Thor's mighty hammer Mjolnir has been lifted by several MCU characters to date, but far more characters have tried and failed to wield the hammer. In each case, the characters had established reasons for being classed as unworthy, including the God of Thunder himself, notoriously. Very few of those characters openly confronted the reasons for that unworthiness.

Introduced in Thor, Mjolnir remains one of the most powerful artifacts in the MCU, despite its destruction by Hela in Thor: Ragnarok. Such is its iconic appeal that the hammer will play a major part in Thor: Love & Thunder, transforming Jane Foster into the Mighty Thor. It was also, infamously at the heart of one of the single most fan-pleasing moments in all of Marvel movie history, when Captain America caught it in the climactic battle against Thanos in Endgame. In that instance, the hammer's in-built worthiness gauge acted like an amplifier for the audience's goodwill for Captain America, as it had for Thor when he regained his hero status in Phase One.

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But Mjolnir's power works best because it is sparsely used. Vision's surprising use of it was huge at the time because it was so unexpected and Cap's command of it worked so well because it had already been set up in Age of Ultron. And without all of the other heroes who failed to lift the hammer, neither of them would have had that sort of impact. Here's every MCU character who tried to lift Mjolnir and failed, and why they weren't deemed worthy...

Tony Stark

Tony Stark Mjolnir Avengers Age Of Ultron

Like Thor's Phase One arc, Tony Stark's entire MCU story saw the founding Avenger invested mostly in the idea of worthiness. Weighed down by the sins of his father (and of Stark Industries as a whole), Tony was - as Thanos so cleverly accused - "cursed by knowledge", not only of an apocalyptic future, but of his own unworthy past. It took his sacrifices in Endgame (not only of his life but of his family peace) for him to become truly worthy. Back in Age of Ultron, Stark was yet to learn the lesson of over-reaching that made his ego create Ultron in the first place and most of his self-destructive, arrogant and sometimes downright unlikeable character traits were still very much on show. He was arguably the least worthy of all of those who attempted to lift the hammer at that point.

Steve Rogers

Steve Rogers trying to lift Mjolnir in Avengers Age of Ultron

Though there is some debate over Captain America's Age of Ultron moment with Mjolnir, the retrofit logic that he was simply "not trying" to save Thor's embarrassment never made sense. Steve wasn't against impressive feats (and his training included the flagpole gag that saw him break the rules to win a challenge, so he wasn't a total paragon of virtue). More importantly, Steve had also proved with Tony Stark that he wasn't above taking his fellow Avengers down a notch in the name of encouraging humility. More logical is the idea that Steve only became worthy after Age of Ultron before his Endgame hammer catch. Steve was far from flawless, morally speaking, and his refusal to tell Tony about the death of his parents kept him from being truly worthy. Obviously, that was in the name of protecting Bucky - not a crime in itself - so that nuance could explain why Mjolnir shifted slightly.

Hawkeye

Avengers Age of Ultron Hawkeye mjolnir

Hawkeye's unworthiness story is more complex than the two keystone Avengers, partly because he was still quite undeveloped as a character by this point in Age of Ultron. Much of what started Clint Barton's MCU redemption came later in the movie after the Avengers are driven into hiding and his secret family was revealed before he became the surrogate battlefield father of the Twins. It is perhaps his Endgame arc that best explains why he was considered unworthy in Age of Ultron, because his time as a murderous vigilante speaks to the anger inside him. Or at the very least, the capacity he has to twist his emotions into something so dark. On top of that, as an assassin, Hawkeye's modus operandi probably wouldn't sit with the Asgardian warrior virtues Mjolnir would be "programmed" to recognize as heroism. Regardless of his prowess, there's something inherently murky about clandestine murder missions.

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James Rhodes

James Rhodes Mjolnir

While Rhodey is initially presented as the antithesis of Tony Stark when he's flirting dangerously with volatility in Iron Man 2, he's actually a lot more like a clone of his best friend. Both are military men, even if Rhodey is a front-line veteran, and both are cocksure, verging on outright arrogance. In fact, Rhodey is boastful and somewhat buffoonish (particularly in Age of Ultron) and there's very much the - somewhat unfair - suggestion that he's only in the hero business for the fame. More crucially, Rhodey is also not established as a leader or even really as an individual: right up to the point that he defies General Ross in Infinity War, he's a military man primarily and he simply doesn't have the same instincts as the other heroes for autonomy. He even only tries to lift Mjolnir in conjunction with Tony, as if to emphasize that.

Bruce Banner

Bruce Banner Mjolnir

Banner is the final Avengers member to try his band at lifting Mjolnir, mostly using it as an opportunity for a gag about transforming into his angry green alter-ego. That said, he's still clearly unable to lift the hammer, which comes down to the conflict within Banner that stops him from realizing that the Hulk is very much part of him rather than an infection. Banner may believe himself to be more virtuous than Hulk and his pre-Avengers isolation offering medical support to families in poverty is very worthy, but he's too torn by conflict and invested in the selfish agenda to heal himself, understandably. He's also a reluctant hero, even after stepping up in the Battle of New York, which doesn't fit with the Asgardian warrior spirit.

Pietro Maximoff

Pietro Quicksilver Age Of Ultron Mjolnir

Quicksilver's Mjolnir moment is, fittingly, a fleeting affair as he opportunistically attempts to stop the hammer midflight during the Twins' initial battle against the Avengers in Age of Ultron. Inevitably, he's quickly turned into a passenger, though his touch does cause Mjolnir to slightly deviate off-course for a moment, which perhaps hints at Pietro's misguided but not evil morality. At this stage, the speedster is aligned with Ultron, whose plan amounts to global destruction, so there's little explanation needed for his unworthiness. Interestingly, his sacrifice to save Hawkeye and the child at the end of the movie probably would have made him worthy by the MCU's tenuous rules.

Hulk

Hulk Avengers Mjolnir

Long before the Avengers gathered for a macho flexing competition in Age of Ultron, Hulk was the first of the MCU's other heroes to try and lift Mjolnir. He did so not out of some misplaced sense of bravado, but out of rage in the heat of battle with Thor. Even Hulk's enormous strength couldn't shift it, naturally, but he was unable to process the issue and continued to try long after anyone else would have. Hulk's unworthiness comes down to the fact that he's too guided by emotions and too volatile to be worthy of the hammer, not least because of the damage he'd be able to do with the added powers and his diminished sense of responsibility. He's also the most selfish of the Avengers, given his battle for existence, and worthiness seems to be tied to altruism.

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Thor (When Banished)

Thor Mjolnir

Thor himself has even been unable to lift Mjolnir in the MCU at one point after Odin punished him for his arrogance and for threatening the peace the Allfather had carefully crafted in the Nine Realms. In hindsight, it appears Odin was trying to stop Thor from following the same path as Hela, and his decision to banish his son was a means for him to learn some humility. That humility and his impulse to sacrifice himself when the Destroyer attacked Earth was what made him worthy again, confirming that was what Odin saw as his failures up to that point. He had been reckless and arrogant and had endangered his subjects - across every Realm - as well as threatening the work Odin had done to reverse the tyranny of his own rule with Hela, and that all stood in defiance of the virtues Odin wanted to encourage in his son.

Loki

Loki Lift Mjolnir

During the same period of Thor's unworthiness with Mjolnir sent to Earth, Loki followed the hammer and curiously tried his own hand at lifting it. Almost casual at first, the God of Mischief showed a flash of his true ambitions as years of what he saw as treatment as an inferior next to his brother curled his mouth into a snarl momentarily. And almost as quickly, he brushes the failure off, as if it doesn't matter to him, despite the audience knowing how much it means. Loki would never be worthy at this point: he was hateful towards his brother, sought vengeance, and had dark ambitions to oust his brother. Though a prodigious warrior - a fact often overlooked in the MCU - Loki was also a villain (no matter what his complex moral compass might later suggest) and that immediately disqualifies him from true MCU worthiness.

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