Avengers: Infinity War
retaliator : eternity Warsaw Thanos snap his fingers and apparently kill half the life in the universe - but that may not have been the the case at all . In the MCU , the ginger nut was Thanos ' greatest accomplishment , the very reason he had assemble togetherthe Infinity Stonesin the first place . The excited Titan believe that volatile universe ontogenesis endanger to result in a universal extinction - level result . His mad " solution " was to kill off one-half of all living things in the creation . Shockingly , Thanos proved to be the one villain who truly succeeded in his end , and inAvengers : Endgame , he died content .
In reality , Thanos ' shot does n’t make sense at all . Thanos literally erased half the life in the creation - not just sentient being , but half theplants , animals , and bacteriaas well . He destabilized ecosystems across the intact creation , no doubt touch off environmental and ecologic catastrophe , and depleted vital resource . give that ’s the font , it would n’t be a surprise if in realism Thanos had basically position in gesture a concatenation of event that would direct to the defunctness of all life . He believed he fought on the side of life , but in trueness he was a champion of dying . Fortunately , of course , the Avengers were able to put the subject to rights .
Related : Avengers : Endgame ’s closing Has Some Disturbing implication
But how exactly did the snap work ? Thanos himself believed he literally killed his victim , and in interview the writer anddirectors ofAvengers : Infinity WarandAvengers : Endgamehave used the same language . One insidious detail , however , paint a picture that may not be the case at all - and it has authoritative implication for theend ofAvengers : Endgame .
Doctor Strange Suggests The Snap Didn’t Kill Anyone
Doctor Strangeintroduced the Masters of the Mystic Arts , and reveal that the Ancient One had served as the Time Stone ’s defender for centuries . " I ’ve spent so many years peering through metre , " the Ancient One distinguish Stephen Strange , " I ’ve keep unnumberable fearful future . And after each one , there ’s always another , and they all lead here , but never further . " The Ancient One had protect realness itself by using the Time Stone to research countless alternate future tense , identify threats and exploit out how best to deal with them . It was the same trickDoctor Strange used inAvengers : Infinity War , when he identify the one timeline in which the Avengers ultimately triumphed , and begin cautiously orchestrating events so that timeline was the one that came truthful .
But according to the Ancient One , anyone who use the Time Stone to explore the future will be ineffectual to see past the import of their death . Indeed , that was confirmed byAvengers : Endgame , when the Hulk attempt to take the Time Stone from her . Although the Ancient One knew that she was fate to be replaced by Doctor Strange , she had no idea the threat of Thanos was approaching , or that Strange would touch off anEndgame programme involving time traveling .
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InAvengers : Infinity War , Doctor Strange was able to apply the Time Stone to see " all the possible outcomes of the follow conflict " - all 14,000,605 different futures . According to the Russo buddy , that admit timelines in which Scott Lang never escapedthe Quantum Realm , and the Avengers never got the idea to use clip travel to restore Thanos ' victim . But in those timeline - and likely in the legal age of those 14 million future - Doctor Strange was never restitute . So how was he able-bodied to see past his own dying ? Logically , if a someone using the Time Stone ca n’t see past their own expiry , but Doctor Strange could see all the futures that flowed from the snap , it must think the snap did n’t vote out hoi polloi at all . It did something else .
What Happened With The Snap?
lease ’s adjudicate to redo what actually happened with the snap . The physical dead body of Thanos ' snap victims were cut back to dust . That was n’t justa convenient particular effect , either ; reckon closely at the post - snap humankind ofAvengers : Endgame , and you ’ll observe that the inflammation levels are slimly darker . That match perfectly with the mind that a massive amount of debris particles have been infix into the atm , and are preclude some of the sun ’s radiation hit the planet . The ignition change after the Hulk ’s pushover , when Ant - Man expect at the hoot , because that junk has been extracted again and used to reform Thanos ' victims . ( It then return to a darker hue because Thanos ' attack on the Avengers Compound kicks up a whole heap of rubble in that local area . )
Meanwhile , in the MCU it ’s now clear that there is such a matter as an immortal somebody ; that ’s prove by the existence ofthe Ancestral PlaneinBlack Panther , which T’Challa can visit in rules of order to interact with the disembodied spirit of his ascendent . Avengers : Endgamedidn’t so much as hint as to what happen to these mortal ; all that can be said for trusted is that , for Peter Parker , there was no awareness of the transition of time . If that was honest for Black Panther and Shuri as well , then it bear the theory that they were n’t really dead , because otherwise T’Challa at least would have been on the Ancestral Plane during the five - year menstruation . Some fans theorized that the souls were consume by the Soul Stone , but that ’s unlikely , simply because the Soul Stone ’s destruction would have meant their souls would either have been released or blend for good , unable to be bring back - even by another snap . Another theory is thatthe souls were transmit to the Quantum Realm , explaining why it was glut with energy at the moment Thanos snapped his fingers .
lay the composition together , the most reasonable account is that the snap functioned akin to transporters inStar Trek . InStar Trek , a car transporter converts a individual or object on a molecular degree , transforming them into an DOE pattern . This energy pattern is salt away in a computer memory buffer , then transmitted to another point , where it is converted back into matter . In the same kind of direction , the catch come along to have deconstructed people correctly down to a molecular level . However , it seems to have stored details of their form somewhere , on some airplane of world - perhaps the Quantum Realm . That ’s why , when the Hulk crack his fingers , masses turn back precisely as they were ; their clothes reformed as well , the things they had in their pockets , even point as esoteric as Bucky ’s cybernetic arm or Falcon ’s annexe . By this logic , nobody was truly defeat when Thanos snatch up his fingers ; instead , they were shunted into a sort of cosmic stale storage , where they were held in stasis . This would neatly explain why Doctor Strange could see the ultimate termination of all these 14 million dissimilar futures ; because in all but one of them , he would remain in this unusual form of stasis eternally .
This Also Means That Thanos Is Still Alive
So far this seems like nothing more than an interesting theory , of no practical importance to the MCU . In actual fact , though , if the snap did n’t vote out hoi polloi at all , then that has massive implications for thefuture of the MCU . Because it think of Thanos and his United States Army are n’t really dead at all .
Avengers : Endgameended with Tony Stark steal the Infinity Stones from Thanos , andforming his own Infinity Gauntlet . He snap his own digit , sacrificing himself to turnThanos and his armies to dust . It ’s clearly intended to be a unmediated latitude with the snap Thanos subjected to the full creation to , and note that it involve the disintegration of everything loyal to the delirious Titan - and even of the wreckage of his Sanctuary - II spacecraft . presumptively even the bodies of fallen Chitauri and Outriders crumble away . But if this is indeed a parallel of the first snap , then it mean Thanos , too , is n’t truly drained ; like his original dupe , he has simply been disintegrated , with his formula store on some other plane of reality .
Related : Kevin Feige Answers 11 Burning Questions About Endgame & The MCU ’s Future
If this is the case , then there ’s no reason to assumeThanos is gone for well from the MCU . It ’s totally possible that , somewhere in the depth of place , some exotic races studied into the science behind the snap and worked out what had happened - even managing to reverse it . Doctor Strange , after all , focused only on events on Earth and Titan , mean he ’d have been unaware of what was happening in the distant corners of the cosmos . That in turn means there ’s no understanding someone could n’t successfully ferment out how to bring Thanos himself out of this cosmic cold storage .
The truth is that this likely was n’t intentional ; it ’s the sort of inadvertence that inevitably slew in when a franchise has been running for over a decade , albeit quite a dramatic example . And yet , from an in - creation perspective , the system of logic is sound . The Time Stone has specific constraint , and those storm us to interpret the various snap ofAvengers : Infinity WarandAvengers : Endgamein a room they plausibly were n’t destine to be read . And that logically elevate the possible action that Thanos could return .
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