Jane Foster
Jane Foster is a character who’s been made retroactively redundant. Natalie Portman is a great actress, but never gave her best work in the first two Thor movies as the God of Thunder’s astrophysicist love interest. She did, however, at least have a role. That being to act as Thor’s tie to Earth.
Come this November’s Thor: Ragnarok, however, and Jane will be completely absent. Apparently, her and Thor weren’t meant to be, after all, so it seems we sat through all those lacking romantic scenes in the first two films for nothing. Besides, by the looks of things, Thor has found himself a much more interesting prospective love interest in Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie.
If Jane’s career as an astrophysicist was ever actually explored, she might have had a purpose. However, Portman’s Thor co-star Stellan Skarsgård, who plays Erik Selvig, has become the MCU’s resident go-to science guy, after his appearances in both Avengers movies.
Christine Palmer
Sticking with underwhelming love interests for the moment, we bring you Doctor Strange‘s Christine Palmer. Yet again, the MCU was guilty for wasting a talented actress – this time Rachel McAdams – in a thankless role. In Christine’s case, she’s mostly pointless because she feels like a placeholder for not one, but two more interesting characters.
Firstly, comic readers will know that Palmer is not Stephen Strange’s true love. The sorceress Clea is his longterm partner in the source material and thus, is bound to make an appearance in Doctor Strange 2. So, why did they even bother setting up this temporary romance in the meantime?
Likewise, Christine is a loose version of Night Nurse from the comics, who runs a facility where superheroes go to get patched up after a fight. The problem is that the MCU already has a version of Night Nurse in Netflix’s Claire Temple. If the movies are planning on introducing the character in future, just bring Rosario Dawson on board instead.