When Thor: Love and Thunder was officially announced on stage at Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con 2019, Tessa Thompson — who will star in the film as Valkyrie — was asked what her character plans to do now that Thor (Chris Hemsworth) made her the new king of Asgard in Avengers: Endgame. “As New King,” she replied, “she needs to find her Queen. That will be her first order of business. She has some ideas. I’ll keep you posted.”

That hint was then confirmed by Marvel’s Kevin Feige, in an interview with io9: In Thor 4, Valkyrie will become Marvel’s first openly LGBTQ superhero:

‘The answer is yes,’ Feige said of Valkyrie having a LGBTQ storyline. ‘How that impacts the story remains to be seen with that level of representation you’ll see across our films, not in just Thor 4.’

Thompson has talked in the past about Valkyrie’s sexuality, and how her bisexuality was originally going to be at least hinted at in Thor: Ragnarok. At the time of Ragnarok’s release, Thompson told Rolling Stone the film did “originally include ... a glimpse of a woman exiting Valkyrie’s bedroom.” The scene was eventually cut because, supposedly “it distracted from the scene’s vital exposition.” Thompson also talked about how “there were things that we talked about that we allowed to exist in the characterization [of Valkyrie], but maybe not be explicit in the film.”

According to Feige, those things will be more clear in Thor: Love and Thunder. Of course, Marvel and their parent company Disney have talked in the past about adding such LGBTQ moments and characters to films before, only to see many of them fall far short of what was promised in publicity interviews. Thor: Love and Thunder hasn’t even begun shooting yet, and a lot can change between now and November 2021 when the movie opens in theaters. Hopefully exactly what Feige is talking about is what winds up on the screen. At that point, it will absolutely be something worth discussing and getting excited about.