Avengers: Infinity War has ret-conned the origin story of one of Marvel’s greatest cosmic weapons. The Infinity Gauntlet is the device that can simultaneously harness the power of the six Infinity Stones to grant the wielder a myriad of godlike abilities and powers to control the whole universe. It literally makes the user the most powerful cosmic entity in the universe.

The movie had a heist-style energy where Thanos was the quest to locate all six Infinity stones namely Power, Space, Reality, Soul, Time, Mind that represent cosmic singularities which control fundamental aspects of the universe.

He went from one place to another along with his Black Order, stealing these powerful ingots and leaving a trail of death and destruction. The Earth’s mightiest heroes and Guardians of the Galaxy tried to stop the march of Thanos but in the end, he snapped his fingers that wiped out half the life in the universe including half the superheroes.

While the movie did make several changes from the comic book arc called the Infinity Gauntlet, it has created a fresh new hole in the overall plot line that Thor Ragnarok had so difficulty in fixing. It has been recently confirmed that Infinity War has created a new plot-hole in Marvel Continuity that Thor Ragnarok had already fixed!!!

Every now and then, Marvel tweaks the stories of the elements of within own characters to suit the cinematic universe in a more realistic manner. Thanos was changed to become a villain that is trying to provide balance to the universe by wiping out half of all life so that the remaining half could live a life without poverty and squalor as the resources are limited.

In the comic books, he wanted to kill just to impress his lady love. But she still dumped him even when he piled up bodies for her.

The examples are endless. Marvel tries to change the plot elements to provide room for further development in the future. More often than not, it provides results but it also creates some problems sometimes in terms of continuity. The Infinity Gauntlet is the latest to fall prey to the latter.

The original plot hole

The movie Thor (2011) showed us that Odin’s vault possesses the Infinity Gauntlet. It was a pretty ‘blink and you will miss it’ shot but the eagle eyed fans managed to identify the cosmic artifact exists in the Marvel Universe. But Marvel had no plans for the Gauntlet until then.

Then in Age of Ultron, Thanos is shown again in the Post Credits scene where he decides to “do it himself.” He is seen putting his gauntlet in his Right Hand. The problem is – the one shown on Thor was for the left hand and in Age of Ultron, the Gauntlet was for the right hand. There was no way to connect the two so Marvel decided to correct it.

How Thor 3 fixed the problem

In Thor: Ragnarok, Hela takes control of Asgard and takes a stroll through Odin’s Vault of Cosmic treasures. She reveals that Asgard used to be a warring nation, plundering the nine realms for their wealth. Odin personally led the Asgardians to battle and kill innocent beings.

In doing so, he gathered several powerful artifacts to be stored in Asgard. The artifacts he could not acquire, he decided to use fake ones. Asgard had to be the best. Odin then covered up Asgard’s violent history and paraded the lie that Asgard had always a benevolent realm.

The Vault of Treasures was then locked down, with all the real and fake artifacts. The Infinity Gauntlet, as claimed by Hela, was a fake one. Thanos had always had the actual Infinity Gauntlet all along. The continuity error was fixed until Infinity War came along.

How Infinity War created a fresh new plot hole

In Infinity War, it is shown that Thanos personally traveled to Nidavellir to force the Dwarves to create the Infinity Gauntlet. But in Age of Ultron, it pretty much looked like Thanos wore the Gauntlet for the very first time in the Post Credits.

When Eitri asks where Asgard was when Thanos was persecuting his people, Thor says Asgard couldn’t come to their aid as it was destroyed. But Asgard was only destroyed in Thor 3 while the Infinity Gauntlet had existed since Age of Ultron.

To make matters even more confusing, Ebony maw stated that No being in the history of the universe had wielded two Infinity Stones at once. So what was Odin’s Infinity Gauntlet based on then? If the power of the Infinity Stones had never been realized to work together, then why would anyone try and make the Infinity Gauntlet?

Add to that the fact that the Infinity Gauntlet is an artifact that could be just created by the skilled Dwarf-smiths of Nidavellir, why was Odin sitting on a fake Gauntlet? He could have just ordered the Eitri to make him a Gauntlet to harness the power of the six Infinity Stones.

While the movie did create some glaring plot errors, the fans are already coming up with solutions. Some of them do cover up the gap. Some of them end up making new ones. We won’t know for sure until Avengers 4 releases on May 3rd, 2019. Hopefully, all questions will be answered in the conclusive Avengers film that will mark the end of MCU Phase 3. It is currently playing in theaters and drawing huge audience worldwide.

The cast is stunningly awesome as some of the biggest Hollywood stars are part of the Infinity War bandwagon including Josh Brolin (Thanos), Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Chris Pratt (Star Lord), Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Sebastian Stan (Winter soldier), Anthony Mackie (Falcon), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk), Bradley Cooper (Rocket Raccoon), Vin Diesel (Groot), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Jeremy Reiner (Hawkeye), Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange), Benedict Wong (Wong), Tom Holland (Spiderman), Letitia Wright (Shuri), Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther), Paul Rudd (Ant-Man), Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlett Witch), Karen Gillian (Nebula), Pom Klementieff (Mantis), Peter Dinklage (Eitri), Dave Bautista (Drax), Paul Bettany (Vision), Samuel Jackson (Nick Fury), Cobie Smulders (Mariah Hill).

Here is the official synopsis for the movie:

“As the Avengers and their allies have continued to protect the world from threats too large for any one hero to handle, a new danger has emerged from the cosmic shadows: Thanos. A despot of intergalactic infamy, his goal is to collect all six Infinity Stones, artifacts of unimaginable power, and use them to inflict his twisted will on all of reality. Everything the Avengers have fought for has led up to this moment – the fate of Earth and existence itself has never been more uncertain”.

Throughout the journey, MCU has faced major issues regarding specific plot timelines but the problem worsened with Spiderman: Homecoming as it threatened to throw the entire current flow of events out of the window. Marvel studios realized that these loopholes need to be plugged in future so Kevin Feige made an official announcement that MCU will publish its timeline from now, he said:

“All of that debate has encouraged us. We are going to be publishing an official, and I’m not sure when, or in what format, an official timeline. It’ll probably be a part of ah, I don’t know, a part of an in print that you can fold out and look at,” he said. “But suffice to say, only in limited cases do we ever actually say what the actual years are because we never want to be tied down to a particular year and I think people assume that whenever the movie is released is when is when the movie is taking place, and that is not the case.”

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