In an earlier version of Thor: Ragnarok, Thor and Loki found Odin living as a homeless person in New York City. The God of Mischief had sent their father to the Big Apple at the end of Thor: The Dark World, and the All-Father was supposed to die at the hands of Hela in an alleyway.
During yesterday evening's live commentary, writer and director Taika Waititi explained that the decision to move that sequence from New York to Norway was, in large part, because that country needed to be set up as a potential location for New Asgard in Avengers: Endgame.
"Here's the thing, alley ways aren't cool," Waititi said with a tongue in cheek tone. "Fields are cool. Ask anyone. We originally shot some of that stuff on the set of our stuff in New York. What we wanted to do was have them go down to Earth and they see Doctor Strange and stuff but it felt too convenient that he was suddenly just down the road in an alley."
Also everything, up to then, everything was so fast-paced and all over the place. We wanted to go somewhere peaceful and actually chill out with those characters and be with Odin while he imparts this wisdom and stuff and not have to hear stupid yellow cabs honking out the back."
Waititi added, "For various reasons we wanted to get them out of New York and set up this place for Avengers: Endgame. We wanted to seed this location earlier to set up Asgard's new home. Also, the test audiences felt bummed out about Odin dying next to trash and garbage in an alley."
The filmmaker's explanation adds up, and that deleted scene actually leaked online not too long ago. It was pretty cool, but possibly not the fitting ending Anthony Hopkins deserved. As Waititi indicates, that Norway setting also went some way towards setting the stage for the God of Thunder to establish New Asgard there, a nice pay off for the character's story arc in the MCU.
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