equipment...
• It's All About Me: Has shades of it. She cast a spell on Baldur to make him immortal and invulnerable, but the side effect was that lost the ability to physically feel anything and went insane. Despite how miserable Baldur is in this state, Freya repeatedly refuses to break the spell because she doesn't want him to die; she even comes right out and admits that her actions are driven by her own needs and desires rather than Baldur's.

J-R

• Knight Templar Parent: She wants her son to remain alive, and is even willing to let him kill her if that's what he wants, but she absolutely refuses to consider that Baldur himself doesn't want invulnerability (at least, not the way she gave it) and that her invulnerability spell was essentially torturing him for over a century with him being unable to escape, even through death. And in the end, her promise of revenge on Kratos ignores that while Kratos may have done the actual deed, it was Freya herself who turned Baldur into a mad beast impervious to reason, thus forcing Kratos to put him down before he could do any more damage.
• Lack of Empathy: She "blessed" Baldur with invulnerability to any threat, rendering him effectively immortal, but in doing so prevented him from feeling literally anything else; like heat, cold, taste, pleasure, and pain. When he begged her to undo the spell, she outright lied to his face and told him "It doesn't work like that, Son." This lasted for over a hundred years, and ultimately ends in Baldur's tragic demise. Growing out of this mindset forms one of the major crux of Freya's Character Development in Ragnarok.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Her name and identity, which are treated like twists in 2018, are given away through Ragnorok's marketing, making it hard to talk about her without spoiling the prior game. Hell, not even five minutes into Ragnarok she's trying to kill Kratos for Baldur's death.
• Leitmotif: Her theme, "Witch of the Woods", a somber and mysterious motif, signifying her mystical nature, as well as hopeful, showing her kindness towards Kratos and Atreus. It can also be heard in "Mimir" and "Salvation", the latter having a more menacing version of it to represent her revenge.
• Looks Like Cesare: In Ragnarok, after she has lost her son, Freya looks gaunt, deathly pale, unkept, and has deeply shadowed eyes marred with smudges and tear lines.
• Loophole Abuse: She was cursed by Odin not to use her magics to harm anyone, not even to protect herself. But there's no stopping her from using her magic to try and stop Kratos and Baldur from fighting, even if that means reanimating a Frost Giant, or even summoning mooks to outright attack Kratos.
• Lost in Transmission: When she's being expunged from Alfheim, she tries to give Kratos and Atreus a warning regarding their quest to retrieve the realm's Light, but she's blasted out and cut off before she can finish ("be very careful not to-").
• Love Makes You Dumb: Her love for Baldur is so strong that she's blinded to the fact that what she did to him (removing Baldur's senses so that he cannot feel anything) in order to 'protect' him caused a century of agony for Baldur. Even then, she still tries to reconcile with him even though it's clear that Baldur is beyond reasoning and is actively trying to kill her. When Baldur is killed by Kratos, she swears vengeance upon him even though he did it to protect her, just because she loved her son that much. It's even lampshaded by Mimir, who says that love can make people do stupid things, and Kratos admits that if he was in her place, he would've let his own son kill him if it meant Atreus would live.
• Malicious Misnaming: In Asgard, some call her "Frigg", the name Odin chose for her to diminish her identity as a Vanir god and affirm her as his wife, thus claiming a measure of credit for her accomplishments. Odin does so casually (albeit that it was originally his pet name for her), while Heimdall takes special glee in taunting her with it.
• Mama Bear:
  • Towards her son, even if he is trying to kill her, she still loves him and will do anything to protect him — even taking control of a giant's corpse to fight against Kratos or willingly surrendering her own life to Baldur in order to make him feel better. She vows revenge against Kratos when he kills Baldur.
  • Becomes this towards Atreus, especially once it becomes clear he's being targeted by the Aesir. In Ragnarok she can't bring herself to truly hurt him despite her rage towards he and his father. She also threatens to kill Odin when he threatens Atreus' life and fights in Ragnarök to protect him (and get her vengeance). By the end of the game, she's all but adopted Atreus as her son, which he seems perfectly happy about.
• My Beloved Smother: She made her son invincible, against his wishes. Being unable to be harmed by anything extended to not being able to feel anything made him go crazy. She admits that what she did was wrong and wants to make amends to it somehow but she can't bring herself to actually break the curse.
  Freya's Son: You just can't help yourself, can you, mother? No matter what I do or say, you won't STOP INTERFERING IN MY LIFE!
• My God, What Have I Done?: Eventually realizes Baldur's madness and death was entirely her fault and she was projecting her guilt on Kratos to make herself feel better.
• Never My Fault: Downplayed but present; after Kratos kills Baldur to defend her, Freya swears vengeance upon him. While it's clear to her that she played a large hand in making Baldur as insane as he became, she refused his pleas to free him from his immortality and constantly ignored the pain he suffered through thanks to her selfishness. Instead of accepting responsibility for her hand in her own son's death, she pins all the blame on Kratos, much like how Kratos would blame everyone else for his problems in his younger years. Freya's Character Development in Ragnarök revolves around overcoming this quality; her encounter with the Norns, who show Freya in no uncertain terms that she holds the most accountability for Baldur's death allows her to fully accept responsibility for her son's fate and try to be a better person going forward. This is also discussed in the post-game with Gna, whose journal talks about all of the ways that Freya constantly plays the victim to absolve herself of wrongs, whether it's with Odin or Baldur.
• Nice Girl: Freya is remarkably friendly towards Kratos and Atreus despite they having harmed her friend, she doesn't hold much ill will against them and provides help for them to proceed in their quest. She also warns Kratos about the risks of being a foreigner god in the Aesir' territory since they don't like outsiders. Atreus takes an instant liking to her, though Kratos is wary as always. Her kindness evaporates when Kratos kills Baldur, as she vows to make him pay for her son's death. Her kindness does, however, return after she admits to her own guilt, forgives Kratos in full and decides to help the realms that are being ravaged by Ragnarok.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: The intro to Ragnarök is using her restored Valkyrie wings to nearly kill Kratos without warning. Dialogue with Atreus shows that this isn't the first time she's ambushed them.
  KRAAATOOOS!!!
• The Not-Love Interest: She's beautiful, kind, and capable, very much like Kratos' second wife Faye, and she has a motherly fondness for Atreus, and she helps the heroes out throughout the first game, even being crucial in saving Atreus' life when he falls ill. But she never displays attraction to Kratos, and he's still too busy mourning Faye to show interest in Freya. After Kratos is forced to kill her son Baldur, Freya swears vengeance on him, and she spends much of the first half of Ragnarok trying to murder Kratos, but they're able to patch things up over the course of the game, with Kratos opening up about the deaths of his first wife and daughter, and Freya slowly accepting that Baldur's death was his own (and her) fault. In several chapters, including the Playable Epilogue, they travel and fight together. But even with the new closeness that their renewed relationship brings, the two only treat ever each other as Fire-Forged Friends and True Companions.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: She becomes uncharacteristically angry upon seeing Atreus' mistletoe arrows. It's supposed to clue in the player of her connection to Baldur as the only thing capable of removing his invincibility.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: During the final showdown, Freya tries to soothe Baldur, remarking that she knows that "how he feels hasn't changed." Not the best thing to say to a guy who's gone insane from a hundred years of sensory deprivation because of her actions.
• Ornamental Weapon: Freya's sword is called "Sparrow's Bite" and is mainly worn as a reminder of her warrior spirit, since Odin had cursed her into a life of pacifism out of spite with his magic.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Learning of a prophecy that foretold her son's needless death, Freya did everything in her power to ensure that it couldn't happen, and in doing so, guaranteed it; the spell that made Baldur immortal deprived him of all sensation, driving him to madness and vengeful rage against Freya. Once his spell was broken, Baldur tried to kill her, only to die at Kratos' hands when the Spartan came to Freya's defense.
• Parents as People: Her transgressions against Baldur, blind to his resentment until it was too late, were all done to ensure his safety against a needless death, and it tragically became a self-fulfilling prophecy. She fully acknowledges how selfish her attempts were, but refuses to rectify them, and tries to advise Kratos to avoid her mistakes by telling Atreus the truth of his nature before it permanently harms him or their relationship.
• Parental Substitute: Tries to act like one towards Atreus when they first met, to Kratos' obvious annoyance as he tends to get excited to see her. Sadly, it doesn't last when Kratos kills Baldur permanently, and their relationship becomes sour in Ragnarök. Luckily, they rebuild their relationship once she becomes Kratos' willing ally.
• Pet the Dog: Even at her most villainous, she is unable to harm Atreus despite him playing a major role in Baldur's death.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: She is willing to let her son kill her in revenge for what she did to him, but Kratos saves her at the end. She doesn't appreciate it though, given it meant the death of her son. After their reconciliation in Ragnarök, Kratos admits that the choice between life and death should have been Freya's alone; he doesn't regret saving her, but he does regret denying her the choice.
  Freya: If that alone will make you whole, if seeing me dead will make this right... I won't stop you.
• Promoted to Playable: At least in the sense that she becomes a companion of Kratos with multiple weapons, runic specials, and a full skill tree in Ragnarök. In fact, it's she, not Atreus, who accompanies Kratos in the post game, as Atreus has set off alone to find the giants who went into hiding.
• Redemption Demotion: In Ragnarök she gives Kratos a tough fight as a valkyrie, but once she sets aside her grudge and joins him as an ally she's about as strong as Atreus mechanically, which isn't quite "Queen of the Valkyries" strong.
• Related in the Adaptation: This Freya is said to be a Vanir deity like in Norse myths, but is also made Baldur's mother when she had little interaction with him in the original myths. This makes sense given that Frigg, who is Baldur's mother in the myths, and Freya are the same person in God of War.
• Retired Badass: She used to be none other than the Queen of the Valkyries herself. Unfortunately after she was forcibly retired by Odin, who took away her fighting ability and spirit. However, Mimir comments that she might broker a deal with Odin to get her fighting abilities back to seek revenge on Kratos.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: While arguing with him in Ragnarök, Freya assumes that Kratos could never understand the pain of losing a child, only for him to respond that he absolutely does.

S-Z

• Sadly Mythtaken: Zigzagged. Some aspects in this depiction pull from other characters in the real-world myths. For instance, in myth Odin animated Mimir's head, not her, and her characterization as a passive Nice Girl is inaccurate as well — she may be a love goddess, but she was associated with war just as much as Odin. However, the traits she gets from Frigg don't necessarily make this depiction wrong; see Composite Character above.
• Secret-Keeper: Maybe. Mimir mentions the legend of Hrimthur who built the walls of Asgard but had built in a weakness. He allegedly told Freya the nature of said weakness but Freya hasn't told Odin nor anyone.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: As the Norns bluntly explain to her, the only reason the prophecy of Baldur's death came to pass is because Freya herself was too selfish to let him go and placed the invulnerability curse on him. She killed her own son, because sooner or later he'd have encountered mistletoe by whatever chance (indeed, it's a complete accident when he does get hit by some) and the insanity she drove him to would lead to him picking a fight with someone willing and able to kill him. Kratos simply confirmed what she'd already done.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Subverted at the last moment; her allowing Baldur to kill her wouldn't have meant anything aside from her being dead, since it wouldn't grant Baldur any peace, and he'd made it clear that he would have tried to kill Kratos and Atreus afterwards anyway, so he'd probably have only lived a few more minutes before the two killed him in self-defense. Kratos's journal in Ragnarok explains that this is why he doesn't regret saving Freya, despite knowing that she was okay with Baldur killing her.
• Sherlock Scan: She is able to tell that Kratos is a god just by looking at him. That is because she is a goddess herself.
• Ship Tease: In Valhalla, Mimir suggests that Kratos and Freya have feelings for each other and thinks they'd make a good couple, though Kratos is less certain.
• Solitary Sorceress: She lives by herself in a house under a giant turtle. She does have a friend in the form of a boar named Hildsvini, who isn't really a boar but a shapeshifter stuck in this form.
• Spanner in the Works: Subverted; when she sees Atreus carrying mistletoe arrows, she burns them as they can remove Baldur's invulnerability. As Atreus is able to hit Baldur with ordinary arrows at least once before their final battle, if he'd kept those arrows, Baldur would have gone down a lot sooner. However, since Kratos used a head of the mistletoe to fix Atreus' strap, it led to Baldur getting cut by it, removing his invulnerability and rendering Freya's actions pointless.
• Statuesque Stunner: She's about as tall as Kratos (who is 6'6'') and is an attractive woman.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: She believes that explaining her intentions and telling her son she loves him is enough for him to forgive her. Baldur, on the other hand, rejects her and still wants revenge for what she's done to him. This is nowhere near enough to make up for Baldur's suffering.
  Freya: I've made mistakes, I know, but you're free now. You have what you want. Try to find forgiveness, and we can build something new—
  Baldur: [No. No, we can't. Because I will never forgive you. You still need to pay for the lifetime that you stole from me!
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: How she views working with Kratos in Ragnarök. She makes it apparent in conversations that she views the arrangement as a temporary convenience, and is still very much contemplating killing Kratos once it has run its course. As their shared quest progresses however, he gradually manages open up to her about his past, telling her about the loss of family that he himself has suffered, and ultimately the magnitude of his revenge and the emptyness it left him with in the aftermath. Once they sever the spell binding her to Midgard, she decides to redirect the source of her rage to someone who actually deserves it, Odin.
• The Fog of Ages: While putting to rest the lingering spirit of one of her fellow Vanir, she laments to Kratos that she was once able to recognize all of her people, but can't any longer.
  "Sometimes I wonder if gods live too long."
• The Unapologetic: Though she clearly expresses regret at what she did to Baldur, as well as all the pain and suffering he endured because of her selfishness, she never once apologizes for any of it, preferring to explain her intentions and hope for the best.
• Took a Level in Badass: In the 2018 game, she was a Friend to All Living Things who helped out Kratos and Atreus and expected nothing in return. In Ragnarök, she's capable of flying as a hawk with Voluntary Shapeshifting, and even attacking someone with a sword. Too bad that someone is Kratos, as her desire for vengeance is so strong that she's devoted her existence to killing him.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In Ragnarök, grief over her son and her rage towards Kratos have made Freya bitter, antagonistic, and violent. Even when Atreus, whom Freya treats as largely innocent of his father's actions, tries to talk peace, Freya refuses to compromise, showing the boy little of her previous warmth, even if she is unwilling to kill him to avenge herself upon Kratos.
• Took a Level in Kindness: By the end of Ragnarök, Freya has undergone a full character arc; having started the game fueled by rage and vengeance (not unlike Kratos himself in his younger years), her conversations with Kratos during their alliance of convenience and their life-changing experience with the Norns cause her to see the error of her ways, and she becomes a much more selfless, empathetic person than she was in even the previous game.
• Ungrateful Bastard: While her grief towards her dead son is understandable, she vows to make Kratos pay for Baldur's death, even though he did it specifically to save her and because Baldur was far too gone off the deep end to be talked out of it. It is noted in Ragnarök however, that Freya made the fully conscious choice to die at Baldur's hand rather than defend herself or ask for aid. Her lack of gratitude at Kratos saving her life at the cost of her son's when she knowingly chose for it to be the other way around is understandable in this context, and Kratos himself acknowledges it, even if he doesn't regret killing Baldur or saving her, since Baldur's insanity would make her death a Senseless Sacrifice as he'd have to be killed anyway when he went after Atreus again.
• Unperson: Freya was hit by this from Odin's part. As a couple, Odin gave her the nickname Frigg and ended up turning it into a brand new fictitious character who would be attributed Freya's every accomplishments for Asgard. Mimir explains that Odin didn't want a Vanir god to be presented as this useful for Asgard.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: She selfishly made Baldur invulnerable without a care in the world how he felt about it. If she hadn't, Baldur might still be the Nice Guy he is in the original myths instead of a maddened Blood Knight.
  • Her actions also directly lead to Baldur's death. If she hadn't, Baldur would never have gone looking for a Jötunn to tell him how to break the curse and would never have dragged Kratos into the mix. Kratos and Atreus would've found their way to Jötunheim without his interference since they would've met Mimir anyway, and Baldur would never become Ax-Crazy enough that Kratos had no choice but to kill him. One's sympathy for her can diminish drastically when they remember that everything that happened was her own damn fault.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Twice over in Ragnarök. Part of what facilitates her Heel–Face Turn is her finally realizing that even if she does manage to kill Kratos, it won't bring back Baldur or heal the pain his death caused her. And at the end of Ragnarök despite having spent her entire life waiting for a chance to take revenge on Odin for all he's done to her in the end she recognizes that, with him conclusively defeated and no longer a threat to her or anyone else, further hurting him won't bring her any peace.
• Walking Spoiler: That she is the goddess Freya, the mother of Baldur, and the fact that Baldur dies makes it hard to talk about her at length.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: She blessed Baldur with Complete Immortality that drove him to the point of insanity. Turns out, it was more than just a means of preventing his death. It was also to prevent the coming of Ragnarök.
• What You Are in the Dark: Regardless of her hatred towards Kratos and being more than willing to push aside Atreus when he tries to get in her way, Freya actually has more than enough chances to kill the son of the man who had killed her own son, thus enacting her vengeance in a way sure to make Kratos suffer, but never follows through because as Atreus points out, she is better than that and regardless of her initial hatred towards Kratos, the affection she had for Atreus was not gone: She could have easily went after Atreus instead of Kratos to hurt him when she was chasing them in the forest, stabbed or knocked him away from the sled Kratos was using, but she barely even bothers to lay a hand on him, only hitting him once to stab Kratos. When Atreus went to meet her alone, without Kratos, he was obviously no match for her, which she even calls him out for as she easily restrains him with magic, and yet despite threatening to kill him in vengeance for Baldur's death, she releases him and is even willing to talk with him before she gets angry and forces him to leave. And in her final fight with Kratos, she had Kratos straight where she wanted him, but once Atreus gets angry and transforms into a bear, trying to kill her until Kratos stopped him, both Kratos and Atreus were wide open and yet she can't bring herself to go through with her revenge.
• You Can't Fight Fate: She made her son invulnerable because she learned he'd die a meaningless death before Ragnarök. However, in doing so she stripped him of his ability to feel anything and set him down the road to his final confrontation a century later with Kratos, leading to his completely preventable death.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Her curse keeps her trapped in Midgard and is unable to return home to Vanaheim and be among the rest of her people, The Vanir Gods, who all resent her for supposedly betraying them. She can't even set the record straight if a Vanir ever arrives in Midgard, since Odin prevents all gateway access to Vanaheim from being opened at all. All she has left is an enchanted window portal built into her new home in Midgard that allows her to see one square area of Vanaheim, but unable to interact with it at all. It gets subverted after Kratos helps her lift Odin's curse.
• Your Makeup Is Running: She has noticeable tear lines below her eyes after Kratos kills Baldur, which she keeps in Ragnarök to show her continuing despair over his death. It's only after she comes to term with her grief that the tear marks go away.

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