From The Verge, comes one of the most complete discussions on the six Infinity Stones and their place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). This post contains a spoiler for Avengers: Age of Ultron. You have been warned.
Since 2008, there have been 11 MCU films ( 3-Iron Man, 2-Thor, 2-Captain America, 2-Avengers, 1-Guardians of the Galaxy and 1- Hulk). If you thought the purpose of those films was solely to establish the Avengers, you are partially right. The real purpose of these films is to establish the Infinity Stones and setup the Avengers: Infinity War movies in 2018 and 2019.
We get a glimpse of these stones and their owner, Thanos, in the mid-credit scene at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron. With Thanos’ final words, “Fine, I’ll do it myself,” we sense that the stones are important, but still aren’t sure why.
Unless, we remember what The Collector said in Guardians of the Galaxy, “Before creation itself, there were six singularities, then the universe exploded into existence and the remnants of this system were forged into concentrated ingots… Infinity Stones.”
#/media/File:Collector-movie.jpg){kind=link}
With these stones, Thanos has the ability to destroy and re-create the universe as he pleases. These stones control space, reality, power, mind, time and soul.
If you’ve been paying attention over the last 7 years and 11 films, you know that:
– the Tesseract (Space Stone) appeared in both Captain America: The First Avenger and in The Avengers. This teleportation stone is currently in Odin’s Vault on Asgard, having been place there by Thor at the end of The Avengers.
– the Reality Stone (Aether) is the red mist that was in astrophysicist Jane Foster and that Malekith and his army of Dark Elves needed to destroy the 9 Realms. At the end of Thor: The Dark World, Lady Sif and Volstagg entrust the Aether to the Collector.
– the Power Stone appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy. This stone, stolen by Peter Quill (Star Lord), destroyed the Collector’s storage facility and ended up in Ronan the Accuser’s Warhammer. At the conclusion of the movie, the stone was in the hands of the Nova Corps on Xandar.
– the Mind Stone appeared in the Avengers: Age of Ultron. The stone was in Loki’s scepter and was what he used to mind control Hawkeye and Doctor Erik Selvig in the first Avengers movie. The stone was placed in the forehead of the Vision by Ultron where Thor allowed it to remain at the conclusion of the movie. It’s interesting to note that Loki had two of the six stones at the beginning of the Avengers’ movie and managed to lose them both.
The Time Stone and the Soul Stone have not appeared in the movies yet. My money is on the Soul Stone appearing in Doctor Strange (November 2016) and the Time Stone appearing in Thor: Ragnarok (November 2017). There is a chance the Time Stone could appear in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (May 2017); but I think it makes more sense for the last stone to appear in the last movie to be released before the first Infinity War movie (May 2018).
The Verge has put together an excellent video explanation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is below. The bottom line is that the movies are connected and that connection is the Infinity Stones.