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At the start of Thor: the Dark World, Jane Foster discovers the Aether by being sucked through a space-time passage that has opened up, due to the approaching Convergence, leading to the place where it was hidden.

What bothers me about this is what an incredible coincidence this is, even by the standard of Hollywood plots. A passage just happens to open up to one of the most powerful and dangerous artefacts in the universe, near the girlfriend of the heir to the throne which locked it up?

To say nothing of the fact of how ill guarded the Aether apparently is. There are no guards, and not even any meaningful containment. It appears to be floating about more or less freely between the halves of the monolith that's supposed to be keeping it. All it takes is for Jane to approach it closely for it to be able to escape and infect her.

Yet none of this is addressed in the movie, I don't think. It is not explained to have been engineered somehow by Malekith or one of his allies. Or is it? Am I missing something? Was it really an astronomical coindidence? Why was Jane sucked through the passage, when the other ones appear to be entirely neutral and inert passages? And why could the Aether escape so easily?

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  • This movie is full of plot holes, and this is one of them.
    – Gustavo Gabriel
    Mar 17, 2017 at 20:25
  • That's what it looked like to me but this seemed a cliche on another level so I was wondering whether there in fact is an explanation, perhaps even in the comics or some other part of the canon.
    – Pepijn Schmitz
    Mar 17, 2017 at 20:28
  • This is a perfect example of the ‘contrived coincidence’ trope...and maybe one of the most contrived, I’ve ever seen.
    – DrMrstheMonarch
    Aug 3, 2019 at 18:33

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Jane was specifically looking for unusual energy sources while trying to track down Thor.

Jane Foster: Oh, God. None of this would have happened if I hadn't found the Aether.

Thor: Then Malekith would have only possessed it that much sooner.

Jane Foster: I only found it because I was looking for you.

Thor: Dark World transcript via Transcripts Wiki

Early in the movie, Darcy pulled Jane away from a dinner date because she had detected a series of unusual energy readings. These readings were similar to when Thor arrived in New Mexico during the first movie.

Jane Foster: I haven't seen readings like this since...

Darcy Lewis: New Mexico?

Thor: Dark World transcript via Transcripts Wiki

As soon as she makes this realization, she uses her tracker to find where the energy source is coming from. In this case, instead of the energy source being Thor, it was a portal linked directly to the Aether.

It's still a bit of a stretch, but the fact that Jane was specifically tracking unusual energy sources at least lends some plausibility to the idea.

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