Yeah, King Thor was a little worrying, but I don't think Cates is bound to work towards that future, same as with any other future story. And he's already demonstrated that he isn't, since he restored Thor's arm and eye. I felt he should have kept that, but at least it showed that the events of King Thor will play out somewhat differently.

Marvel (and DC) has for many years adhered to an informal policy of an illusion of change, for the most part, where characters appear to undergo changes, but then they land back in the same, or at least very similar, status quo not long after. There have been some exceptions to this, but they are rare, and usually with lower tier characters. A-listers like Spider-Man fall victim to this particularly hard, (or, in the case of villains like Loki, the hero they are linked to. If Thor gets reverted, chances are good he will drag Loki with him) the lower tier a character is, the more likely they will be able to escape the illusion. The reasoning behind this was to not deny newer readers the experience of reading a character at their most iconic characterization. But this reasoning makes less and less sense as time goes on, now that we no longer have to go to a comic store and dig through boxes of back issues to get older stories. They're readily available in collections, either in print or digitally, where they will never ever go out of print. It's EASY for readers to read the classic takes of the characters now. Yeah, some of it will be kind of dated now, but still. Also, though there are differences between the movies and comics, the movies do get to the core of a character pretty well, so even if you have never picked up a comic in your life, and don't want to read the older stuff, you probably already know what makes Superman, Batman, Iron Man or Spider-Man or Thor tick, what their origins are, even if some details are different. And hey, there are always flashbacks too. We don't need to constantly retread the same ground because of this. Also, we live in a time where people love TV shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, Bojack Horseman, etc. where character's growing from one thing into something else is something people enjoy and expect. Most new readers will not want a character to remain in place forever, and will be perfectly able to understand that the story they are reading could have had some character development in the past, making the characters different over time. The Illusion of Change has also had the side effect of making long term fans jaded, never expecting anything to stick, and some of them buying into the idea that nothing should ever change. Stakes have to be raised to absurd levels to make fans care about anything. And even then, it all usually amounts to nothing, and people know it. All that is to say, I think it's time for the Illusion of Change to go away, for the most part. And I think it is, in some cases, and Thor over the past decade or so has been an example of how it should be done, imo. Yeah, not everything has been done exactly as I would have wanted, but I still want things to move forward rather than backwards. If Aaron had moved backwards just because Fraction's run was poorly received, it would have meant undoing JIM, we'd have never gotten Young Avengers or Agent of Asgard. You can still move forward from bad stories in interesting ways.

And yes, I do think Cates (and Aaron before him) were of the 'move things forward' type, and Cates in particular is likely going to be diving into why moving forward is a good thing. The setup, the themes, all the pieces are there for the characters to be forced to come to terms with things changing in their lives, whether they like it or not, and they are just going to have to learn to deal with it and not just try and force things to go back to the way they used to be.

As for having a limited pull list, I don't think that's a bad thing, I don't think the publishers really expect people to read more than a handful of books. I've been reading since the 90s, and I keep my selection fairly small too. The publishers put out so many books, and at 4 dollars each, being able to (legally) follow the entire line would cost an absolute fortune. But even if i was super rich and could do that, I just find that, though I could probably keep tabs on everything more or less, and I kinda do that with the internet, even if i don't read every book, I can only get invested and really care about a small number of stories/characters at a time. If i ever get to a point where i legit have to use the recap pages to remember what's happening, I know it's time to do some pruning. But some people, mostly old school fans who were reading back in the day when reading every book in the line was perfectly doable, like following the entire universe as a whole, and tend to not get as invested in the individual stories.