TheVision is not Worthy!

For all of you crying “The Vision is Worthy!” and that’s why he can lift Mjolnir, you are not only wrong, you are very wrong. The general consensus is Thor brought the Vision to life with his lightning bolt and somehow this made the Vision worthy of lifting Mjolnir. Correlation does not imply causation.

An elevator can lift Mjolnir. By that logic, this elevator is worthy.

Instead of simply reacting to a scene, let’s use canon to determine how the Vision was able to lift Mjolnir instead of a knee-jerk reaction to what might have appeared an awesome moment.

Background Canon

Since Thor’s recreation by Kirby and Stan Lee, Mjolnir is inscribed with a statement of enchantment written by Odin: “Whosoever holds this hammer, if (s)he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.”

And herein lies the rub. Odin’s enchantment implies a number of things:

1. You must be able to lift the hammer. If you can lift it, is the first indicator that you MIGHT be worthy.
2. If you can lift the hammer, AND you are worthy, you will be given the power of Thor. Worthiness is defined by the enchantment imbued within the hammer by Odin. This means you must be worthy of wielding the power of Thor.
3. This means when people ARE able to lift the hammer, the indicator of whether they are worthy is NOT the lifting, it is the bestowal of the POWER OF THOR.

In the past when an individual who lifts the hammer does so, if they are worthy, they are immediately imbued with the power of Thor which includes superhuman strength, vitality, increased durability and stamina.

This is including whatever capabilities they already had. We have seen Captain America, who has been considered worthy, not only lift Mjolnir, but gain superhuman strength a hundred times his own.

In a DC/Marvel cross over, the Avengers and Justice League battle the mad Guardian, Krona and are nearly defeated until Superman is able to add the power of Thor to his own when he lifts and wields Mjolnir in battle. These are canon interactions.

When the battle with Krona was over Superman was unable to lift Thor’s hammer, his great strength notwithstanding.

He’s told by Thor:

“There is an enchantment ‘pon my hammer laid by my father Odin. It is not… easily lifted by others. My father is stern, Superman. But not stupid. A very few worthies have been allowed to over come the spell, in desperate hours. But know this. Perhaps it was but briefly… but it was in good hands.”

What is this WIELDING of which you speak?

You see wielding the hammer implies being bestowed the power of the enchantment on the hammer to completely share its power with the wielder. Lifting the hammer and wielding it are entirely different things.

Note in both of the above instances, both heroes note an increase of their personal power beyond their expectations!

In Age of Ultron, Vision does not experience any such epiphany or awareness of the power of Mjolnir.

He first hands it to Thor in a lab and later uses it in a game of Ultron croquet, as a well-balanced club, nothing more. No lightning, no energy discharges, no displays of power beyond his already considerable superhuman strength.

The Vision is not worthy.

So why can Vision LIFT but not WIELD Mjolnir?

SPOILERS – In small print on the side of Mjolnir – “Worthiness lifting requirements may be waived in the event of a ‘sentient machine’ operator. No powers included.”

The Vision is an android, a sentient machine.. There has already been precedent in the Marvel Universe for androids, who are NOT alive, to be able to pick up Thor’s hammer. See: Awesome Android. This loophole does not allow them to wield any of its powers, however, since the hammer essentially does not register them at all. Picking up Mjolnir and wielding its powers are two different things!

• When Mjolnir is dropped or set aside, it takes a fixed position, from which it cannot be moved except by a ‘worthy’ individual. This power does not stop the hammer from being driven from place to place in a vehicle unless Thor does not want it to be moved.
• If it is dropped by Thor in a battle, its “default” setting is immovable until summoned by Thor. So while on the Helicarrier, Mjolnir could sit on a shelf somewhere until Thor called for it and it would still be immovable to a person trying to drag it away, but perfectly able to be flown where it needs to be.
• This immovability enchantment has been subverted as well. Mjolnir has been wielded by a select number of other individuals: the alien Beta Ray Bill; Avenger Captain America; Eric Masterson who would later be known as Thunderstrike; Odin (Thor’s father); Bor (Thor’s grandfather); and Buri (also known as Tiwaz, Thor’s great-grandfather).

• The hammer has also been lifted by various sentient constructs i.e. Galactus’ herald, Air-Walker (animated by the soul of Nova Corps captain Gabriel Lan);

• the Awesome Android (by mimicking Thor’s abilities and worthy nature).

• The Vision in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is very much like his comic counterpart, a synthetic android or synthezoid.
• The Vision is composed of non-living but lifelike material which resembles organic tissue with the advantage of superhuman capacities.
• His body has machine organ analogues which give him the semblance of life but he is completely an artificial intelligence.
• The Vision is a highly sophisticated machine intelligence uniquely created from the merger of Tony Stark’s Jarvis software and the Mind Gem’s superhuman and alien machine-like intellect.

As a machine with consciousness, the only kind of machine capable of moving Mjolnir, the Vision is capable of lifting and moving the hammer by virtue of his being NONLIVING but sentient.

Why has this been allowed by Marvel’s writers?

Dunno. But the precedent allows the Vision a loophole by which he can confuse an entire generation of non-comic readers and even a few comic guru wannabees who believe the Mind Gem makes the Vision worthy.

It doesn’t. The Mind Gem is powerful but it cannot overcome Odin’s enchantment of worthiness by itself. In conjunction with the other Infinity Gems, it most certainly could.

If you want to convince me of the Vision’s worthiness, have him throw a lightning bolt with Mjolnir, summon a storm, throw Mjolnir and have it return to him and I will immediately deem him worthy.

The qualification of worthiness with Mjolnir is simple. If you can’t summon a storm, throw lightning, or use Mjolnir to fly, you are likely a machine just moving Mjolnir from one place to another and trying to look cool doing it.

Yes, when you have the power of Thor, you look something like this. So, she clearly qualifies.

UPDATE:Whedon On Avengers: Age Of Ultron Moment Where Thor Trusts The Vision

Joss Whedon reveals in an interview/podcast he used the Vision lifting Mjolnir as a “narrative shorthand” to say the Vision was a “good guy.”

“That came from a ‘Do you know what would be cool?’ moment. It’s the cheer moment of the film. And what’s great is that, like the Hawkeye thing, we’d set it up – we’d unknowingly set it up, just by having that [‘Who is worthy enough to Mjolnir?’] sequence, then with Quicksilver as well, trying to grab it and it throws him off. Both of those things were in the script before I came up with the idea of [the Vision lifting Mjolnir].

I had done something similar in an episode of Angel, where I needed you to know someone was telling the truth. It was, very simply, Angel saying, ‘He hates it if you ask questions, he can’t lie.’ So, you just accept that.So on the one hand, I want them all to trust each other and go into battle not as a coherent group, but when they finally all show up at the church, they really do come together for the first time.

On the other hand, I need them to take this guy with them, and I need something to say, ‘All right, we’re off!’ And that really does answer a lot of questions. It was so much fun and so cute. Chris added the ‘Nice work!’ as he walked by Tony, by the way.”

This clarifies my position that the Vision is not “worthy.” Vision doesn’t get any of the powers of Mjolnir, he just lifts it.

Whedon needed a way to make the Avengers trust the Vision and move the movie along.

This flies in the face of the previous expressions of worthiness (in the comics) and instead takes the hammer into a nebulous region of being used as a mystical polygraph.

“‘Nuff Said!”