Hopefully you’ve seen Age of Ultron by this point? I’m assuming that you have either already seen it (or as you are reading this) are planning on seeing it again for the second or third time! If you’ve not seen it yet, but are planning on doing so in the future, please give this post a skip as spoilers abound! As we’ve discussed already on this site this isn’t perhaps a perfect movie but it has lots to love and if you’re a fan of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) in any way, its a must see. One question that is out there though is who is big purple guy that we see at the very end of the movie and what’s his deal?
Well most Comic Universes have a couple of major villains … Marvel as large as it is has a specific foe that is the antithesis to each of their Hero’s and hero teams. With Captain America you have the Red Skull (as we saw in the first Captain America movie), with the Fantastic Four its often Dr. Doom and with the X-Men its Magneto and Apocalypse (set to appear in the next X-Men movie). There are many, many more examples of this (Spider-Man and the Goblin, Batman and the Joker etc…) in both Marvel and DC but one of the most iconic and instrumental storylines was the Infinity Guantlet arc written by Marvel in the late 80’s.
Well the big bad of that book is someone that you’ve seen a couple of times now – namely Thanos – and he’s not only appeared at the end of Avenger: The Age of Ultron, but he’s also made an appearance in a meeting with Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy as well as hearing from his flunky about how the Avengers screwed up his plans in the first movie. He will be the bad guy in Avengers: Infinity War.
OK, I know who he is, but what’s his deal?
The guy is Thanos. Thanos was one of the last sons of A’Lars, progenitor of the second colony of Eternals on Titan, and Sui-San, the last survivor of the original settlement of Eternals on Titan. Born with grey, hide-like skin and a massive body due to being born with the Deviant Syndrome, Thanos was a morose child who became obsessed with the concept of death. Through bionic implementation and long hours of meditation, Thanos augmented his Eternal strengths and powers so that his abilities surpassed those of all other Titanian Eternals.
Well if the comic book is anything to go by, Thanos really has a thing for a specific chick and he wants to impress her. Sounds somewhat banal doesn’t it, but guess who Thanos’ flame is? Yeah, you got it – in the Marvel Universe, the incarnation of Death is a female and Thanos believes that the only way to impress her is by basically destroying the cosmos and he’s going to use the infinity gems to do it!
What are the gems & what do they do?
Well you hopefully know by this time that all of the Marvel movies are interconnected? You can also that in both Agent Carter and Agents of Shield too so its a really nice touch. (Off topic – I’d be very curious to see if DC does the same with Gotham and the other DC properties – Arrow and Flash – as that would be a nice touch). Well you’ve actually seen most of the gems already & each of these gems by themselves is extremely powerful. Combined as Thanos plans … well lets just say that he could literally wield the powers of a not so benevolent god! So far we’ve seen the following infinity gems:
Mind Gem
The Avengers franchise: The Mind gem is what was in Loki’s scepter and is currently in the Vision’s forehead.
Space Stone
The Avengers franchise: The Tesseract, AKA the Space Gem, has transported the Chitauri army to Earth via rips in space. The Tesseract is currently in Asgard. (Shown in Avengers, Captain America, etc.)
Reality Gem
Thor: The Dark World: The Reality gem was that red thing Thor was calling the Aether, and that “infected” Jane Foster.
Power Stone
Guardians of the Galaxy: The Power stone was what Peter Quill steals in the opening and they basically spend the whole movie chasing. You might remember that it figures prominently into the finale.
There are two other stones, Time and Soul, which will almost inevitably turn up in some of the upcoming films prior to Avengers: Infinity Wars.