Thanos has always said that he senses a special bond between himself and Tony Stark, and now a Marvel fan’s theory has suggested exactly what this connection might be. Building from an earlier theory that suggested that the real villain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the Mind Stone, the new one says that both Iron Man and Thanos have been cursed by the stone.
“First off, props to whomever posted the original ‘mind stone is the true villain’ theory....it got me thinking. From the bonus A3 features, we know that in response to Tony asking “how do you know my name?” Thanos replies “I know your soul...it is much like mine, cursed with knowledge”. Great line, but I don’t think Thanos and Tony are necessarily “cursed with knowledge” per se; rather, I think that they are both suffering from some intense PTSD inflicted by the mind stone,” the theorist, named Broseph2576, wrote.
AVENGERS Infinity War: Thanos’ and Tony’s curse? The mind stone. from r/FanTheoriesIn Avengers: Infinity War, Tony had said that he has been obsessed with Thanos ever since the Battle of New York from the first Avengers film, which was when the two first became acquainted with each other. Several other theories have suggested that Tony’s survival was key to the Avengers defeating Thanos in Avengers 4. According to Doctor Strange’s visions of the future, the Avengers will beat Thanos in only one out of a possible 14 million outcomes, and the ‘death’ of half the universe’s population was a part of that one scenario.
“You could argue that the ‘endgame’ actually started at the beginning of AoU, when Wanda showed Tony a vision of dead avengers and an unstoppable alien invasion. Tony’s vision, which directly led to Ultron, the disbanding of the Avengers and his inability to move on with his life with Pepper, emanated from the mind stone. In an Inception-y kind of way, it instilled in Tony a drive to “do anything to make things right” which, in the most basic sense, was to prevent the outcome he witnessed and believed would come true. But his actions were premised on a “vision” that seemed more an induced hallucination (even the movie sequences looked all ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’) rather than a true revelation of the future. Regardless, it changed the paradigm for Tony personally and would impact Earth and its population forever,” the theory continued.
The theorist also pointed out that it was likely that Thanos was shown a similar vision, of his home planet being torn apart. “I think it could be altogether likely that, at some point prior to the MCU timeline, Thanos was shown a similar vision - one where his beautiful home planet had withered away and population of Titan starving, suffering & dying. Thanos would, in that light, be similarly driven to “do anything to make things right” which, if fueled by the same fear and irrationality that drove Tony to create Ultron, could otherwise explain his moral ambivalence to the atrocities he and his followers had been committing in the names of ‘life’ and ‘survival’”.
As a result of these visions, “both Tony and Thanos would become self-fulfilling prophesies of their worst fears - Tony’s obsession with protection of Earth could have very easily resulted in the total extinction of the human race; Thanos obsession with ensuring that what happened (or what he saw happen) on Titan would never happen again, ultimately led him to murder trillions during the snappening.”
Every time the Mind Stone plays a role in the plot, the earlier theory said, characters are compelled to kill each other. So what if the Mind Stone has been controlling things all along? We’ll find out in May, when the fourth and final (at least of this phase) Avengers movie is released.
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First Published: Oct 22, 2018 18:37 IST