WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR INFINITY WAR AHEAD
Seriously, if you have not seen it get to a theater and do so – cause you need to. Then come back and read.
After ten years and 18 movies, we finally arrived at the highly anticipated Avengers: Infinity War and it was everything I expected yet nothing I expected and there aren’t really words to describe it.
From a time travel side, I almost want to drool over the implications of the movie. We’re going to spend more time discussing theory than giving a synopsis of the movie.
As you know, in the Marvel universe there were six elemental stones that were released when the universe was created: the space stone, mind stone, soul stone, power stone, reality stone, and of course the time stone. These six stones carry immense power individually. Together…
The team-up I’ve been waiting for finally happens in this movie. Heimdall manages to summon the Bifrost one last time sending Hulk back to Earth where he crashes into the New York sanctum where Doctor Stephen Strange and Wong meet him.
Bruce Banner must have told Doctor Strange about Tony Stark because Strange interrupts a moments between Tony and Pepper who happen to already be in New York celebrating their engagement (apparently the engagement at the end of Spiderman: Homecoming actually happened).
I’m hoping there’s a deleted scene because next we see Tony he’s on a couch in the New York sanctum looking slightly shellshock. I want to see the whole magic explanation and wonder if that just had to be cut because of time. When we get a chance to see Tony react, he’s taking it in stride. Then again, after the things he’s seen over the years it’s not entirely a surprise.
The next interesting temporal thing happens after that. The Black Order comes to Earth on the orders of Thanos to retrieve the two stones there. Cull Obsidian and Ebony Maw face down Doctor Strange, Wong, and Iron Man. For some reason, the Hulk will not come out, no matter how hard Bruce Banner tries to get him to.
After the showdown, where Wong saves Tony, Tony flies off to rescue the newest arrival into the movie – Spider-Man – he tells Wong he is invited to his wedding.
One of Doctor Strange’s first words to Tony were, “Congratulations on the wedding.” It’s a subtle implication that Doctor Strange has been looking into the future.
Later in the movie, Tony, Peter Parker, and Doctor Strange meet up with Peter Quill, Drax, and Mantis on Thanos’ home planet of Titan. While Tony and Quill are arguing over who gets to make the plan, Mantis notices something strange with Doctor Strange. He is meditating but has activated the Time Stone and seems to be slightly distorted at times and is surrounded by green magic instead of his usual red.
Tony approaches him just as Doctor Strange snaps out of it. He seems shell-shocked at first and when Tony asks him what happened, Doctor Strange says he looked at potential timelines to see various outcomes of the upcoming conflict.
Tony asks the question we all were thinking. How many timelines did he see?
14,000,605
14,000,605 timelines.
“How many where we win?”
We all can take a guess at the answer. But to hear Doctor Strange confirm it makes your heart drop.
One.
That means there are 14,000,604 timelines in which they fail. One can only guess what happens in those.
What did he see in that moment?
Thanos shows up on Titan and after a battle, he almost kills Tony.
My. Heart. Stopped.
Let me express my feelings in that moment. I mentioned in my post last week how I love Doctor Strange. I also love Tony Stark. Robert Downey Jr. is one of my favorite actors and I love when they let him play in the MCU.
So in that moment, the one I thought I was ready for, the one I had told myself repeatedly that I needed to be ready for, I found myself about ready to fall apart.
“I hope they remember you.”
Thanos’ words are actually worse in context.
There he is, about to die when Doctor Strange makes Thanos an offer. The Time Stone for Tony’s life. The trade is made and Thanos vanishes, leaving them all in shock.
“We’re in the endgame now.” Doctor Strange’s vague and haunting statement reminds us that there isn’t much left in this movie and there doesn’t seem to be a way out.
With the time stone in his possession, Thanos is almost one stone away from his goal. He believes the universe is out of balance. He’s been going planet by planet eliminating half of the population with the belief that if the population of the universe is controlled, then life will continue on indefinitely. With the Infinity Stones, he could do it on a universal scale with the snap of his fingers.
We join the rest of the team who are in Wakanda fighting Cull Obsidian, Proxima Midnight, and Corvus Glaive – the remaining members of the Black Order ( Ebony Maw was killed by Tony and Peter earlier in the movie) and their army are trying to get to Vision and the Mind Stone. Shuri believes she can remove the stone and allow Vision to live without it, enabling them to destroy the stone and stop Thanos that way.
Unfortunately, Shuri’s lab is ambushed and Vision is forced into the fight. He tells Scarlet Witch that she can destroy the stone because the energy that her powers create and the energy of the stone are just similar – yet different enough that it can unravel it.
Thanos arrives on Earth and Vision tells Scarlet Witch it’s time. As Thanos plows through the Avengers on Earth, she begins to destroy the stone, at one point doing that and holding off Thanos simultaneously.
She destroys the stone and I sat there, once again forgetting an important detail, and was like “was it really that easy.” No, no it was not.
In case you forgot, Thanos has the time stone and he used it to back it up a minute and rip the stone from Vision’s forehead, killing him.
And with that, he has all six stones. With the snap of his fingers, he destroys half of all life in the universe. Bucky, Drax, Groot, Mantis, Maximoff, Quill, Strange, T’Challa, and Wilson.
And Peter Parker.
That needed to be a separate one because that is the one where Marvel takes a dagger and shoves it right through the heart.
Time Travel Theory
Let’s talk theory.
Most of the temporal puzzles revolve around two scenes: when Doctor Strange views timelines and the scene when we see Tony Stark for the last time.
Doctor Strange’s 14,000,605 Timelines
The sheer number of timelines there alone is astounding. He was only in that trance for about two minutes. Did he create hundreds of variations of himself in that moment, as we saw him do later? That would aid his speed in reviewing so many timelines in so short a time.
If that holds true, there are possibly hundreds of versions of Doctor Strange floating in various points of the timestream. Do they just phase out of existence when the road to that path closes? At that point, which ones is the prime Doctor Strange – and does he really know?
I think so? At least using this theory based on the later scene, Thanos managed to make the illusions disappear and end up with just one version.
But those illusions could interact with their surroundings. How much control did he have from that spot observing timelines? Could he just observe or are we going to see a fragment of Doctor Strange in the next one?
Maybe his body is gone, but he’s still alive on the astral plane. We saw him do a variation of that when he was operated on in Doctor Strange. The problem is, you can only do it for so long.
It could be I’m dead wrong and he’s completely out of play in the next film.
What did Doctor Strange see in the 14,000,604 timelines where they fail? I have some theories about that as well.
Why Doctor Strange didn’t clue Tony in? I wonder in how many of those timelines Doctor Strange did clue Tony in on what was to come and because of that they failed.
Foreknowledge can be tricky.
Tony, the longest running character in the MCU, has changed a lot since we saw him in Iron Man.
The Tony we meet in Iron Man caught me off guard, if we’re honest. He isn’t as paranoid thus doesn’t seem to have backup plans for his backup plans. We see later on in the series that he tricks out his suits, his car, his house, the Avengers’ headquarters, whatever he can to make sure that no matter the circumstance he will have the upper hand, come what may.
I think that’s part of the reason he wasn’t told about the timeline that works. Because Tony would take it onto himself to make plans to backup the plans to back them up. That’s how he’s come to function.
Doctor Strange, even for having just met the guy hours earlier, would have seen that in his timeline. Their relationship shifts after he sees down the timeline, most of the antagonism is gone – though it had already been fading at that point.
Another problem with filling Tony in is that there’s the little issue of Peter Parker fading out of existence there at the end. Tony would not have allowed that to happen. Just like Quill set these events in motion because he wanted to avenge someone he loved, Tony Stark may have accidentally let half the universe die to save Spider-Man.
So much of this seems to rest on the shoulders of Tony Stark. I watched Yinsen tell him to not waste his life and come next May I’m fully expecting him to lay it on the line to save half the universe. And it will break my heart to watch him do it.
Another reason is if Tony knows what’s happening, there’s a good chance that he might still make the wrong choice. Because if we’ve learned anything over the last ten years, it’s that Tony Stark will always believe that he knows best regardless of conflicting information.
Look at the Iron Man suit. He outright says he doesn’t want the tech falling into wrong hands and that maybe in his, it can do some good. That feeling that he’s the one that has to have a plan to save Earth has only increased as his paranoia increases as we go through the various phases of the MCU.
Did Doctor Strange possibly manipulate Tony into the timeline that has their only chance of winning?
Yes. I think he coaxed him into it.
Is Doctor Strange going to get an earful if Tony Stark gets a chance to have another conversation?
Most definitely.
That is a big if though.
14,000,506
That number still continues to blow my mind.
I really hope you know what you’re doing, Doctor Stephen Strange.
And I really hate that I have to wait a year to find out just what he saw.
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