There are few things that can kill Avengers: Infinity War. However, one Iron Man comic reveals that the MCU pushed Thor’s limits a bit too far, proving that he never should have survived Infinity War.
In the MCU film Avengers: Infinity War, the movie opens with Thanos decimating Thor’s ship, killing Loki, Heimdall, and many other Asgardians in his wake. After Thanos destroys the ship and flees, leaving Thor for dead, since he is an Asgardian god, he survives with little injury suffered.
In Iron Man Vol. 2 #6 by Scott Lobdell, Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, and Ryan Benjamin, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four are faced with a potentially catastrophic issue at their home base. During this run, the Avengers’ headquarters is on an island and in its center is a gamma-radiated energy core. In this issue, that core is overheating and is on the verge of going nuclear which could cause untold destruction to not only their facility, but to the whole planet. To keep this from happening, Thor and the Thing volunteer to go into the core and shut it down manually as they are the only ones who believe they are strong enough to handle the task. However, once they are down there, the heat emanating from the core increases exponentially, and hot enough to kill even Thor. As it turned out, Iron Man was right, and the Hulk had to go down and retrieve Thor and the Thing as they ed out moments later.
This comic shows that the gamma-radiated energy is strong enough to kill, or at least gravely injure, Thor himself, which is a far cry from his power level in Avengers: Infinity War. If an energy core is enough to take out the God of Thunder, then the full force of a star should easily have been able to do the job.
The only caveat here is that this comic book issue takes place within the rebooted Marvel Comics continuity of Heroes Reborn so it could be argued that it isn’t the best example of each character’s canonical power limits. However, it is presumed that this new world is no different than the original as each character was perfectly transported into the pocket dimension by Franklin Richards, with all of their power levels and basic histories intact. Therefore, based on Thor’s limits set in this Iron Man comic, he never should have survived Avengers: Infinity War.
