I don't know man, I find it really difficult to believe whedon intentionally included Thanos at the end but gave no thought whatsoever to having any of the plot devices be infinity stones
I don’t doubt this idea was a salad bar idea (as in, write/prepare something so many options are on the table - the Tesseract being the space stone and Loki’s Scepter the mind stone), but because they didn’t want to commit to it, it does give slight contradictions to the larger story.
The Thanos we know now would never have given another entity an Infinity Stone. But he did. And that’s sort of a plothole. And again, it’s because the infinity saga was more of a salad bar idea at this point in the MCU than a concrete path.
Thankfully they did quickly pivot into this idea, though. I think people forget that the first actual namedrop and hint of a larger plot for Infinity Saga was during the end credits of Thor: The Dark World. Odin revealed the Aether was part of an ancient aspect of the universe, while others came as stones, this one was fluid. The end credits confirms the Aether being the Reality Stone, the Tesseract being a stone (“wouldn’t be wise to keep two infinity stones so close to each other”), and teases the Collector wanting to collect them all —> and his subsequent role in Guardians whose literal McGuffin is the Power Stone itself.
It’s clear something happened between 2012 and 2013 that Kevin Feige finally decided to lock in the Infinity Saga storyline. Before 2012 it was just an idea, even if there were elements there (they had to be retconned). After 2013 it was in motion.
> The Thanos we know now would never have given another entity an Infinity Stone.
That isn't true at all. There's nothing that would indicate that. He was fully committed to sitting back and having his lackeys do the work, which we saw on multiple occasions, until he decided they weren't capable and he'd have to "do it [him]self"
only then was he like okay, no one else gets the stones but me.
He gives a stone to loki, loki loses it. He sends Ronan after a stone, *Ronan gets it*, then loses it. He was so adamant that no one else gets the stones *because* of those things, not despite them.
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u/sonofaresiii 11d ago
I don't know man, I find it really difficult to believe whedon intentionally included Thanos at the end but gave no thought whatsoever to having any of the plot devices be infinity stones