Headed into Avengers: Infinity War, one of the movie’s biggest mysteries revolved around the Soul Stone. At the time, the orange gem was the only Infinity Stone not yet seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and its abilities therein were unknown. Now we have an official description from Marvel.
In a featurette promoting the Blu-ray and digital release of Infinity War on July 31st, we get to see Wong’s description of how the stones were created, intercut with footage of Thanos using them in Infinity War. While the abilities of the other Stones had been more broadly known, and we saw them in action in other movies, even after Thanos managed to attain the Soul Stone by sacrificing Gamora on Vormir, we weren’t really sure what it could do. (Other than contribute to making Thanos look really pissed off.)
Now, with the featurette above, we know that the Soul Stone’s official power per Marvel is to “control life and death.”
The Space Stone: Travel across any dimension
The Time Stone: Set the future, alter the past
The Reality Stone: Bend reality to your will
The Soul Stone: Control life and death
The Power Stone: Destroy anything in your path
The Mind Stone: Create and alter consciousness
That control over life and death seems pretty crucial here for the events of Avengers 4. While we think that the Quantum Realm and possibly time travel are going to come into play in a bid to reverse what Thanos did, knowing that the Soul Stone has these comprehensive powers in the MCU would appear to make it an MVP going forward.
Prior fan theories before the movie came out regarding the Stone had speculated that it would be found in Wakanda (because of their ancestral plane) or that the Stone was none other than Tony Stark himself. Now, post-Infinity War, there’s a new prevailing theory that the MCU’s Soul Stone will act as it does in comics and introduce its pocket Soul Dimension, where the souls of the lives taken with it hang out in semi-idyll. It’s not terrible in there, it’s just, you know, not being alive. This idea was further fuelled by the scene at the end of the movie, where Thanos meets a young Gamora in an orange-tinged place that seems to stretch out into infinity.
Going by this idea, the people who fell victim to the Snap could end up together in the Soul Dimension. I’d like to imagine that they’re working there to turn this thing around as well—that seems like a good way to ensure that characters like Gamora and Spider-Man and Winter Soldier and the Wasp and many others actually have something to do in Avengers 4, instead of waiting around to be rescued. Of course, given the Infinity Stones’ other trippy qualities, we could also see these folks appear in flashbacks, at other points in time, or in alternate realities.
In comics lore, the Soul Stone (or Gem as it was often called) is even more intriguing. By its own claim (it is sentient and gives soliloquies sometimes) it’s the most powerful of the Infinity Stones (here the Power Stone is like “what?”) and it’s on a mission to collect souls to hang out in its pocket dimension. It can give its wielder the ability to access the memories and truths of another person by, well, looking into their soul, among a host of other abilities. I hope we’ll see some of these come into play. And now I kind of hope that it talks.
(via Slashfilm, image: Marvel Studios, Marvel Comics)
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