For about five years, the Marvel movies have been telling us that Thanos is the most formidable villain the Avengers have ever faced. Ever since his cameo appearance at the end of the first Avengers movie in 2012 to his grand debut in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War - a film that was essentially told from his perspective - Thanos has been billed as the MCU’s biggest villain. But a new theory suggests that we’ve been misled.
Sharing their ideas on Reddit, a user named zaneman777 has written a detailed post about why they believe that the actual villain of the 21-film Marvel Cinematic Universe is, in fact, the Mind Stone - one of the six Infinity Stones Thanos covets in Infinity War. Every time the Mind Stone plays a role in the plot, the theory says, characters are compelled to kill each other. So what if the Mind Stone has been controlling things all along? The post has received close to 700 upvotes so far.
(MCU) The true villian in Infinity War is the Mind Stone. from r/FanTheories
The Redditor lists six examples of how characters in the MCU could have been influenced by the Mind Stone. “The mind stone was in Thanos’ possession before the events of Avengers and he gives the stone to Loki. (This may be how he became the Mad Titan),” the Redditor wrote in their first point. The following points noted how everyone from Iron Man (Avengers: Age of Ultron), Vision (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), and SHIELD (Captain America: The First Avenger) have been influenced by the stone.
The Redditor continues that in their opinion the Mind Stone has - well - a mind of its own and can see the future. They cite the example of Red Skull telling Thanos that the Soul Stone has wisdom. According to the Redditor, this means that the Mind Stone saw its own demise and set Thanos on the quest to kill half the universe’s population.
One of the earliest examples of the Mind Stone’s power they provide is from the first movie, when the Avengers are fighting among each other - the scene in which Steve Rogers asks Tony Stark, “Take away the suit, who are you?”. The Redditor writes that immediately after Stark responds with his famous line “Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist,” the camera shows Loki’s sceptre, which has the Mind Stone embedded in it, suggesting that it was influencing them even during the fight due to its proximity.
This is one of the bolder theories we’ve read. You can check out others here, here and here. We’ll find out if any of this is true when Avengers 4 hits theatres in May, 2019.
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First Published: Sep 30, 2018 18:02 IST
