With EW’s recent reveal for their Phase 3 film Doctor Strange starring Benedict Cumberbatch, myself and fellow-Ovener Kenny Williams felt it a fitting time to revisit the Infinity Stones in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
The Infinity Stones.
Originally Gems.
Small artifacts of huge f**k-offery power that when wielded in concert grants the bearer omnipotence and omniscience (you know, just in case they weren’t powerful enough).
These 6 stones (or gems) while wielded by many, have always been associated with one big-bad purple faced being:
THANOS.
You’ve seen him.
He was the secret ending in the 2012 Avengers feature; Revealing himself as the mysterious benefactor for Loki (Tom Hiddleston).
Thanos then shows up again when Ronan The Accuser (Lee Pace) packs a hissy-fit in 2014’s Guardians Of The Galaxy and is now come-to-life in the mo-capped form of actor Josh Brolin.
His final appearance on screen has been in the 2015 Avengers sequel Age Of Ultron where he declares that he’ll “do it himself” because apparently whatever game he’s been playing hasn’t been panning out the way he wanted it too.
Oh, and it’s around about here that they announced the 2018 and 19 Avengers sequels Infinity War Part 1 and Part 2.
Notice that nice little keyword popping up again?
Infinity?
Yup. It appears that the all-out balls-to-the-wall ensemble action we’ve been seeing so far will come to a head with this 2 part Avengers feature.
And that’s because SOMEHOW the stones (or gems) will finally be in the hands of Thanos once more, set in to the gauntlet he places on in the Age Of Ultron mid-credits ending.
Where are these stones now you may ask?
Well we’ve been introduced to them slowly since Captain America: The First Avenger. This film introduced us to the Tessaract.
The Tessaract is what many fans suspect to be the Space gem. Because when used by the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) and later Loki in the Avengers, it did all kinds of spacey-things like throw alien armies across galaxies or randomly disintegrate beings with space…energy.
As you can tell, like some pieces of the MCU, not only have the ‘gems’ become ‘stones’, but the colours representing their differing power sets are now slightly askew between comics and film.
So yes, the blue ‘stone’ is now the ‘Space’ stone, and this currently resides back in Asgard after Loki’s defeat in The Avengers.
By all accounts, the next stone to show on-screen was the Mind stone in the guise of Loki’s sceptre from The Avengers. With it’s hypnotic power, many suspected this was a stone until it kind of disappeared after those events.
At which point it then re-appeared in the Age Of Ultron with confirmation that yes, it was the Mind stone.
It also bought Vision to life, because ‘mind’ and really it just reiterates these particular devices as complete MacGuffins and it’s wonderful.
Our next stone that shows up, wasn’t so much a stone at first but a red liquid-like substance that became the plot-point for 2014’s Thor: The Dark World.
The Aether is suspected to be the Reality stone. How that’s the case is anyone’s guess as it did weird funky things like gravitational disturbances and making alien species known as ‘Dark Elves’ giant as hell.
Thor though manages to stop the Aether/Reality stone and now this currently resides with The Collector (Benicio Del Toro) which brings us the next stone in a cool roundabout way!
THE POWER STONE!
I just wanted to say that because it sounds so wild and fun.
ANY WAY!
The Power Stone introduced in 2014’s Guardians Of The Galaxy was the stone that finally kind-of-loosely-explained to the general audience what the Infinity Stones are.
With the ability to be wielded by beings of great power or by a powerful group, the stones can reconfigure their shape and may not necessarily look like a stone (THANK YOU FOR EXPLAINING THE LIQUID STONE MARVEL…) and can generally ruin whole planets just in case we forgot how powerful they were.
After the Guardians defeat Ronan and trick Yondu, this stone is left with the Nova Corp to keep it locked away.
So how does this clever plot all come together??
It means there are 2 stones left.
It means based on the below screenshot from Guardians Of The Galaxy, we have the orange and green stones left, of which either could be the Soul or Time stones.
AND LIKE ANY GOOD STORY WE COME BACK TO THE START OF IT ALL…
That green stone may have just shown its face in the new Doctor Strange images. What we know about the stones so far is that they always tend to show up as a plot-device. In this case, it appears that Doctor Strange’s all-powerful necklace that is typically known as the Eye Of Agamotto may in-fact be a stone.
I mean, let’s have a look at it…
It kind of has a nice orange hue there doesn’t it?
But hey, the Sorcerer Supreme is doing some crazy magic there in front that has a similar colour, so it may be a reflection or something visual like that.
As you can see by the broach, something is clearly embedded as the pupil of that design and you know what would like really good as such a thing?
A STONE.
This is still speculative in a way, so LET’S EXPLORE THE OTHER PICTURES THAT HAVE BEEN RELEASED SO FAR USING SKILLS WE’VE LEARNT FROM CSI!
If we crop out that necklace area from the cover, increase image size by 200% and then adjust levels around the Eye Of Agamotto, what do we see?
Hmm, that looks a heck of a lot like a FREAKING GREEN THING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BROACH.
And what other stones are we looking for?
An orange one.
OR A GREEN ONE!
But we need more speculation!
ENHANCE!
When we crop the profile image and zoom in on the broach, it appears that again, there’s a very particular colour in play…
Oh look! It appears to be MORE FREAKING GREEN!
What better way to introduce the Doctor Strange into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, than being a person who is able to wield and use a device that can only be wielded by those of great power?
Doctor Strange is described as “the mightiest magician in the cosmos” and “more powerful by far than any of your fellow humanoids” by Eternity, a cosmic entity who is the de facto leader of a group of abstract entities that are collectively known as the cosmic powers of the Marvel universe; so, Gods.
Gods have described a human (Stephen Strange) as more powerful than any fellow human.
And how do you introduce a character as this on first showing?
By having him inadvertently acquire and wield a stone that grants its user an insane amount of power.
And that’s why Doctor Strange might just be carrying our next Infinity Stone on the road toward the Infinity War.
UPDATE:
EW have run a new article today which has producer Kevin Feige running us through the Doctor’s STRANGE power set. In this particular case, a quote around what they say are the Doctor’s signature pieces pops out with regard to our idea around the Eye Of Agamotto:
In this film, the Eye is a very important relic that can be quite dangerous if used in the wrong hands, because it has the ability to do any number of things, the most dangerous of which is, it can sort of manipulate probabilities. Which is also another way of saying, ‘screw around with time’ — which is part of our story.
it can sort of manipulate probabilities. Which is also another way of saying, ‘screw around with time’
Screw around with time.
Time.
Time Stone.
One of the 2 stones left to be found in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I think Kenny and I just made like House M.D and solved this case.
