Thor Monster Powerful Monster Odin Asgard Beta Ray Bill

Warning: contains spoilers for Beta Ray Bill #3!

While Thor may be the newly crowned All-Father of Asgard, Daniel Warren Johnson's Beta Ray Bill miniseries keeps revealing new secrets that Odin never told his son, setting up the God of Thunder for a major fall when the powerful villain his father locked out of sight one day breaks free.

Last issue, fans learned that Odin had ordered Asgard's most powerful warriors to stand guard over the Stygian Gate; a portal to Muspelheim through which Odin has spent thousands of years banishing powerful creatures. While more public threats could easily be dealt with using the Bifrost's teleportation capabilities, Odin needed somewhere to dispose of more disturbing threats to Asgard - the type of being he didn't want his subjects, including his son, to know about.

Related: Thor: Marvel Confirms the One Villain Powerful Enough to Kill Odin

In Beta Ray Bill #3, Bill continues his hunt for Twilight, the sword of Surtur. The unique magics of Muspelheim have allowed his ship Skuttlebutt to manifest a humanoid form, giving Bill, Skurge, and Pip the Troll an essential new ally as they're beset by the army of creatures Odin banished, some of who now worship the demonic Surtur - a villain movie fans will know from the MCU's Thor: Ragnarok, but also the beast who destroyed Bill's world. Skuttlebutt navigates Muspelheim by tracking the biggest energy source in the realm; something which the group agree must be Surtur's enchanted blade, but after diving into Muspelheim's lava, traveling deeper into the realm than anyone else has ever gone, it turns out this energy source is actually a horrific creature shrouded in darkness.

Beta Ray Bill 3 Odin Secret Villain Monster Thor

It's difficult to overstate the power this being must possess. Surtur's destruction of Beta Ray Bill's home planet wasn't a simple act of malice, but a cosmic event which destroyed an entire planetary system in an area known as the Burning Galaxy. This cataclysmic act, and the life force lost in bringing it about, forged Twilight as a weapon intended to set the universe ablaze. Twilight is so powerful that Loki was able to use even its shadow to rewrite reality, and is the weapon Surtur is destined to use to destroy Asgard itself in the final battle of Ragnarok (although Thor has since found a way to end that endless cycle of death and rebirth.)

For this previously unknown monster to possess power exceeding Twilight would make it one of the most powerful villains in the Marvel Universe, and one Odin has failed to mention to his son. Odin's guards are extremely capable, but warned Bill that everything that returns through the Stygian Gate is changed, saying, "a blackened hollow burns in their eyes. What they once were is forever gone." This mysterious process didn't quite make sense with Surtur's usual preference for incinerating anything that stands against him, but the presence of this monstrous new threat suggests that Beta Ray Bill's makeshift team have found one of the most dangerous creatures ever to cross Odin's path - one which the former All-Father was either unwilling or unable to destroy.

Thor has been paying for many of Odin's mistakes lately, especially as his old human host Donald Blake realized that he wasn't a real person, but rather a fake created by Odin to teach his son humility, losing his sanity and attacking Asgard in response. That conflict ended with Thor promising Odin that the two would one day come to a reckoning regarding the former All-Father's deeds, but even Blake was just the tip of the iceberg of Odin's secrecy. While Thor may now be the All-Father of Asgard, Beta Ray Bill has revealed there are allies and threats long kept secret from him. Hopefully, Bill will find a way to slay this ultra-powerful new monster and return to inform Thor of all the things Odin has hidden away.

Next: Hulk vs. Thor Rematch Settles Who's the Strongest Avenger