Is Disney Really Doing This on Purpose?

Something really troubled me about Thor: Love and Thunder.

Recently saw Thor: Love and Thunder  and while overall I enjoyed the silly movie - there was one thing that has been bothering me about the flick since I walked out of the theater. Where were all the two parent families? They were absent to the point where it had to be a conscious decision not to have any.

We are introduced to the Christian Bale character Gorr and his dying daughter but not the girl's mother. No mention of the mother is made at all in the movie.

We see a young Jane Foster at the bedside of her dying mother but no father also at the bedside. And at the funeral there's only one name on her mother's headstone. No dad whatsoever.

The closest we get to a two parent family in the entire movie is when we are introduced to Axl, who is Heimdall's son. We later meet Axl's mom Grace - who is of course now a single mom since the death of Heimdall.

There seemed to be only two exceptions to this two-parent taboo. The first was Thor himself who was the child of Odin and Frigga. But it has to be mentioned that Thor's Marvel backstory was created before Marvel was bought by Disney.

The second was when Korg met Dwayne and they had a baby by holding hands in molten lava for a month. So the actual only two-parent "family" shown in the movie was one with two dads. This had to have been on purpose which seems a strange choice for a company whose success was based on family entertainment. Family in the traditional sense - mom and dad bringing the kids to see a movie or even better (for the Disney bottom line) to Disneyland. 

I'm all for being more inclusive but you don't become more inclusive by actively excluding major parts of society. In this case two-parent households. This strategy by Disney just seems strange and corrosive to me.

I am reminded of JK Rowling and the Harry Potter books but for the opposite reason. Rowling purposefully did not have any divorced parents in any of her books. Rowling was a single mom and did not want kids to have stress about their own parents when reading her books. Now of course Rowling is being "cancelled" because she sticks up for the traditional definition of what a "woman" is.

When I left Thor: Ragnarok I was like "Awesome!" and couldn't wait to see it again. I left Thor: Love and Thunder thinking "I guess that was OK - maybe I’ll catch it again when it starts streaming." If Disney keeps making the message more important than old-fashioned entertainment - there probably won't be a next time walking out of the theater for one of their movies.

Is that what Disney really wants?