Characters / MCU: Odin Borson

Main Character Index > Other Individuals and Organizations > Cosmic > Asgard and the Nine Realms (Odin Borson | Loki Laufeyson | Loki Laufeyson (Variant L1130) | Sylvie Laufeydottir | Other Loki Variants) | Knowhere | Nova Empire | Sovereign | Skrulls | Eternals

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Spoilers for all works set prior to the end of Avengers: Endgame are unmarked.

Allfather Odin Borson

"A wise king never seeks out war, but he must always be ready for it."

Species: Asgardian

Citizenship: Asgardian

Affiliation(s): Asgard

Portrayed By: Anthony Hopkins

Voiced By: Bernard Dhéran (European French, Thor), Jean-Pierre Moulin (European French, other entries), Gabriel Pingarrón (Latin-American Spanish dub), Camilo García (European Spanish dub), Jin Urayama (Japanese dub), Guy Nadon (Canadian French dub), Isaac Bardavid (Brazilian Portuguese dub)

Appearances: Thor | Thor: The Dark World | Thor: Ragnarok | Loki ^note  Archive footage from Thor: Ragnarok | Thor: Love and Thunder ^note  Archive footage from Thor: Ragnarok

"We are not gods! We're born, we live, we die, just as humans do."

Lord of the Aesir and King of Asgard. After Thor starts a war with the Jötunns, he exiles him in hopes of teaching him humility. Upon a particularly strenuous conversation with Loki, his old body goes into the "Odinsleep". Loki promptly takes advantage of this and starts scheming.

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A-I

• Action Dad: Odin is not only the warrior king of Asgard, but he is also the father of Hela, Thor, and Loki.
• Actually Pretty Funny: In Ragnarok, he's actually more impressed that Loki managed to trap him on Earth than anything else, praising his adoptive son with belief that Frigga, who taught Loki magic, would be proud. His chuckle as Thor tells Loki to remove his magic just says it all.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: In both Marvel comics and Norse Mythology, Odin sacrificed his right eye in exchange for wisdom. In the MCU, he lost it at the hands of Laufey during a battle.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: In the comics, Odin had blond hair during his younger years. In the MCU, he had dark hair instead.
• Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed. While the MCU still establishes him as the strongest being in the Nine Realms (with only Thor showing the potential to surpass him), it also shows that he's long since past his prime and is never seen going into action in the present day, whereas he still kicks a lot of asses in the comics on a regular basis. A lot of his known feats, such as sealing away Hela and defeating Surtur while the latter was in his prime, are never showcased onscreen either.
• Adoption Diss: Played for Drama in The Dark World. During his trial, Loki attempts to appeal for his birthright as a son of the king and Odin retorts that his birthright (as an abandoned child whom Odin adopted) was to die.
• Advertised Extra: Played straight in Ragnarok. He gets a prominent spot on the poster but dies in the first act, and his only subsequent appearances are in a pair of visions Thor has later in the movie.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head:
  • In a flashback scene of Thor, Odin caresses the head of the abandoned baby Loki to make him stop crying.
  • Just before he goes to take care of the prison skirmish in Thor: The Dark World, Odin gently puts his hand on his wife Frigga's cheek.
• Amazon Chaser: Implied. His wife is Frigga, a Lady of War, and he ships his son with Sif, another Lady of War.
• Ambiguous Situation: The end of The Dark World left it vague as to whether Loki killed him or not. The first stinger of Doctor Strange reveals that he actually is alive, and Ragnarok shows that he was living in a New York retirement home that Loki had banished him to. At some point, though, he left and ended up in Norway (possibly as a result of the retirement home being demolished).
• Ancestral Weapon: Is wielded by the ruler of Asgard, so it passed on from ruler to ruler.
• And I Must Scream: When he goes into the Odinsleep, Odin is perfectly capable of hearing and seeing what is going on around him, but powerless to do anything about it until the sleep is over.
• And Starring: "And Anthony Hopkins as Odin."
• Anger Born of Worry: Odin is furious at Thor when he foolishly goes to Jötunheim to pick a fight with the Frost Giants, which nearly gets him, his brother, and his friends killed, not to mention nearly starting a war.
• Angrish: Odin just growls loudly at Loki when he tries to speak up for his brother after returning from Jötunheim. Loki gets the message.
• Angst Coma: Downplayed. Odin was already close to the Odinsleep, but he eventual collapses from the stress of banishing Thor and arguing with Loki after revealing the truth about his real heritage.
• The Atoner: It's implied that Odin's current status as protector of peace across the Nine Realms is to make up for his past as a pillaging warmonger who obtained his power through violence and bloodshed. Certainly, it's worth noting that his key message to Thor is that "a wise king never seeks out war" (though must always be ready for it).

• Bad Liar: It's lampshaded by Frigga when she observes in The Dark World, "You've never been a very good liar." It explains why it's easy for her to manipulate him—Odin has no idea that his wife has totally disregarded his royal authority and has been visiting Loki's cell for the past year.
• Barrier Maiden: Is this, surprisingly enough, because his death is what allows Hela to break free from her imprisonment.
• Battle Couple: He and Frigga work together in protecting Asgard from the Dark Elves.
• Big Damn Heroes: Shows up just in time to save Thor and his friends from the Frost Giants near the beginning. Granted, it is only one hero, but he is on a horse at the time. A horse with eight legs no less. Then he does it a second time to save Thor and Loki from falling into a wormhole.
• Big Good: He is the king of Asgard and the highest authority against Laufey, the king of Jötunheim. The fragile peace between them is the catalyst of the plot of Thor. However, he is not without his flaws.
• Big Sleep: The Odinsleep. Ultimately subverted. It's a power recharge, not death.
• Boom Stick: Gugnir can fire energy blasts.
• Broken Pedestal: Loki and Thor loved and admired him for centuries, but as his lies about Loki's parentage and the conquest of the Realm cause them both to become disillusioned with him.
• Calling the Young Man Out: Rakes Thor over the coals for nearly starting a war with Jotunheim in Thor; in an astonishing display of arrogance, Thor actually tries Calling the Old Man Out for perceived cowardice, only for Odin to reply with a full-blown "Reason You Suck" Speech that ends with Thor being stripped of his powers and banished to Earth.
  Odin: You are a vain, greedy, cruel boy!
• Casual Interstellar Travel: Gungnir controls the Bifröst.
• Celebrity Paradox: Nick Fury mentions Hannibal Lecter in Captain Marvel (2019) when the Kree put a muzzle on Goose. Anthony Hopkins played Lecter from the 1980s to the early 2000s.
• Chewing the Scenery: Whenever Odin gets angry and raises his voice. Magnificent in a way that only Anthony Hopkins can deliver.
• Cool Horse: Sleipnir is Odin's personal steed since the time of the Asgardian wars of conquest and expansion.
• Cool Helmet: Odin's helmet is a mixture of his sons' helmets: It has two wings and two horns.
• Cool Old Guy: Sure, he sits on his throne most of the time and never really goes into action, but if he decided to use his power, he would make Thanos look like a street thug in comparison.
• Clever Crows: Hugin and Munin serve as Odin's spies in The Avengers and watch over Odin during the Odinsleep.
• Crusading Widower: After Frigga's death in The Dark World, he is willing to sacrifice Asgard's entire army and risk countless civilian deaths to avenge her.
• Dead Person Conversation: In Ragnarok, he appears to Thor in a vision during the Final Battle to share his wisdom.
• Demoted to Extra: He plays a much smaller role in Ragnarok, only appearing briefly both alive near the beginning and posthumously near the end (not counting the parts where Loki is impersonating him) but in a still plot-critical role.
• Despair Event Horizon: Succumbs to it when Frigga is killed in The Dark World. He throws aside all the virtues he preached about to Thor in favor of bloody revenge. He even drives Heimdall to go against him!
• Determinator:
  • Has been putting off the Odinsleep for quite a while. In the opening for Thor, he takes an ice mace from Laufey in the face and continues fighting anyway. He doesn't even stop seeking treatment for his eye until after the Frost Giants are driven back to Jötunheim.
  • Takes this to a dark place when he's strategizing how to get vengeance for his wife. When Thor says that his plan to fight Malekith's forces in Asgard until he stands victorious on a pile of Asgardian and Dark Elf corpses only makes him as bad as Malekith, Odin responds that his will to win is what separates them (as Malekith doing something similar was purely out of cowardice and trying to run away from battle). While he is probably right, his determination would ruin the kingdom.
• Deus Exit Machina: As the most powerful being in the Nine Realms, Odin could probably solve most of the problems in the Thor movie by himself without much effort. However, each film finds some excuse to prevent him from doing so.
  • In the first movie, Odin has put off the Odinsleep for too long and is forced to go to sleep to rejuvenate his powers halfway through the movie, which leaves the way open for Loki to take power and for Laufey to attempt to assassinate him in his sleep.
  • In Thor: The Dark World, Odin is apparently still weakened from having used dark energy to get Thor to Earth in The Avengers (2012), so he doesn't participate in the fights against the Marauders and he's not as effective in repelling the Dark Elf invasion as he would be under normal circumstances.
  • In Thor: Ragnarok, Odin dies at the beginning of the film, thus leaving no Asgardian powerful enough to defeat Hela.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: The original Ragnarok myth had Odin being swallowed in battle by Fenris (Fenrir), not dying of old age on Earth (Midgard).
• Disabled Deity: Just like in Norse Mythology, he is missing an eye.
• Disappears into Light: Upon death, his body turns into motes of light that disappear shortly after. In the rendition of this scene in Ragnarok's credits, against the blazing sun it looks like he turns into ashes.
• Dying Declaration of Love: A platonic example, but he tells his sons that he loves them both shortly before dying.
• Elderly Immortal: Odin looks like an elderly human, but he's actually a thousands-year-old Human Alien.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids: Odin, as per Hela, was a Galactic Conqueror and tyrant who butchered whole civilizations, and plundered their wealth to build the splendour of Asgard. He had a Heel Realization, banished Hela, and raised Thor and Loki in the hope that they would become better than both Hela, and him.
• The Extremist Was Right: Odin imposed peace on the Nine Realms through bloody conquest, destroys the entire civilization of his enemies, and regularly intervenes militarily to maintain that peace (though avoids it, where possible). Yet, without Asgard's constant policing the realms have been shown to quickly descend into chaos with wars spreading and the strong preying on the weak. The extreme methods he employs are often necessary because Asgard's enemies are that dangerous.
  • Tellingly, soon after he's dead and Asgard is destroyed in Thor 3, Thanos seized the opportunity to start gathering the Infinity Stones by attacking the Asgardian refugees.
• Eye Scream: Loses his right eye to Laufey in Thor's opening. There are few shots of Odin with a gaping, bloodied hole where his right eye should be. The moment he loses an eye is also shown on screen although it is not graphic (he appears to lose it in a battle, which does not correspond to mythological origins where he willingly gives it up to gain knowledge and wisdom).
• Eyepatch After Time Skip: Odin is seen with two eyes (or a dead, patch-less eye) in flashbacks.
• Eyepatch of Power: Odin, natch. He even has different patches for different situations — a golden armored one for battle, for instance.
• Face Death with Dignity: He is quite content to spend his last months of life wandering the Norwegian countryside on Earth, and seems barely bothered by it by the time his sons find him.
• Fantastic Racism: He doesn't like the idea of his son being fascinated by a mortal. He has a point (Midgardians only live a small fraction of the life of an Asgardian), but he's really a dick about it. He's also pretty genocidal toward the Dark Elves, following in his father's footsteps.
• Fatal Flaw: As pointed out in Thor: Ragnarok, he kept hiding his less admirable past actions until they blew up on everyone. Specifically, Loki's true parentage until he learns it in the worst way and Hela's existence leaving everyone unprepared for her return.
• Forgot About His Powers: Although he removed the powers of his son Thor when he banished him to Midgard, he apparently didn't think of doing the same for his daughter Hela when he banished her to Niflheim. Had he done so, many deaths could have been prevented, including those of the Valkyries. It's also possible he learned to remove powers because of that slaughter.
• Former Bigot: In the past, he had been a vicious imperialist and an avid believer in Asgardian supremacy. After his Heel Realization, he leaves this behind but has his relapses, such as likening the human Jane to a goat or raising his adoptive Frost Giant son to believe that Frost Giants are inherently evil.
• Galactic Conqueror: Thor: Ragnarok revealed that he used to be this before changing his ways. Hela even noted how she used to be his favored tool of conquest and lamented that such glorious days were long gone.
• God-Emperor: Odin is the Top God of Asgard and rules over the Nine Realms that he conquered in the past.
• A God I Am Not: When Loki asserts that the Asgardians are like Gods compared to Humans, Odin succinctly declares that they should not act Holier Than Thou in spite of their advantages as a species. However, this does not stop him from acting superior to Jane when she comes to the realm, probably because he feels that she's not good enough/too mortal for his son, more than anything else.
• Gold and White Are Divine: He wears various combinations of silver and gold and has white hair. Notably, his sons each appropriate one of the two colors for their own outfits.
• The Good King: Taking care of his people is his number one priority and his anger at Thor is based on his fear that his son cares more for war than for them. In The Dark World his despair drives him into the very Blood Knight behavior he scorned.
• Good Parents: Thor shows that Odin loves both his sons, even if Loki is an adopted Frost Giant, a racial enemy, and gives Thor a much needed object-lesson to teach him the value of kindness and compassion. His main failure is being too proud of his sons to teach them the lessons they needed to learn until it was too late. This leads to some less than stellar parenting decisions later on, to say nothing of his relationship with Hela.
• Grandpa God: Odin's role as the Top God of Asgard is expressed through his white beard signifying the wisdom he has gained from eons of experience and learning. He also goes by the title "Allfather," which dates him a bit.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: Has an epic one with Thor during the banishment scene in Thor. When Loki tries to intervene, Odin even growls at him to shut him up.
• Handicapped Badass: His missing eye doesn't get in the way of his ass-kicking.
• Happily Married: To his wife Queen Frigga.
• Heavy Sleeper: Nothing can wake him from the Odinsleep once it begins, although he still sees and hears everything going on around him.
• Heroic BSoD: Odin goes into one, since Loki's discovery of his ancestry and consequent outburst are the final push into Odinsleep. Frigga points out that he's been putting off the Odinsleep longer than he should have, and several days' worth of... extreme stress and high power expenditure finally pushed him past his limits.
• Horseback Heroism: Odin arrives on his eight-legged horse Sleipnir to save his sons and their friends on Jotunheim.
• Horse of a Different Color: Odin, true to the myth, is seen at one point riding Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse.
• Holy Halo: In Ragnarok, the Asgardian frescoes he has commissioned as part of official propaganda depict him with it. However, his past sins hardly make him worthy of one, even as he tried to change.
• Hyper-Awareness: His powers allow him to sense danger from great distance. During Thor's coronation ceremony, Odin realizes in the middle of his speech that three Frost Giants have just infiltrated the Vault, several floors below him.
• Hypocrite: He admonishes Loki's way of thinking that Asgardians are not looking down on humanity as inferior from a place of godhood, yet scoffs at a mortal within Asgard as though she were a being that had no place among higher life forms such as themselves.
• I Am Not Your Father: Finally admits to Loki that he is an adopted Frost Giant when Loki confronts Odin about his changing skin colour in the vault.
• Identity Amnesia: The spell Loki casts on him offscreen in The Dark World is implied to make Odin forget who he is. As shown in Ragnarok, Loki then sent him off to a retirement home on Earth, where Odin eventually broke free of the spell.
• I Didn't Tell You Because You'd Be Unhappy: In Thor, Odin states this is why he kept Loki's adoption from him since he knew Loki would hate the knowledge of being a Frost Giant, the sworn enemies of Asgard. Loki went mad when he finds this out.
  Loki: You could have told me what I was from the beginning! Why didn't you?!
  Odin: You're my son. I only wanted to protect you from the truth.
• I Did What I Had to Do: In a deleted scene of the first film, Frigga confronts Odin about his banishment of their son. However, Odin tells her that even if Thor's absence pains him as well, as King of Asgard he sometimes has to make difficult decisions.
• I Have No Son!: After Loki murdered hundreds of innocent New Yorkers, Odin no longer considers him his son. In the Dark World Prelude comics, he underlines this by calling him Laufeyson to his face. In Ragnarok, since getting free of the enchantment put on him by Loki, he has mellowed out and refers to both Thor and Loki as his sons. Still played straight with his first child, Hela, though. She's actually his firstborn daughter whom Odin banished and erased her existence because she's too dangerous to be set free.
• Interspecies Adoption: Adopts Loki, a Frost Giant found by Odin during a raid on his homeworld, since he couldn't bear to let the child die after he'd just killed everyone else in the area.
• It Has Only Just Begun: When Thor finds Odin in Tønsberg and assures him that he stopped Ragnarok because he killed Surtur, Odin tells him that Ragnarok has already begun.
  Odin: It is upon us...Ragnarok.
  Thor: No, I've stopped Ragnarok. I put an end to Surtur.
  Odin: No. It has already begun.
• It's All About Me: A major aspect of his character arc is his difficulty in avoiding this behavior, being aware of it, and wishing better for his sons.
• It's Personal: Odin falls off the Despair Event Horizon and becomes a hateful war-mongerer, desiring only to draw Malekith and his forces close enough to engage in a battle within Asgard, no matter how many lives are lost or destroyed on either side. One can read his warmongering frenzy as driven less by bloodthirsty pride and more by his grief at Frigga being killed in battle against the Dark Elves.

J-Y

• Jerkass God: The Allfather is revealed in Ragnarok to have been a ruthless conqueror who once bathed the Nine Realms in blood together with Hela, and then decided to change his ways.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Loki defends his invasion of New York City by stating that a throne is his birthright. Odin fires back with the harsh but hard to argue with the point that given the circumstances of Loki's birth he really has no grounds to claim this, and it certainly didn't excuse the death and destruction he caused.
  • Although he stepped off the Despair Event Horizon by that point and was ready to expend unit after unit to fight Malekith in Asgard, Odin did have a point about Thor's plot to bring Jane to Malekith in Svartalfheim if Thor can't destroy the Aether once it's extracted from Jane as that's precisely what happens.
• Large Ham: Obviously, since we're talking about Anthony Hopkins... as Odin. At one point in Thor, he downright barks at Loki.
• Like Father, Like Son: Both sons take after him in some aspects:
  • In The Dark World, he shows himself very much like Thor in the first film, with his bloodthirsty ways in the fight with the Dark Elves. Granted, he has a better reason. He also shares Thor's courage, nobility, and ability to lead.
  • While he respects humans as a race and government, he also shares Loki's attitudes about being superior to individual humans. Justified, because he would first have encountered humanity in the early Bronze Age, through to the Viking Era. He also shares Loki's intelligence and diplomatic skills, as well as magic (he had embedded a spell within Mjölnir in Thor, and also shows signs of it in The Dark World when he examines Jane for the Aether).
• Little "No": Gives one of these when Loki lets himself fall into the abyss below the Bifrost.
• Love-Obstructing Parents: He addresses Thor's affection for Jane as impractical, considering he's a nigh-immortal Asgardian (give or take five thousand years) and she's a mortal human. Mark how he likens Jane's presence in Asgard to the presence of a goat at a banquet table, and for that matter, he lets slip he's a Thor×Sif shipper (admonishing Thor that "the one who's right for you is right in front of you", right as they're watching Sif during training/sparring).
• Machiavelli Was Wrong: He realized after his lengthy conquests that he wasn't comfortable ruling through fear and force, and preferred Asgard to be a peacekeeper. When Thor declares they should make the Jotuns fear them too much to attack Asgard, Odin retorts that he's only thinking of pride and vanity rather than true leadership.
• Mister Exposition: In the first three Thor films, Odin is the one who gives the heroes a detailed explanation of who the villains are (the Frost Giants in the first film, the Dark Elves in the second one and Hela in the third one).
• My Greatest Failure: Hela was instrumental in helping him build his empire, Asgard's unquestioned domination over the Nine Realms, but "her bloodlust grew too great for me to contain". He exiled his daughter, stopped at the nine realms, and covered over the history.
• Named Weapons: A spear named Gungnir, which is Old Norse for "penetrating".
• Necessarily Evil: His view on war. He views it as ugly, but something kings have to be ready for. He views his father's extermination of the Dark Elves as necessary to safeguard the universe due to the threat they posed. His conquests and intervention of the other realms can also count to force peace on them because without Asgard to maintain security they fall into war and chaos. As he told his children:
  Odin: A wise king never seeks war, but must always be ready for it.
• Never My Fault: He doesn't take any responsibility for how his sons turned out. It doesn't dawn on him at all that Thor's war-mongering behavior is because of him, or that Loki's issues were due to neglecting him as a child, which resulted in his madness. This is subverted with Hela, whose insanity he does take responsibility for. He must not have wanted to imagine repeating the same mistake for his sons.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • He never told Loki of his true heritage because he felt it would cause him to feel like an outsider. Even when Loki didn't know the truth, he still felt overshadowed by Thor and Odin. Finding out just made things worse, much worse.
  • He went into the Odinsleep after banishing Thor, which put Loki on the throne.
  • If he had listened to Thor when he argued that their best course of action was to take Jane off Asgard so Malekith wouldn't target them a second time in order to get the Aether, Thor wouldn't have sprung Loki from his cell and subsequently the actions that led to Loki usurping the throne of Asgard would not have come to pass.
  • He never told his sons about their bloodthirsty sister and goddess of death (who he knows will be free to invade Asgard once he passes away) right up until he was close to death.
  • He put a fake Infinity Gauntlet in the vault in order to appease Asgard's fears about it. This means when Thanos shows up with the real thing, Asgard is completely off-guard.
• No Body Left Behind: When he passes away, he dissolves into wisps of light.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • When the stress of combating Malekith's forces and the loss of Frigga has gone to his head, he basically bellows he intends to fight to "the last drop of Asgardian blood", earning him a justified remonstration from Thor, (who he was supposed to have cured of this bellicose tendency a film prior through banishment to Earth):
    Thor: Then how are you different from Malekith?
    Odin: [bitter laughter] The difference, my son, is that I will win.
  • During his and Loki's first scene together, Loki points out that his actions in leading armies to subdue and conquer the other realms is not that different from Odin's (and Bor's) own war-torn history. Odin doesn't really address this, except by denying that Loki was ever in line for the Asgardian throne and thus has no birthright.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: Just like in the comics, Odin isn't fond of his son's mortal girlfriend Jane Foster at all, and doesn't even try to hide it. When she's brought to Asgard in the second film, he makes it clear that he doesn't want her here and goes out of his way to act disrespectful towards her, even insulting her by comparing her to a goat on their first meeting. It gets worse after the Dark Elves' attack on Asgard and Frigga's death, as Odin decides to have Jane held prisoner in order to use her as bait to lure the Dark Elves into a trap.
• Offing the Offspring: The only reason he doesn't kill Loki is that Frigga spoke in his defense. If it weren't for her, he'd have Loki executed without a second thought.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Half a million years ago, he fought Surtur when the latter was at full power^note Keep in mind that at full power, Surtur flicked Hulk aside like a gnat and was able to kill Hela, who herself easily slaughtered the Einherjar and the elite Valkyrie, while barely reacting to her all-out power. and not only won but defeated him so thoroughly Surtur walks with a limp in the present.
• One-Man Army: He is considered the most powerful warrior in all of Asgard for a good reason. During a flashback of the war between Asgard and Jotunheim, Odin can be seen using his spear Gungnir to dispatch countless Frost Giant left and right with ease.
• Out-of-Character Alert: In stark contrast to how imposing and no-nonsense Odin is normally, Odin in Ragnarok has become a Lazy Bum who sits around in his bathrobes eating grapes and watching theater while the Nine Realms burn. This is to clue you in that he's really Loki in disguise.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Goes into Jötunheim, by himself, to rescue his sons and pull Thor's ass out of the fire. He then scolds him for not only putting Asgard and the other warriors in danger, but his own little brother as well.
  • When the Rainbow Bridge starts to crumble, Odin awakens from his sleep to rescue his feuding sons from falling into the abyss of space. Unfortunately, he only managed to rescue one of them.
• Parental Favoritism: Odin paid more attention to Thor, who is his eldest son and whom he shares a lot in common with, as they both embody the ideals of Asgardian masculinity. Tom Hiddleston confirms this when he affirms that "[Odin] connected much more with Thor. They were sort of cut from the same cloth." Odin's preference for Thor initially made him blind to the latter's faults.
• Parental Hypocrisy: In Thor: The Dark World, he accuses Loki of bringing war, ruin, and death wherever the latter goes. As revealed in Thor: Ragnarok, this is exactly what Odin himself was doing in the past when he conquered the Nine Realms with Hela at his side.
• Parental Neglect: Although Odin does love Loki, he found it difficult to forge a close bond with his second son because Loki isn't manly like he is, and being of Jötunn descent may also have contributed to Odin remaining somewhat distant. It's lampshaded by Loki.
  Loki: You know, it all makes sense now, why you favoured Thor all these years, because no matter how much you claim to love me, you could never have a Frost Giant sitting on the throne of Asgard!
• Parent-Preferred Suitor: Tells Thor that he would prefer him be together with Sif rather than Jane:
  Odin: Human lives are fleeting, they are nothing. You'd be better served by what lies in front of you [points at Sif] I'm telling you this not as the Allfather but as your father.
• Parents as People: Odin's parental skills leave a great deal to be desired and caused many of the problems and insecurities associated with Thor and Loki, which in turn snowballed into major conflicts such as Loki's invasion of Earth and Hela's... everything (indeed, they could be said to be at the root of the conflicts of Thor, The Avengers, and Thor: Ragnarok). That being said Odin did regret what he did to Hela and loved both of his sons deeply, making sure to tell them this in his last moments in spite of everything Loki had done.
• The Patriarch: Odin may be a kind father who wants the best for his children, but he is also far more powerful than any of them and shows no hesitation to discipline them with banishment or imprisonment whenever they get arrogant enough to ignore his counsel.
• Plot-Triggering Death: In Thor: Ragnarok, it's his death that frees the Big Bad Hela and it's her quest of conquering the nine realms that fuel's Thor's efforts to return to Asgard.

• Public Domain Artifact: Gungnir is taken straight from Norse Mythology.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: He does this while berating his son Thor for restarting the war with the Frost Giants in the first film.
  Odin: YOU ARE A VAIN! GREEDY! CRUEL! BOY!
• Pyrrhic Victory: Stricken with grief over his wife's murder, he is willing to "win" such a victory by allowing the Dark Elves to invade Asgard a second time. Thor tries to point out that this is crazy and a reckless waste of his people's lives, but his fury blinds him to it.
• Really 700 Years Old: Odin is incredibly old, even by Asgardian standards. According to Thor, his father fought Surtur no less than half a million years ago!
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • In the first movie, he wants to avoid war and does a good job of handling things when he's not in the Odinsleep. Just mind the Hair-Trigger Temper.
  • This goes away about halfway through The Dark World. He becomes bloodthirsty and irrational due to grief from Frigga's death, leading to Thor and his friends committing treason just to do the right thing.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Gives one to Thor around the beginning of the film, but it was meant to inspire some humility in him, and not just for the sake of being mean-spirited.
    "You are a vain, greedy, cruel boy!"
    "Through your arrogance and stupidity, you have opened these peaceful realms and innocent lives to the horror and desolation of war! You are unworthy of these realms! You're unworthy of your title! You are unworthy!... of the loved ones you have betrayed. I now take from you your power! In the name of my father and his father before, I, Odin Allfather, cast you out!"
  • Also gives a brief one to Loki before sending him to the dungeon in The Dark World.
    "Do you not truly feel the gravity of your crimes? Wherever you go, there is war, ruin, and death."
    "Your birthright, was to die, as a child, cast out onto a frozen rock. If I had not taken you then, you would not be here now to hate me."

• Related in the Adaptation: He is the father of Hela in this version, something that was never the case in the comics or in Norse Mythology.
• Retired Badass: He led the charge back in the 10th century AD, but now he prefers the diplomatic approach.
• Retired Monster: As per Hela, Odin was once a Galactic Conqueror who drenched entire civilizations in blood, with Hela as his executioner. After conquering and subjugating the nine realms, Odin stopped expanding his empire and decided to become a peaceful monarch, so banished Hela from Asgard, making her an Un-person, and more or less rewriting history so that his children would have a kinder legacy to build on.
  Hela: [to Thor, in Odin's throne room] Where do you think all this gold came from?
• Revenge Before Reason: Frigga's death at the hands of the Dark Elves in The Dark World turns him into a blinding rage and he becomes much like Thor was prior to his Character Development, willing to throw as many Asgardian lives as is needed to crush Malekith. Thor comments that this makes him sound like Malekith, to which Odin scoffs/laughs and replies that the difference is, he will win.
• Royal Blood: He is the king of Asgard, and most conflicts in Thor trilogy revolve around who of his three children will succeed him.
• Royalty Super Power: While all Asgardians are strong and tough, he possesses supernatural powers that make him a literal god among his people. He passes his powers down to his biological children, Thor and Hela.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Personally led the Asgardian charge against the Jötunns to defend Midgard during the Dark Ages.
• Secret Test of Character: If Thor was to be truly exiled to Earth forevermore, there was no reason for Odin to send in the Mjolnir after him with it actively trying to determine when he was worthy of its power again. Indeed, the entire event was an exercise in forcibly instilling a sense of humility in his son, and once Thor does find it, Odin welcomes him with open arms again.
• Shipper on Deck: In The Dark World, he lets slip he's a Thor×Sif shipper by admonishing Thor that "the one who's right for you is right in front of you", right as they're watching Sif during training/sparring.
• Silence, You Fool!: Thor, together with his brother and friends, has gone to Jotunheim against his father's orders to investigate the Jotuns' appearance in Asgard. It eventually leads to a huge fight, threatening to break the truce between the two realms. When the group is surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, Odin suddenly appears through the Bifrost:
  Thor: [shouting] Father! We'll finish them together!
  Odin: [angrily growling] Silence!
• Single Tear: During the climax of the first film, he sheds a tear while in the Odinsleep after Thor let himself be killed by the Destroyer and proves himself worthy.
• So Proud of You:
  • At the end of the first movie, Thor tells his father that he hopes to make him proud one day. However, Odin assures him that he already is.
    Thor: Someday, perhaps, I shall make you proud.
    Odin: You've already made me proud.
  • In his last moments on the cliffs near Tønsberg, he confides this in Thor and Loki. He even relents in his condemnation of Loki, commending the trickster on his feat of illusory magic that had entranced Odin for months.
• Spirit Advisor: He serves as this to Thor in the climax of Ragnarok, revealing how Mjölnir was a Power Limiter for his true power while the latter is having the life choked out of him by Hela.
• Staff of Authority: Gungnir is the symbol of kingship in Asgard.
• Suddenly Shouting: He has his moments in the first ''Thor movie.
  Odin: We will find the breach in our defenses and it will be sealed.
  Thor: As King of Asgard....
  Odin: BUT YOU'RE NOT KING! Not yet.
  • He also does this quite often during Thor: The Dark World as well.
    Odin: If and when [Malekith] comes, his men will fall by ten thousand Asgardian blades.
    Thor: And how many of our men shall fall on theirs?
    Odin: AS MANY AS ARE NEEDED! We will fight! Until the last Asgardian breath, the last drop of Asgardian blood.
• Superhero Trophy Shelf: Odin has one underneath Asgard in his vault. Throughout the movies, it houses among others the Tesseract, a replica of the Infinity Gauntlet and Surtur's skull.
• Sword over Head: As shown in flashbacks, after waging war against the Frost Giants for years, Odin finally defeated Laufey in battle and put his spear Gungnir to his throat. However, instead of killing him, he chose to confiscate the Casket of Ancient Winters and forced him to agree to a truce between their two Realms.
• This Cannot Be!: In Thor: The Dark World, Odin has this reaction when he realizes that Jane Foster is carrying the Aether within her body, even though his father Bor was supposed to have hidden it forever.
  Odin: That's impossible...
• Together in Death: Before he dies, Odin tells his sons that he can hear his beloved Frigga calling him from the afterlife and looks forward to finally be reunited with her.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • In The Dark World, he stops treating Loki like his son and is openly disapproving of Thor's infatuation with Jane, comparing bringing Jane to Asgard to bringing a goat to a banquet (and says this to her face, as if her response doesn't matter). Most likely, it was probably caused by the fact that his second son, who he does still love, went insane, slaughtering droves of innocents (which probably reminded him very unpleasantly of Hela), and the fact that his first son is in love with a mortal who will break his heart by dying a millennium or three before Thor starts even going grey.
  • He takes another level in the second half of the film due to grief and anger over Frigga's death and shouts We Have Reserves.
• Took a Level in Kindness:
  • In Ragnarok, when Thor and Loki find him, he doesn't hesitate to refer to them as his sons and has generally softened, likely because he knows he doesn't have long to live.
  • Also from Ragnarok. As it turns out, Odin was once much closer to the Odin of Norse Mythology. The reason the Nine Realms exist is that he led a series of massive wars that devastated the cosmos; the Realms are the areas he had conquered by the time he was finished. Then he had a Heel Realization about being a Galactic Conqueror, stopped at Nine Realms rather than continue to conquer the cosmos with Hela, and retreated to Asgard rather than continue direct rule over all nine of his realms.
• Top God: He's the "King of the Gods" type, the Allfather who presides over all other Asgardian Physical Gods, including his two sons, the God of Thunder and the God of Mischief, and his daughter, the Goddess of Death.
• Twisting the Words: When he explains that he saved Loki as a child because he hoped that one day Loki can serve as an example that Frost Giants and Asgardians can peacefully co-exist, Loki instead believes that Odin saved him only because he wanted an extra war trophy. Odin even reacts by asking, "Why do you twist my words?"
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: In the comics and Norse Mythology, Odin is the father of Tyr. In the MCU, there's nothing to indicate that the two have any family ties.
• Unreliable Narrator: When he is telling young Thor and Loki about the war with Jötunheim, he just happens to leaves out the part about Loki's background in which he finds the Jötunn king Laufey's abandoned baby and adopts him.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He has a strong habit of leaving things or sending things to Earth that cause destruction. For example, his sending Thor and his hammer to Earth helped the Earth realize they were outmatched as they were, which caused S.H.I.E.L.D. to revive HYDRA tech, based on an Asgardian power source, the Tesseract. This snowballs into attracting the intentions of Thanos and the Chitauri, which brings to Earth the Mind Gem. That gives power to Ultron and the Vision.
• War Is Hell: After having lived through the war between Asgard and the Frost Giants, which is repeatedly described as destructive and terrible, Odin is very dedicated to ensuring that sort of thing never happens again. Laufey, to an extent, feels the same, but in contrast to Odin, he's very vindictive and thus not shy about starting another one should the situation arise, and even then he tries to prevent such a situation from occurring.
• We Have Reserves: In The Dark World, he is ready to get as many Asgardians killed fighting the dark elves as needed. When Thor asks how Odin is different from Malekith (who sacrificed most of his own race in the past) Odin replies that unlike Malekith he intends to win.
• World's Strongest Man: He is recognized as the best warrior in all of Asgard. In his prime, he was able to defeat powerful opponents such as Laufey, Hela and even a fully-empowered Surtur himself (with Surtur outmatching Hela in short order, despite being the strongest of Odin's children), and anything other Asgardians can do, he can with comparatively more ease. In a deleted scene, Loki even calls him "The most powerful being in the Nine Realms", and this was very much likely the case in the movies prior to part three of the Infinity Saga, before outright reality warpers and his son increasing his might took centre stage.
• Written by the Winners: Hela angrily and resentfully reveals in Ragnarok that Odin is only known as a peace-keeper because he covered up his bloody conquests once he ruled all the Nine Realms.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: When Thor is overpowered by Hela in the climax of Ragnarok, Odin's spirit appears to him in a vision and encourages him that he is stronger than him.
  Thor: I'm not as strong as you.
  Odin: No... You're stronger.
• You Are Not Ready: After Thor went to Jotuheim and restarted the war against the Frost Giants, Odin admonishes his son and tells him that despite what he thought, he isn't ready to be crowned king.
  Odin: I was a fool to think you were ready.

Variants

Party Thor's Odin Borson

Allfather Odin Borson

Species: Asgardian

Affiliation(s): Asgard

Voiced By: N/A

Appearances: What If...?

The Odin of Earth-72124, who returned the infant Loki to the Frost Giants rather than raising him as his own son.

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• Adaptational Nice Guy: Compared to the Odin of the Sacred Timeline, he returned baby Loki to his people instead of taking him for himself. The fact that Asgard's influence also seems benevolent enough that nearly everyone in the Universe is well disposed to Thor also suggests his empire-building was done in a more benevolent fashion (at least more than it already was—especially since the backstory does not imply the absence of Hela).
• Big Sleep: Just like his Sacred Timeline counterpart, Odin goes into his Odinsleep here, which puts Frigga in charge. Thankfully, he does this willingly rather than collapsing from stress like in the Sacred Timeline.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Odin only appears briefly in What If's seventh episode, but him falling into the Odinsleep and Frigga subsequently leaving Asgard to visit friends on another planet is what allows Thor to sneak down to Earth and host an Asgardian's equivalent of a Wild Teen Party.

Kahhori's Odin Borson

Allfather Odin Borson

Species: Asgardian

Affiliation(s): Asgard

Voiced By: N/A

Appearances: What If...?

A variant of Odin who was killed by Surtur during Ragnarok.

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• Dead Alternate Counterpart: He's this to the other Odin variants.
• Death by Adaptation: He dies much, much sooner than Sacred Timeline Odin.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Instead of dying of old age like in the Sacred Timeline, this Odin gets killed by Surtur.
• The Voiceless: He has no lines.

Queen Hela's Odin Borson

Allfather Odin Borson

"I am your father and your king. You will obey."

Species: Asgardian

Affiliation(s): Asgard

Voiced By: Jeff Bergman

Appearances: What If...?

A variant of Odin who, when confronted by Hela's desire for more conquest, chose to exile her to Earth instead of imprisoning her.

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• Abled in the Adaptation: This version of Odin hasn't yet gone to war with Jotunheim and gotten his eye gouged out in battle, meaning he retains both eyes. And considering Hela becomes queen and puts an end to his conquest, this war will never take place, meaning he will likely keep both eyes for all his life in this timeline.
• Adaptational Villainy: Subverted. Odin is more villainous in this version because this is set far earlier in his life, and shows what the Sacred Timeline Odin was like when he conquered the Nine Realms. How he turned his daughter into a weapon to fight his battles is shown and that despite his claims of wanting peace, he's very quick to resort to violence. He's also shown to be a hypocrite, having sent his daughter to Earth to learn about mercy but becoming angry when she actually learns it.
• Bling of War: Sports epic golden armour with a helmet adorned with horns befitting a Norse god.
• Control Freak: It seems much of Odin's issues stem from his desire to be in complete control. Namely, he used Hela as a tool because he wanted to control her, seeing her as dangerous, and his conquest of the Nine Realms is due to his desire to unite it under his rule.
  Odin: A king must tame his threats... to ensure they fight for him.
• Galactic Conqueror: Of the Nine Realms (and possibly beyond). This makes sense since the episode is set during the days of Odin's conquest of power and control over the realms, as Hela alluded to in the movie.
• Heel Realization: After Hela defeats him by regaining her powers, he realises that she has become a better ruler than he could ever be and surrenders.
• Hypocrite: He sent his daughter to Earth to learn mercy, but during their fight expresses anger when she offers him a chance for peace.
• Neck Lift: Does this to Hela when she offers her hand to him so they can make peace with each other. She breaks out of it when her helmet flies to her head and it causes an energy that sends him flying.
• Parental Neglect: He clearly neglected if not outright abused Hela when she was a child and treated her more like a personal tool than a daughter. His mistakes as a father is a core component to Hela's storyline.
• Summon to Hand: It's revealed that he can do this with Gungnir. It makes Hela and Wenwu trying to disarm him of it extremely difficult.
• Strong and Skilled: This is Odin in his prime, after all. He's strong enough to turn the tide of battle against Wenwu and Hela when an entire army of Asgardians fell to them and he held his own against them with his skill with Gungnir and powerful magic.
• Villain Respect: Downplayed. He considers Wenwu "primitive" due to being a mortal, but he does seem impressed with his skill with the Ten Rings and is intrigued by how easily he repelled his forces.
• Underestimating Badassery: Odin denounces Wenwu as a primitive human unworthy of an artefact like the Ten Rings. He learns the hard way that Wenwu is no ordinary man, and underestimating humans is a bad idea.

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"Asgard is where our people stand. Even now, right now, those people need your help."