The Teenage Climate Hero: Displacement of Responsibility in the Climate Fiction Series Ragnarok (2020–2024)

This paper examines the Netflix series Ragnarok (2020-2024) through the lens of intermedial ecocriticism, focusing on the construction and implications of the "Teenage Climate Hero" trope.Drawing on Linda Haverty Rugg's theory of environmental guilt displacement and the intermedial framework of Niklas Salmose and Jrgen Bruhn, the study argues that Ragnarok displaces the responsibility for addressing the climate crisis onto adolescents, despite clearly identifying corporate and governmental actors as the primary culprits.By transmediating real-world ecological emergencies and youth climate activism-particularly as represented in the documentary Make the World Greta Again-into a mythological YA superhero narrative, the series both empowers and burdens its young protagonists.The paper explores how the series' narrative and visual strategies, including the use of Norse mythology and superhero tropes, obscure this displacement by framing environmental resistance as a heroic, individualistic quest.Ultimately, the series undermines its ecological message by concluding with a metafictional twist that renders the entire climate battle imaginary, thereby neutralizing the agency of its young heroes and reinforcing the problematic rhetoric that future generations alone must solve the climate crisis.