Avengers Infinity War arrived on the filmmaking scene after over a decade of construction of an interlinked and interdependent universe of superheroes. The movie dealt in something that we were completely unaware of as Marvel Cinematic Universe fans. The movie was about death and destruction, for sure. But more importantly, it was a story of how the good guys lost. The film follows the main villain as he systematically disintegrated the living daylights out of all of our “superheroes”.
There are no heroes here. No protectors, not anymore. Not since Thanos rubbed his hands together and made them disappear. Now the only residents here are despair and the sad feeling of defeat. The entire idea that Thanos could be so much more powerful than he already was, is so surreal that we as fans could not wrap our heads around it until it actually happened. The carnage was inevitable. The deaths were always coming.
The Avengers must know this. Or perhaps they can’t. They have no way of knowing what happens after the snap or what would happen if they tried to stop Thanos. They could not have known that all of their efforts were futile and it was the sad inevitability of death that was going to be their reality soon after they got through with their futile struggle of a losing battle in the last stand of Wakanda. Or did they?
There was one Avenger in particular who knew exactly how everything will play out, down to the last detail. It is the one and only sorcerer supreme vis-a-vis Doctor Strange also known as the protector of our dimension and the time stone. The man went forward and backward in time and explored 14000605 futures out of which there was only one in which the ‘good guys’ won against Thanos. If we assume that we are in that exact timeline (considering the words of Strange himself, ‘we are in the endgame now’) then that means everything has been vicariously planned out by Strange himself.
But how is that possible? After all, Strange is dusted and all the other heroes have lost to the might of the Mad Titan and the infinity stones. Even after powering up Thor lost to the quick thinking of the Titan. So how is this scenario anything but a loss for the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy? Well, there is a new theory doing the rounds on Reddit that explicitly explains Doctor Strange’s endgame and moreover gives us the exact reason for why Strange gave the time stone to Thanos even after all that struggle.
You see, the theory suggests that there are two different time stones. One that is handed over to Thanos by Strange so that Stark can be spared a gruesome death and the second one will be used by the Avengers and the remnants of the Guardians of the Galaxy to traverse through the Quantum Realm’s time vortex to collect all the other stones for the completion of the Startek Gauntlet to fight against Thanos and his might post Infinity War.
But what kind of utter hogwash is that? How can there be two-time stones? How can there be two of ‘the most powerful singularity in the entire universe that has complete autonomy on the lateral stream of time itself’. Well, the answer comes from the theory itself that suggests that it was Doctor Strange who planned it all out.
You see, when Strange looked through all futures he realised that no matter what the Avengers and the other heroes do they will have to hand over the time stone to Thanos to ensure that Tony lives. Because they will need tony to conjure up the time travel machine to undo Thanos’ carnage once he does get the time stone and completes the gauntlet. It’s a vicious circle and it must happen so that time keeps flowing.
So Strange’s idea was that he will send the time stone back in time to the Strange of the past who has just lost a battle Thanos on Titan and once he is dusted tony will then use the stone in his necklace to make the time travel machine. Then once Thanos is defeated at the end of Avengers 4, Strange will store the time stone take off of Thanos’ defeated corpse and send the other stone back to past Strange to be handed over to past Thanos. It’s an ontological time paradox that must take place and it’s something brilliant that only the sorcerer supreme can conjure up.
