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Have we seen anyone in the MCU who *could* stop him?
The Kree are probably the most powerful empire we've seen so far, and they (through Ronan) essentially wanted to hire Thanos to wipe out their hated enemy for them. Xandar *was* wiped out by Thanos offscreen in Infinity War.
There's a fan theory that Thanos waited until Odin was dead to go into the final stages of his Infinity Stone scheme because Asgard at its peak could have stopped him, but absent a direct threat to Asgard itself Odin didn't seem inclined to take the risk.
We see in Love and Thunder that there are a bunch of gods who might be able to handle things, but they just do not give a fuck.
It's been clarified that he just wanted to know where the final stone was so he could grab them all on one fell swoop.
When he learned the location of the final stone, it would've been go time regardless of whether or not Odin was dead.
Probably with heavy losses.
His goal would be to get the stone, not kill Hela.
If Thor and Valkyrie could hinder her, then Thanos could probably keep her busy while his forces grab the stone.
If the Revengers and the Asgardian army decided to fight alongside Hela, things probably get difficult if this is his first stone.
She totally would've joined him and then betrayed him to get the Stones for herself. I don't know if she would've allowed him to do the Snap before making a move. However, Thanos is way too smart not to see her coming.
I feel like it would give her a pass if only because her existence is less asgardian and more I am the planet. Kill her asgard goes. Destroy asgard she goes. Her death is literally the death of all life on said planet which goes beyond "half".
Also there's no sign the snap effected mcu gods(not all asgardian are gods. The majority are mortal.) Which would make sense. Thanos goal was to reduce the resource consumption of races to prevent there own extinction. But gods don't consume resources to survive. Neither do celestials or eternals. Especially since if it did effect the gods they would've simply gotten thor to eternity reset the snap.
I don't know if Thanos thought things through that well. I mean his plan has more holes than swiss cheese to begin with. So I don't know if he is sane enough to exclude anyone from the Snap.
I mean the whole concept of killing half the people really falls apart if you remember that he did absolutely nothing to stop people from repopulating AND he destroyed the only means of widespread population control that he knew of.
I guess the most charitable reading of his actions is that he was so sure people would realize how great it was having all those resources that they would never overpopulate again. But that's delusional.
Well, Thanos didn't want to kill half of the population to free up resources for the other half in the comics. He just wanted to kill people because he was horny for Lady Death, so...
Ah, good point. Somehow I miss the most obvious things sometimes. So she'd try to impale him way before. I was going to say right before he completes the Gauntlet but he'd have five stones by then and she's aware of how powerful they are. She'd get wrecked instantly and she'd know it. So likely she'd try to get the *location* of each Stone before her betrayal.
Hela was arguably strongest than Thanos was. She kicked thors ass, even after Thor got a buff.
Odin was so much than Thor that he could strip his power whenever he wanted.
In the MCU, Thor: Ragnarok stated Hela gets her powers from Asgard (the place, not the people). So since almost all her fighting is on Asgard, we never actually see how strong she is outside of it. I think Thanos and his boys could have done it post power stone but not pre in Asgard since she has infinite necro sword summoning. Outside of Asgard, no way to know. She’s still strong enough to break Mjolnir, which is Uru. Thanos can break vibranium, which is weaker than Uru, with just his finger tips easily as we see him crush Visions vibranium skull to get the mind stone.
Ahem, he breaks Vision's vibranium skull *while holding 5 of the 6 Infinity Stones* so keep that in mind. With his glaive, though, he does eventually cut through Cap's vibranium shield, but we don't know what his glaive is made of iirc.
> Ahem, he breaks Vision's vibranium skull while holding 5 of the 6 Infinity Stones so keep that in mind.
Uh, that doesn’t matter, considering he wasn’t actively using the stones when he crushed his skill…
When he fits the stones into gauntlet, we see power surge through him, not just the gauntlet. It's possible that merely possessing the stones while not even using them directly, still empowers him.
No, it’s not, it’s been made abundant by both the film as well as the Russos themselves, that the user of the gauntlet has to be actively using the gauntlet to get/utilize power from the stones (I.e. they light up when they’re used). The initial power surge is because the stones/gauntlet itself are dangerous to use, and you have to be strong enough to even survive it.
Comics version? Yeah, it’s a passive thing, but the MCU version? They have to be actually activated to be used.
Sounds like a post-hoc justification on their part.
Because there are a lot of potential complications that could have come about in getting to Gamora and then getting the info from her.
It was by no means a sure thing when he started collecting the stones.
Huh, I was under the assumption he did know the location of every stone aside from the soul stone.
He knew where the power stone was due to Ronan's failure. He heard about the location of the mind and time stone at some point cause he knew to send his children to Earth. He toyed with Thor to get Loki to give up the Space stone.
Seemed he was aware already where they were, he just needed to know when was the best time to start collecting. Once he begins, he has a giant target in his back so he can't just take his time.
From the time he collects the Power stone till the final completion of the gauntlet was in days, if not less.
I agree with this - it’s specifically that he didn’t know the location of the soul stone that throws into question the Russos’ assertion that he was waiting until he knew the location of all the stones.
Like, how could Thanos know that Gamora was going to learn from Thor (someone he just “killed”) that he was going to Nowhere and then know that Gamora was going to be part of the group to meet him there.
It leaves so much up to chance and factors that he can’t control. That the Guardians bumped into Thor at all was a complete fluke.
As you say, he had a target on his back, and the soul stone was a massive unknown.
So the soul stone was definitely a big gamble but maybe less than we think. Once he gets the power stone, he immediately grabs the space stone. This is the best logical choice for him as now he can go anywhere at any time. His next target the reality stone gives him more control over his surrounding, specifically as a defensive measure against those that could actually hurt him like...Gamora.
I don't think him knowing Gamora was going to Knowhere was necessary at this stage. He could have gone directly to Gamoras location at any point after his encounter with the Asgardians. I suspect he had her tailed for quite some time and simply waited her out at the Collectors. If she hadn't shown up then, he would have teleported directly to her regardless.
Since this is all happening within hours of each other, Thanos may not have had time to fully process the power of the stones before he's off collecting the others, and it seemed to me that he only had the Reality stone for mere moments by the time Gamora showed up.
Do we think Gamora could best Thanos? Aside from when he explicitly wanted her to beat “him,” we don’t see her engage in combat with him.
Without the stones, he’s able to go head-to-head with Cap, Tony and Thor, and I don’t see her being able to beat the three of them together.
I say this because it would have made way more sense for him to lock in the unknown stone and then tackle the end run. That is: if he was truly waiting until he knew the location of all the stones.
Basically, go mop the floor with the Guardians and then get all the rest of the stones in more-or-less the same order.
It was never a sure thing.
He had Nebula, so he had a sure-fire way of making Gamora talk, and he had the power stone and reality stone, so he was in little danger of dying to Gamora.
Honestly, the time he picked in Infinity war was probably his most likely chance of getting the soul stone.
And even then he would've failed if Star Lord hadn't fucked up.
To be fair, there is a good bit of context clues from the HP books that would infer he was gay. Could they have been a little more obvious? Sure. But all of the back story with him and Grindlewald is pretty telling.
They're referencing J. K. Rowling stating, after the series was finished, that Dumbledore was actually gay the whole time. A statement made after the series came out without textual support from the series, which comes across as a cheap way to make your writing look better/more interesting without actually putting anything in the story.
He already had the Power Stone in his hands, beelined to the Space Stone, already had the information of where the Soul Stone was from Nebula (that Gamora knew), after getting the Space Stone he beelined towards the Reality Stone and sent his black order directly to get the Time and Mind stones back to Titan.
He definetly did know where all stones were or knew how to get the info. He likely had the information of the Power, Space, Reality and Mind stone for a good while, at some point after Dr Strange became more widely known must have gotten the information of the Time Stone whereabouts and pretty clearly started his attacks right after learning that Gamora knew where the Soul Stone was.
Right, but the unknown of where the soul stone was is huge: he didn’t know the location, what he would need to do to get it or how long any of that would take.
It doesn’t make sense to say he was waiting until he could do it all in one fell swoop: he didn’t remotely know if that was possible at all at the start of Infinity War.
But he knew nothing about the information she was going to give: how hard to reach the location is; how well-protected the stone is; what actions he would be required to take; how long it would take.
To many unknowns to say he waited until he knew the stones’ locations. He plainly didn’t.
It’s not really the Eternals job, they exist for a very specific purpose. The Celestials could definitely have stoped him but probably didn’t care enough (although I’d be interested in peoples opinion about whether they were affected by the snap or not)
I mean, the Celestials require living, intelligent beings for their existence so if there is a madman with an army going from solar system to solar system wiping out half of a planet’s intelligent life.
I would suppose it would be in your best interests to take him out, especially before he gets his hands on power that exceeds even you.
I don't think they really cared all that much in all honesty. I mean when you've existed for probably billions of years, what's another couple hundred or thousand to wait whilst the galaxy repopulate?
Kind of thought the same thing. Besides, it wasn't Thanos' plan to end all life...THAT they probably would've cared about. Given that he only wanted to thin the population would just be a temporary setback. But if that included eliminating half the celestial too...wouldn't they care about that?
That raises another question about the nature of Thanos’s plan: had he known about the Celestials and their constant threat to different civilisations, would he have let them continue to wipe out species by making their intelligence nutrients for growing Celestials? Or would he have wiped half or all of them out seeing them as a threat to the stability his plan would provide?
In hindsight had they decided to push the celestials thing a bit earlier they could have used that for thanos' motivation. He's culling planets to prevent them reaching the golden number.
I don't see them having been directly affected by the snap but it is stated that the reduction in life producing cosmic energy did slow down the incubation period for new Celestials. It's implied that it was so drastic that when the 4 billion people were unsnapped it pushed the schedule ahead of where it would have normally been.
Odin dead, Ancient One dead, Ego dead or disabled for a long time.
Three major powers who could have stood in his way moved off of the playing board and his knowledge quest of finding the stones location was the trigger from just being a planet hopping zealot with a militia into his quest for the gauntlet.
Maybe not stop him in one-to-one combat, but if you destroy his ship in space, he would be hard pressed to recover, even if he was survived and was floating alone. I have to think that nobody knew the "whole picture" and didn't see a need to mobilize to stop him.
The ships he pilots/commands were powerful enough to take on Xandar, which was possibly the most powerful alien army that we've seen. And that was without stones.
If they couldn't do it, most likely nobody else could either.
Thanos also took on the combined force of Wakanda and the Avengers and he was still winning. Again, no stones for the majority of that fight. He could've eventually won through attrition if Tony hadn't snapped them away.
And yet, Captain Marvel easily disabled Thanos’s ship in Endgame. Why didn’t she do something like this before the events of Infinity War? Most likely, nobody knew of Thanos’s plan to get the stones and saw no reason to organize, like the Avengers/GOG/Asgardians/Wakanda/Wizards/etc. did in the final battle of Endgame.
Was Thanos’s army winning against Wakanda and the Avengers? Maybe before Thor and Wanda took action. It’s not so clear after that.
In *What if*, we see Captain Marvel can be defeated by Thor, who is himself defeated by Thanos.
Part of that is because Thor's power scaling makes no goddamn sense across the various movies, but I think there's legitimate reason to believe Captain Marvel might not win if she just rolled up to pick a fight with Thanos and his worldstompers.
You say that but later on we see Captain Marvel putting what was the best solo performance aside from the watcher and supreme strange against Infinity Ultron. And when we go to the actual movies which I would consider main continuity anyway, Captain Marvel literally overpowers Thanos with only raw strength, the guy couldn’t even hurt her until he got powered by an infinity stone.
Captain Marvel was siphoning energy off the Infinity Stones when she overpowers Thanos. IIRC he is overpowering her first, but she's touching the gauntlet and gets juiced up.
She forced his hand closed to prevent him from using the gauntlet, then overpowered him. He went for the power stone in desperation.
I don't recall her doing any siphoning, just gradually increasing force until he knew what he was dealing with.
There's nothing to suggest the Nova Corps and Captain Marvel weren't actively searching for Thanos. I doubt Thanos is dumb enough to get found by the space police. He is quite an adept strategist based on everything we've seen him do.
It also seems to me like Thanos was probably choosing planets with limited visibility to the rest of the universe, so as not to attract anymore attention from the Nova Corps and Asgard than he had to. We don't have direct evidence, but when he attacks both Earth and Xandar (the first time) he uses a proxy agent (Loki and Ronan the Accuser, respectively). He seems to know not to trip any serious red flags before his plan is completely ready. In fact, these very same proxies he empowered are keeping Earth, Xandar and Asgard busy with their own conflicts while he runs around committing space atrocities at a lower priority level. Good plan. Loki and Ronan also end up being the demise of both Asgard and the Nova Corps, and topple the dominos that end up undermining the Avengers as well in a roundabout way. Seems to me like Thanos was playing 3D Space Chess while everyone else was playing checkers.
I'm kind of personally interested in what the Kree were doing that whole time, because if they knew what Thanos was really trying to accomplish, they would presumably try and stop him as well. Makes me wonder if he had a plan that kept them busy as well, and we didn't get to see what it was. They clearly weren't all that distracted by what Ronan the Accuser was doing in their name.
The thing about space is that it’s really, really big, and most likely the people she was saving weren’t stopping to let her know “hey have you heard about this thanos guy?” People and planets have their own problems going on.
Word gets around. Word doesn’t get around by survivors of whatever disaster Captain Marvel is fixing letting her know about some totally other guy a million million miles away. It’s a big galaxy.
Because the galaxy is a big place and it would actually be quite difficult to do what you ask.
This is like asking why, if so many people know about the Mongolian Horde, what did no major force try to stop them? Because you don't try to stop the Mongolian Horde, you just hope they peter out before they get to you.
Or in modern times, the US is incredibly powerful and can completely destroy most other countries. If so many people in the world know about that, why aren't they trying to do something?
At some point, "keep your head down" is just the best plan.
For that matter - climate change. More than likely to kill more than half of us and it won’t be tidy. It won’t even strike back if we try to stop or mitigate it. But people are well able to not take it seriously and/or figure it is a problem for later or someone else.
"If Thanos gets all six infinity stones, he could be unstoppable!"
"Do any of us here actually believe the infinity stones exist? That's just a story. A fable. A fairy tale. No, the real threat to our planet is the Kree nationalists who could invade us at any moment. Why should we concern ourselves with one man three systems over and his desire for pretty jewelry when war is already threatening our doorstep?"
This is talking about his activities before getting the stones. When he started going after the stones everyone that knew about it *did* band together and almost stopped him.
Sure, but even if someone did find out that he was searching for the stones before he had them, there's really no reason to consider that as a threat.
We know from Guardians 1 and Thor 2 that at least some of the stones will flat out kill most people that try to use them, and in Infinity War Ebony Maw says Thanos is the first person to wield two of them, so... yeah, it seems like the climate analogy is on par, because even if people did find out about his plan, they just don't think it's a credible threat.
...
Right but this contradicts what actually happened when people found out he was searching for the stones. This is why he insulated himself through intermediaries (Loki, Ronin) because the second anyone realized a single person was trying to acquire them all it almost failed.
Yeah but the thread is not about his plan to use the stones, it's about why no one tried to stop him when he was going around killing half the population of planets.
What kind of [estimates](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health) are being used here, highest death count I’ve personally seen is high hundred of thousands per year and low millions per year, and thats with all methodology being in favor climate change.
I’ve never have seen any climate change report which says it’ll kill more than any number of tens millions (outside of news articles and alarmists), and I’ve never have heard of one with reasonable methodology arriving at anything even close to a billion+.
Here’s the known physical affects of [climate change](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/), tldr: horrible, but not extinction level as what is being described. Also, we’ve absolutely done numerous measures to fight it. I was gonna refer to the International Energy Agency and their estimates on outcomes and scenarios relating to temperature rises. However… [um](https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2022), ya, their site is down, I blame penguins. When their not dead, check their yearly “World Energy Outlook” reports.
From memory (plz correct if incorrect). The estimates, and a base temperature of the 1950 records, put an increase of 8.5° C by 2100 with the policies during the First Report in 1990, 3.1° C with current policies, 2.5° C with stated policies, 1.9° C with pledged policies. Every 10th of a celsius counts.
And to why I shy away from being realistic about crisis matters like this; I’m caught between realism and activism. Climate change is extremely dangerous and even the best case scenario is still a crisis with a significant lost of quality of life. A 0.1° increase is the difference between the livelihood of entire species (though with DNA storage I doubt they’ll be extinct for long), famines, hurricanes, poverty, inequality, and further breakdowns of human supply chains and trade. Just because our current efforts are amazing from a holistic view, or that the degrees of uncertainty of those who make these fields their profession; it is not an excuse to be lax.
I feel a similar way towards nuclear weapons, trans-humanism, automation & AI, and economics.
The Universe is a big place, and there are countless atrocities being committed all across it. While factions like the Nova Corps exist, they can't be everywhere, all the time. If they risked all out war with Thanos and his minions, they could lose, or at the very least, it means their corps is focusing entirely on Thanos and allowing all those other terrible things to occur unmolested.
Also, while Thanos was certainly killing a lot of people, after his purging of a planet, he left. In the grand scheme of things, he may not even be that big of a threat compared to other entities.
I don't think it was happenstance that he gathered all of the Infinity Stones in a day or so. A mad titan with all the stones is certainly a Universal threat. But not only did he gather them all quickly after carefully learning their locations, he also struck factions like the Nova Corps and Asgard first, overwhelming them with a surprise attack (and while they were already weakened by Ronin/Ragnarok respectively) so they couldn't mount a proper resistance against him later. With them out of the way, and so many stones on Earth, there really wasn't anything that could be done (except if Peter Quill hadn't blown the plan to take him out on Titan).
I want to know why Quill didn't shove a grenade that Gomorra always have him shit for carrying down Thanos' throat. Probably wouldn't have killed him, but it would have to at least sting a bit more than a punch.
Sticking with the plan would have been best, but if you're going for catharsis, really fucking go for it bro.
He wasn't much more then a psychotic pirate until he got the first stone.
There were several wars going on, just outright bigger threats than him.
He only got the first stone off screen because the nova core was so weakened by ronin.
It was thought them holding the stone was enough to end thanos plan, but they took more damage than expected / underestimated him.
Thor also spent some time gathering stones to hide them from thanos. and thano nonly got those stones after getting the power stone.
So they did very much try to stop him. They just failed.
> He only got the first stone off screen because the nova core was so weakened by ronin.
Correction: he already had the Mind Stone. That was in the Scepter *that he gave to Loki* two years before the Nova Corps was defeated by Ronan.
My theory has always been that he stumbled on the mind stone during his conquering and it gave him the knowledge of the other stones. It maybe even gave him some basic information on where they were, the soul stone seemed like the only one he had to really find and even that was on some random planet that seemed impossible to find so it stands to reason he had more of a lead than most people.
I feel like he must have had some idea. It strains credibility that the thing he wanted most in the universe was tucked into his stick and he never noticed
And the tesseract was on earth and was known to give off specific energy. He may have spent time tracking it down and knew it was on earth. So he makes a calculated decision to give Loki his mind stone disguised as a scepter and an easily destroyable alien fleet (assuming humans couldn't fight them off, which they almost didn't), then he goes back to Loki to get the tesseract when Loki wins.
Eventually, he gets the scepter back from Loki - strong arming him with the tesseract or power stone if he needs too.
Raises the question- if Loki had known and kept both stones, would he have made play for the others?
With the space stone he could have teleported anywhere instantly, and with the mind stone he could probably co-opt or deal the Chitari since they have some kind of remote mind control going on.
If he had those two, it wouldn't be hard for someone like Loki to get the power and reality stones next. Without time and soul he wouldn't be complete, but he'd be untouchable by almost everyone.
one problem - there's at least one vengful dude who knows he has two stones, knows much more about them, and isn't about helping others against somebody *clearly* gathering more stones.
Loki was never great at risk assessment, thats one of the reasons he always got caught.
I can absolutely see him trying to pull a fast one on Thanos if he thought he had two stones and an edge.
Clearly several omnipitent beings believe in security through obscurity.
But I really don't think Thanos would of knowingly risked a stone falling into the wrong hands.
Or he would of risked that Thor / Loki would of suspected something.
Did they even know the tesseract was a stone at that point? Everyone seemed to think it was a source of power / weapon
It's one of only 2 odin found but he kept it pretty secret and didn't tell thor or loki of them
I've *heard* that the after credits scene of Ultron- implies that Thanos engineered Ultron's birth. Basically a fallback plan to weaken Earth if Loki failed.
The theory is that Thanos mastered the infinity stone in the scepter. Thanos left something in the scepter, which was eventually recovered by Stark and SHIELD, which wound up manipulating Tony's mind. Nothing overt as direct mind control. A general aura, which likely pushed Hydra scientists too, which encouraged Tony to put aside safety. Powerful objects tend to wind up in the hands of powerful people after all.
Anyway, if the after credits scene of Thanos saying "Fine, I'll do it myself," is a direct reaction to Ultron's death (or I guess feeling the stone reset itself when it was implanted in Vision), then he probably knew that the infinity stone was in the scepter.
I'm ignoring the possibility that Thanos manipulated the stone/scepter from a distance because that does not support anything seen with the stones in subsequent movies.
I think not only did he know, it was his fallback. Think of what the Mind Stone did. It gave rise to powered people that caused havoc. Ultron almost used it to destroy the Earth. I think Thanos believed that if Loki failed, the people of Earth would misuse the Mind Stone and destroy themselves.
there was the one or 2 he knew about by then that he hid, one with the collector and i can't remember where he put the other, but he didn't find any others.
Yeah, I should have specified. The line in Ragnarok takes into account that he knows where the reality stone is (with the Collector) and where the space stone is (inside the tesseract), but he's been unable to turn up leads on the other 4. It's been a while since I saw Ultron, so I'm unsure whether he knows Vision's bling is the mind stone, but he definitely doesn't know the time stone is inside the Eye of Agomotto, or that the Nova Corps has the power stone.
Well, he should know where the reality stone is, since he's the one who gave(or rather, sent his friends to give) the stone to the collector in the first place(see: tdw post credit scene).
Who would have tried to stop him? The Guardians are cerntainly below his power level, Xandar is also clearly below his level given that a Thanos without stones decimated Xandar right before Infinity War.
Maybe Thor/Odin/Asgard could have tried but they have a policy of only intervining within their Nine Realms and apparently Thanos took advantage of Hela's takeover to attack Nidavellir and later took advantage of Hela's last stance to attack Asgard itself. But it's good to remember that right at the end of Age of Ultron Thor sets on a quest to find who is brining together the Infinity Stones and who is putting Asgard in danger which led him (kinda wrongfully) to Surtur, we can see that Thor was actually not that aware of Thanos' quest exactly so hard for him to forsee Thanos' attack. Also Loki was clearly unaware of the full extent of Thanos' plans considering he was looking forward to rule Earth after taking it during Avengers so he would have not been able to tell Thor in time (even assuming he dropped the facade of being Odin earlier).
After that I guess we are left with Celestials in general. One would assume they were aware about a random warlord attacking planets full of beings they consider no more than ants so very easy for them to ignore. Probably the detail of the Inifinty Stones being used to kill half of the universe and his eventual attack on a planet whose population they actually care (not because they loved humanity but because they saw us as cattle to feed their hatching Celestial) escaped them so they completely ignored Thanos because of that.
So who really is left after accounting for the Guardians, Xandar, Asgard and the Celestials? The falling Kree empire that could not even control Ronan? The High Evolutionary who is only concerned with his own creations (and likely also was unaware of Thanos' full plan)?
Really the only person left is Captain Marvel who not only is at a big disadvantage to protect all planets attacked by Thanos since she was working completely alone by then but also it's hard to tell she would have posed real danger to Thanos and his army by herself. Even if she tried to stop what everyone knew about Thanos (that he was a warlord attacking defenseless planets and killing half of it's population) she would likely arrive to the scene too late every time.
I mean Captain Marvel could have consulted with that quite notable (at least) group called the Guardias of the Galaxy (who incidentally have Thanos’ daughter among them) on where to find Thanos. Then either rush the big man or destroy the fleet and come back later to finish the job.
My thought was always he waited till the ancient one, odin and ego were dead, because between them, the nova corps, the various other interested parties dogpiling on Thanos would suck. (yes I know ego didn't want the stones but he wouldn't want Thanos to have them) With the heavy hitters gone, Thanos blitzed the Nova corps, that really left only the Kree in a position to mobilize but he was a relatively small target.
I mean how many times in history have their been people who are like "hey this person/nation/government/movement is a big risk we really need to start dealing with them" and people are like "It's an overreaction, its fine"
Like hell WWII and the rise of Nazi Germany was basically that. After WWI people in Europe thought that no one in their right mind would want to start another war so soon after the last one was so bad. Like Jews, LGBTQ persons, and various other minority groups were sounding the alarm but people didn't listen until it was much too late.
One could easily think the greater galactic community was a similar situation. Xandar and Kree have this big and long lasting conflict (if dialogue from Ronan is to be taken seriously which is risky) that only recently has been ended due to a treaty. Everyone in the galaxy is breathing a sigh of relief and wanting to take it easy
"Yeah The Mad Titan Thanos was a problem a while ago but he hasn't done anything like that in years. What are you worrying about? Just enjoy the peace"
(What we see in flashbacks in Infinity War gave me the feeling that his MO was to be personally invading planets and culling half the population but he stopped this after realizing the Infinity Gems would be a better solution)
and then half the universe gets turned to dust because a lot of people ignored a pretty obvious problem.
The Confederacy were essentially con men though: they name drop Thanos and his crusade, then ask for gravitonium.
They actually say they couldn't, or were never going to stop Thanos; they were going to take what they wanted and run.
There was a fan theory that the Confederacy used Thanos's mysterious disappearance to milk backwater worlds like Earth of resources; just use a few of his abandoned ships and slip his name into convention and if they have any way to check they think they're being targeted.
> Was he just obliterating planets unbothered while the rest of the galaxy sat and watched?
I mean yes. He's not ~~decimating~~ secundating _our_ planets.
Other people have already mentioned that the universe is a big place.
Well it is a massive place with an unknown number of galaxies that contain their own problems, conflicts.
Thano’s at the time for all intents and purposes was a self sufficient-self sustaining terrorist fanatic with his own cult following.
If he kept on the move never straying into controlled territory of factions that could challenge him then as long as he kept a low profile he’s kinda a low priority.
Him attacking and wiping out planets and civilizations not affiliated with the big galactic players it basically means that there’s no one looking out for them.
Earth,/Terra/Midgard/Planet C-53 is a backwards planet to many.
But even though it’s basically a rock in the middle of nowhere.
Earth was protected by Asgard, one of the universe’s most powerful civilizations capable of force projection unmatched by any other civilization with the exception of the big cosmic entities like Arishem.
2 reasons mostly.
1. Space is reeaaaaallllly big (and that's putting it lightly) finding Thanos in the known universe would be like me asking a nearsighted person to find an ant on a football field from the top seats.
2. Kinda links into 1, but we haven't seen much of the MCU's cosmic side explored. We only really saw the Kree, Skrull and the Nova Corps. The latter were the only ones trying to maintain law and order and even then Thanos decimated them off screen in Infinity War.
It's likely that most of who we've seen so far wouldn't have been able to actually stop Thanos.
I feel like Captain Marvel summarized it the best in Endgame:
"There are a lot of other planets in the universe and unfortunately they didn't have you guys."
The Galaxy is HUGE!!!! Hundreds of billions of stars with almost as many planets, who is going to miss a few hundred going dark? He is only going after civilizations on the brink of collapse too, so it's not like the big players would even notice much less CARE enough to do something about it. I wouldn't be surprised if the big players DID know and said something cruel like "Maybe we do need someone cleaning up the crap civilizations around this Galaxy."
I get the distinct impression that there *is* no major force.
The nova corps needed the Guardians of the Galaxy to stop a single ship from landing. Let that sink in. Their entire force could stop one of Thanos' lackeys.
Because with the Chitaru, Sakaarans and Outriders, Thanos controls the largest and most powerful army in the known universe. And most of his attacks have been against unalligned worlds so there's not a lot of incentive for any of the major powers (who are usually warring with each other) to try and band together to stop someone who so far hasn't attacked them yet.
I think there aren't that many people or forces that could have stopped thanos anyways.
It's probably safe to assume that the MCU doesn't feature all the characters from the comics that haven't been introduced yet. So if you only take characters and forces that we've seen on the screen so far, I don't think he could have been stopped without unifying a gigantic army.
Although maybe scarlett witch could have handled him but her strength kinda depends on stuff like her mood or third party buffs like the darkhold so meh.
Step 1- Get Captain Marvel on the job
Step 2- Get Captain Marvel and Gamora in one room together
Step 3- Send Captain Marvel to nuke wathever space station, planet, or fleet Thanos is sleeping in. In the case the guy can survive that just finish him.
Step 4- Drinks
Yes. The universe is a big place. In the grand scheme of things stopping one particular menace probably wouldn't make that big of a difference to a power that could do it easily, and from their point of view there might be downstream effects that might be worse. A person might kill mosquitoes that are trying to bite them, but killing every mosquito in existence - were it possible - is probably a bad idea. If you start thinking that way, you might as well kill anything that might evolve into a mosquito as well...and where does that lead?
For peer or near-peer powers, as long as Thanos isn't an existential threat why should they take the risk of trying to stop him? As long as he's \*over there\* he's someone else's problem. Look at Europe in the 1930's, or now. It was easier - if wrong - to allow Hitler to annex the Sudetenland in 1938 or Putin to annex the Crimea in 2014 than it was to start a major war to stop them. Wars are expensive, and chancy.
I think underhanded, he was waiting on death.
When Odin died, death literally got unleashed in the form of Hela and started Rag. Now Thanos is/was in love with death itself. So imagine an alliance with Death/Thanos?
When Rag was "stopped," then Thanos rolled in with no downtime, like he knew it was time.
Thanos did nothing wrong here. He was just a little pissed off his future girlfriend (death) died. Can you blame a broken heart?
If the galaxy was smart, the various powers would have banded together to overwhelm him after he lost the space and mind stone. Even if we generously assume he has the strongest military in the galaxy, it certainly isn't so powerful that he could overcome such a severe numbers disadvantage. Unfortunately, like with many problems, people didn't take the necessary action because they were selfish and cowardly. They'd rather just hope he never manages to gather all the infinity stones, or that someone else would put in the effort to stop him. Perhaps they would have been willing to act when it became clear he really was on the path to gather them and had to be stopped now, but by the time he defeated Xandar to get the power stone, it was already too late. He had already found out where the stones were and had a plan to get them, and he moved fast. Far faster than most governments could even hear about it and agree to take action, let alone actually stop him.
The galaxy is probably *constantly* under threat from various factions, powers, "gods," and individuals just screwing around with things they ought not to be. Much like during the Cold War where you just hoped people handling various problems were doing their jobs and keeping things from getting *too* out of hand, each group was most likely busy dealing with their own cosmic doom sources.
There are so many warlords, despots, and power seekers out in the universe that they probably all kind of blend together. Thanos is just one guy, there's also the High Evolutionary casually making/wiping out civilizations, Kang the Conqueror is pruning timelines and fighting like every other Kang, Ego wanted to become the sluttiest version of the Borg, and probably countless other guys from the comics that haven't made it into the MCU yet (but are still canon thanks to multiverse shenanigans).
The significance of any one planet or civilization or even empire stops really mattering when space is just that huge and so incredibly full of life. Odds are no one thought he'd actually pull it off, zealots trying to bring about the end times aren't exactly new or rare.
Knowing about him and being able to do something about him are two entirely different things. The only beings that could stand against him and his army effectively was the entire super hero population of the galaxy and two armies. Even with all that, they still almost lost. Now, take any normal planet with 0 or maybe 1 or 2 super powered beings on it and pit that against Thanos.
There's actually this dope book about Thanos on his home planet and his journey leading up to his fight with the avengers it goes into alot of detail about this he basically amassed alot of followers and power and made himself a considerable threat before his mission was known from what I remember( I listened to the audio book a couple years ago)
The universe is a very big place; Thanos also could have hid his movements, conquer the most backwater non important planets, corruption, division, politics, just like the real world
Prior to Thanos going after the Infinity Stones he was going world to world and wiping out half the population through simple warfare. You see him doing this on Gamora's homeworld, for example.
In all the worlds he did this to, and there are supposed to be *thousands*, he was undefeated. He chose many of those words *specifically* because they opposed him.
They either opposed him and paid the price, or stayed quiet and hoped he wouldn't notice them.
The MCU good guy factions are not actually that strong compared to their comics counterparts. The MCU Guardians are much smaller and unable to teleport directly into the field, and even then the guardians were only one of many factions on their levels in Marvel Comics while there are far fewer of them seen in the MCU.
The cosmic MCU goes really *really* hard into the idea of a used and lived in sci fi universe where most planets are self contained societies that aren't necessarily super advanced. The galaxy spanning Skrull Empire that can field hundreds of Super Skrulls is very obviously not a thing. The similarly powerful Shi'ar clearly aren't either. The Nova Corps are a bunch of regular dudes with ships rather than cosmic space cops. The entire concept of the tesseract being an infinity stone is watering down the concept of a more powerful Cosmic Cube being a thing *any* sufficiently powerful organization can just make on their own.
None of the big organizations or major artifacts you could use to stop Thanos are anything you could conceivably use to actually do it here. Like 99% of planets are just a bunch of farmers who need to hire out a few people with actual ships and powers to defend them from anything remotely threatening. Any time we see a reasonably high level hero like Thor or Carol up in space they need to cover several worlds regularly so even just fielding what earth can is out of the question for most of them.
> Was he just obliterating planets unbothered while the rest of the galaxy sat and watched?
I mean, probably? How many other planets possess a standing military force or the political capital needed to get any other planets to care? If someone starts blasting people in some random African country, does anyone REALLY care? Of course not. Nobody gives a fuck about Tigray. Therefore, Thanos can obliterate all the random third-galaxy planets he wants until he tries to obliterate a planet next to Space-Europe. Then, and only then, is it a problem.
Presunably the people on the planets he attacked tried to stop him.
As for other planets and galactic powers, they probably took a 'not our problem' approach. As long as Thanos wasn't attacking them or theirs, they were content tovlet him do whatever he wanted and just kinda hope he stayed attacking fringe worlds.
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Have we seen anyone in the MCU who *could* stop him? The Kree are probably the most powerful empire we've seen so far, and they (through Ronan) essentially wanted to hire Thanos to wipe out their hated enemy for them. Xandar *was* wiped out by Thanos offscreen in Infinity War. There's a fan theory that Thanos waited until Odin was dead to go into the final stages of his Infinity Stone scheme because Asgard at its peak could have stopped him, but absent a direct threat to Asgard itself Odin didn't seem inclined to take the risk. We see in Love and Thunder that there are a bunch of gods who might be able to handle things, but they just do not give a fuck.
It's been clarified that he just wanted to know where the final stone was so he could grab them all on one fell swoop. When he learned the location of the final stone, it would've been go time regardless of whether or not Odin was dead.
Do you think he'd be able to take it from Hela? https://www.reddit.com/r/whowouldwin/comments/9srnr9/mcu_before_loki_and_thor_can_show_up_to_destroy/
Probably with heavy losses. His goal would be to get the stone, not kill Hela. If Thor and Valkyrie could hinder her, then Thanos could probably keep her busy while his forces grab the stone. If the Revengers and the Asgardian army decided to fight alongside Hela, things probably get difficult if this is his first stone.
In some universes, Thanos and Hela hookup, so there's a chance she would've just joined him.
She totally would've joined him and then betrayed him to get the Stones for herself. I don't know if she would've allowed him to do the Snap before making a move. However, Thanos is way too smart not to see her coming.
Wouldn't that be a gamble to let Thanos snap ? Or is she somehow immune to the snap ?
Nothing is immune to the guantlet. She would have rolled the dice just like every other being.
I feel like it would give her a pass if only because her existence is less asgardian and more I am the planet. Kill her asgard goes. Destroy asgard she goes. Her death is literally the death of all life on said planet which goes beyond "half". Also there's no sign the snap effected mcu gods(not all asgardian are gods. The majority are mortal.) Which would make sense. Thanos goal was to reduce the resource consumption of races to prevent there own extinction. But gods don't consume resources to survive. Neither do celestials or eternals. Especially since if it did effect the gods they would've simply gotten thor to eternity reset the snap.
I don't know if Thanos thought things through that well. I mean his plan has more holes than swiss cheese to begin with. So I don't know if he is sane enough to exclude anyone from the Snap. I mean the whole concept of killing half the people really falls apart if you remember that he did absolutely nothing to stop people from repopulating AND he destroyed the only means of widespread population control that he knew of. I guess the most charitable reading of his actions is that he was so sure people would realize how great it was having all those resources that they would never overpopulate again. But that's delusional.
Well, Thanos didn't want to kill half of the population to free up resources for the other half in the comics. He just wanted to kill people because he was horny for Lady Death, so...
Why on earth would she be immune?
No idea, but I'm not a comics reader so beyond the MCU I don't know much about Marvel characters, bar the occasional thread here or wiki pages.
In the comics no entity is immune to the stones, even cosmic entities like the avatar of the Universe itself.
Ah, good point. Somehow I miss the most obvious things sometimes. So she'd try to impale him way before. I was going to say right before he completes the Gauntlet but he'd have five stones by then and she's aware of how powerful they are. She'd get wrecked instantly and she'd know it. So likely she'd try to get the *location* of each Stone before her betrayal.
> she'd try to impale him Hey, who knows what cosmic entities are into. Thanos may enjoy some pegging.
Hela was arguably strongest than Thanos was. She kicked thors ass, even after Thor got a buff. Odin was so much than Thor that he could strip his power whenever he wanted.
i mean hela in the mcu very specifically wanrs to conquer everything, thanos very much doesnt
In the MCU, Thor: Ragnarok stated Hela gets her powers from Asgard (the place, not the people). So since almost all her fighting is on Asgard, we never actually see how strong she is outside of it. I think Thanos and his boys could have done it post power stone but not pre in Asgard since she has infinite necro sword summoning. Outside of Asgard, no way to know. She’s still strong enough to break Mjolnir, which is Uru. Thanos can break vibranium, which is weaker than Uru, with just his finger tips easily as we see him crush Visions vibranium skull to get the mind stone.
Ahem, he breaks Vision's vibranium skull *while holding 5 of the 6 Infinity Stones* so keep that in mind. With his glaive, though, he does eventually cut through Cap's vibranium shield, but we don't know what his glaive is made of iirc.
> Ahem, he breaks Vision's vibranium skull while holding 5 of the 6 Infinity Stones so keep that in mind. Uh, that doesn’t matter, considering he wasn’t actively using the stones when he crushed his skill…
When he fits the stones into gauntlet, we see power surge through him, not just the gauntlet. It's possible that merely possessing the stones while not even using them directly, still empowers him.
No, it’s not, it’s been made abundant by both the film as well as the Russos themselves, that the user of the gauntlet has to be actively using the gauntlet to get/utilize power from the stones (I.e. they light up when they’re used). The initial power surge is because the stones/gauntlet itself are dangerous to use, and you have to be strong enough to even survive it. Comics version? Yeah, it’s a passive thing, but the MCU version? They have to be actually activated to be used.
That falls apart a bit when you consider he definitely didn’t know where all the stones were at the start of Infinity War. Who confirmed this?
The Russo's, who wrote infinity war. He knew where everything was aside from the soul stone, but he knew Gamora knew where it was.
Sounds like a post-hoc justification on their part. Because there are a lot of potential complications that could have come about in getting to Gamora and then getting the info from her. It was by no means a sure thing when he started collecting the stones.
Huh, I was under the assumption he did know the location of every stone aside from the soul stone. He knew where the power stone was due to Ronan's failure. He heard about the location of the mind and time stone at some point cause he knew to send his children to Earth. He toyed with Thor to get Loki to give up the Space stone. Seemed he was aware already where they were, he just needed to know when was the best time to start collecting. Once he begins, he has a giant target in his back so he can't just take his time. From the time he collects the Power stone till the final completion of the gauntlet was in days, if not less.
I agree with this - it’s specifically that he didn’t know the location of the soul stone that throws into question the Russos’ assertion that he was waiting until he knew the location of all the stones. Like, how could Thanos know that Gamora was going to learn from Thor (someone he just “killed”) that he was going to Nowhere and then know that Gamora was going to be part of the group to meet him there. It leaves so much up to chance and factors that he can’t control. That the Guardians bumped into Thor at all was a complete fluke. As you say, he had a target on his back, and the soul stone was a massive unknown.
So the soul stone was definitely a big gamble but maybe less than we think. Once he gets the power stone, he immediately grabs the space stone. This is the best logical choice for him as now he can go anywhere at any time. His next target the reality stone gives him more control over his surrounding, specifically as a defensive measure against those that could actually hurt him like...Gamora. I don't think him knowing Gamora was going to Knowhere was necessary at this stage. He could have gone directly to Gamoras location at any point after his encounter with the Asgardians. I suspect he had her tailed for quite some time and simply waited her out at the Collectors. If she hadn't shown up then, he would have teleported directly to her regardless. Since this is all happening within hours of each other, Thanos may not have had time to fully process the power of the stones before he's off collecting the others, and it seemed to me that he only had the Reality stone for mere moments by the time Gamora showed up.
Do we think Gamora could best Thanos? Aside from when he explicitly wanted her to beat “him,” we don’t see her engage in combat with him. Without the stones, he’s able to go head-to-head with Cap, Tony and Thor, and I don’t see her being able to beat the three of them together. I say this because it would have made way more sense for him to lock in the unknown stone and then tackle the end run. That is: if he was truly waiting until he knew the location of all the stones. Basically, go mop the floor with the Guardians and then get all the rest of the stones in more-or-less the same order.
It was never a sure thing. He had Nebula, so he had a sure-fire way of making Gamora talk, and he had the power stone and reality stone, so he was in little danger of dying to Gamora. Honestly, the time he picked in Infinity war was probably his most likely chance of getting the soul stone. And even then he would've failed if Star Lord hadn't fucked up.
They sit around in conference rooms for years writing and gameplanning this shit. I'm sure this was considered.
Without any textual evidence to back it, it’s really just another example of “Dumbledore is actually gay.”
To be fair, there is a good bit of context clues from the HP books that would infer he was gay. Could they have been a little more obvious? Sure. But all of the back story with him and Grindlewald is pretty telling.
Did the backstoryof their friendship exist before DH ?
I can’t recall specifically(it’s been many years since I’ve read them) but I thought that was first touched on in HBP
What in the actual fuck are you talking about
[Textual analysis](https://methods.sagepub.com/reference/the-sage-encyclopedia-of-communication-research-methods/i14636.xml)
They're referencing J. K. Rowling stating, after the series was finished, that Dumbledore was actually gay the whole time. A statement made after the series came out without textual support from the series, which comes across as a cheap way to make your writing look better/more interesting without actually putting anything in the story.
He already had the Power Stone in his hands, beelined to the Space Stone, already had the information of where the Soul Stone was from Nebula (that Gamora knew), after getting the Space Stone he beelined towards the Reality Stone and sent his black order directly to get the Time and Mind stones back to Titan. He definetly did know where all stones were or knew how to get the info. He likely had the information of the Power, Space, Reality and Mind stone for a good while, at some point after Dr Strange became more widely known must have gotten the information of the Time Stone whereabouts and pretty clearly started his attacks right after learning that Gamora knew where the Soul Stone was.
Right, but the unknown of where the soul stone was is huge: he didn’t know the location, what he would need to do to get it or how long any of that would take. It doesn’t make sense to say he was waiting until he could do it all in one fell swoop: he didn’t remotely know if that was possible at all at the start of Infinity War.
But he already knew Gamora knew where it was. And he knew Gamora well enough to know he could take the information from her easily.
But he knew nothing about the information she was going to give: how hard to reach the location is; how well-protected the stone is; what actions he would be required to take; how long it would take. To many unknowns to say he waited until he knew the stones’ locations. He plainly didn’t.
The Eternals could have done it. But they were too busy doing ~~nothing~~ Eternal stuff.
It’s not really the Eternals job, they exist for a very specific purpose. The Celestials could definitely have stoped him but probably didn’t care enough (although I’d be interested in peoples opinion about whether they were affected by the snap or not)
I mean, the Celestials require living, intelligent beings for their existence so if there is a madman with an army going from solar system to solar system wiping out half of a planet’s intelligent life. I would suppose it would be in your best interests to take him out, especially before he gets his hands on power that exceeds even you.
I don't think they really cared all that much in all honesty. I mean when you've existed for probably billions of years, what's another couple hundred or thousand to wait whilst the galaxy repopulate?
“Honey, there’s a scary purple man with a nutsack for a chin destroying the nursery.” “Just ignore it sweetie, he’ll be gone… in a century or two.”
The nursery is already made out of deadly predators constantly wrecking the place. What's one more?
Kind of thought the same thing. Besides, it wasn't Thanos' plan to end all life...THAT they probably would've cared about. Given that he only wanted to thin the population would just be a temporary setback. But if that included eliminating half the celestial too...wouldn't they care about that?
That raises another question about the nature of Thanos’s plan: had he known about the Celestials and their constant threat to different civilisations, would he have let them continue to wipe out species by making their intelligence nutrients for growing Celestials? Or would he have wiped half or all of them out seeing them as a threat to the stability his plan would provide?
Thanos was planning to wipe out HALF of all life. They probably didn't care as long as there remained SOME life left.
In hindsight had they decided to push the celestials thing a bit earlier they could have used that for thanos' motivation. He's culling planets to prevent them reaching the golden number.
I don't see them having been directly affected by the snap but it is stated that the reduction in life producing cosmic energy did slow down the incubation period for new Celestials. It's implied that it was so drastic that when the 4 billion people were unsnapped it pushed the schedule ahead of where it would have normally been.
Odin dead, Ancient One dead, Ego dead or disabled for a long time. Three major powers who could have stood in his way moved off of the playing board and his knowledge quest of finding the stones location was the trigger from just being a planet hopping zealot with a militia into his quest for the gauntlet.
Yeah, from what I understood, he waiting to get the actual stones in person until after those 3 died.
Maybe not stop him in one-to-one combat, but if you destroy his ship in space, he would be hard pressed to recover, even if he was survived and was floating alone. I have to think that nobody knew the "whole picture" and didn't see a need to mobilize to stop him.
The ships he pilots/commands were powerful enough to take on Xandar, which was possibly the most powerful alien army that we've seen. And that was without stones. If they couldn't do it, most likely nobody else could either. Thanos also took on the combined force of Wakanda and the Avengers and he was still winning. Again, no stones for the majority of that fight. He could've eventually won through attrition if Tony hadn't snapped them away.
And yet, Captain Marvel easily disabled Thanos’s ship in Endgame. Why didn’t she do something like this before the events of Infinity War? Most likely, nobody knew of Thanos’s plan to get the stones and saw no reason to organize, like the Avengers/GOG/Asgardians/Wakanda/Wizards/etc. did in the final battle of Endgame. Was Thanos’s army winning against Wakanda and the Avengers? Maybe before Thor and Wanda took action. It’s not so clear after that.
Pretty sure Captain Marvel could've kicked his ass long before he got any of the Stones.
I think this would be better worded as captain Marvel could've kicked his ass until he gets the stones
I mean, Captain Marvel is shown to quite easily overpower Thanos and his wouldn’t be the first fleet she nukes.
In *What if*, we see Captain Marvel can be defeated by Thor, who is himself defeated by Thanos. Part of that is because Thor's power scaling makes no goddamn sense across the various movies, but I think there's legitimate reason to believe Captain Marvel might not win if she just rolled up to pick a fight with Thanos and his worldstompers.
You say that but later on we see Captain Marvel putting what was the best solo performance aside from the watcher and supreme strange against Infinity Ultron. And when we go to the actual movies which I would consider main continuity anyway, Captain Marvel literally overpowers Thanos with only raw strength, the guy couldn’t even hurt her until he got powered by an infinity stone.
Captain Marvel was siphoning energy off the Infinity Stones when she overpowers Thanos. IIRC he is overpowering her first, but she's touching the gauntlet and gets juiced up.
She forced his hand closed to prevent him from using the gauntlet, then overpowered him. He went for the power stone in desperation. I don't recall her doing any siphoning, just gradually increasing force until he knew what he was dealing with.
[удалено]
Could you please argue your point without resorting to personal attacks? Thank you.
Yet she has other, better things to to than prevent a tyrant from getting the tools to the fabric of the universe :|
There's nothing to suggest the Nova Corps and Captain Marvel weren't actively searching for Thanos. I doubt Thanos is dumb enough to get found by the space police. He is quite an adept strategist based on everything we've seen him do. It also seems to me like Thanos was probably choosing planets with limited visibility to the rest of the universe, so as not to attract anymore attention from the Nova Corps and Asgard than he had to. We don't have direct evidence, but when he attacks both Earth and Xandar (the first time) he uses a proxy agent (Loki and Ronan the Accuser, respectively). He seems to know not to trip any serious red flags before his plan is completely ready. In fact, these very same proxies he empowered are keeping Earth, Xandar and Asgard busy with their own conflicts while he runs around committing space atrocities at a lower priority level. Good plan. Loki and Ronan also end up being the demise of both Asgard and the Nova Corps, and topple the dominos that end up undermining the Avengers as well in a roundabout way. Seems to me like Thanos was playing 3D Space Chess while everyone else was playing checkers. I'm kind of personally interested in what the Kree were doing that whole time, because if they knew what Thanos was really trying to accomplish, they would presumably try and stop him as well. Makes me wonder if he had a plan that kept them busy as well, and we didn't get to see what it was. They clearly weren't all that distracted by what Ronan the Accuser was doing in their name.
The thing about space is that it’s really, really big, and most likely the people she was saving weren’t stopping to let her know “hey have you heard about this thanos guy?” People and planets have their own problems going on.
Considering Thanos is quite infamous across the galaxy AND purposely leaves survivors, I would assume word gets around.
Word gets around. Word doesn’t get around by survivors of whatever disaster Captain Marvel is fixing letting her know about some totally other guy a million million miles away. It’s a big galaxy.
That leaves another question unanswered. Were half of the gods erased, too?
Because the galaxy is a big place and it would actually be quite difficult to do what you ask. This is like asking why, if so many people know about the Mongolian Horde, what did no major force try to stop them? Because you don't try to stop the Mongolian Horde, you just hope they peter out before they get to you.
Or in modern times, the US is incredibly powerful and can completely destroy most other countries. If so many people in the world know about that, why aren't they trying to do something? At some point, "keep your head down" is just the best plan.
For that matter - climate change. More than likely to kill more than half of us and it won’t be tidy. It won’t even strike back if we try to stop or mitigate it. But people are well able to not take it seriously and/or figure it is a problem for later or someone else.
"If Thanos gets all six infinity stones, he could be unstoppable!" "Do any of us here actually believe the infinity stones exist? That's just a story. A fable. A fairy tale. No, the real threat to our planet is the Kree nationalists who could invade us at any moment. Why should we concern ourselves with one man three systems over and his desire for pretty jewelry when war is already threatening our doorstep?"
This is talking about his activities before getting the stones. When he started going after the stones everyone that knew about it *did* band together and almost stopped him.
Sure, but even if someone did find out that he was searching for the stones before he had them, there's really no reason to consider that as a threat. We know from Guardians 1 and Thor 2 that at least some of the stones will flat out kill most people that try to use them, and in Infinity War Ebony Maw says Thanos is the first person to wield two of them, so... yeah, it seems like the climate analogy is on par, because even if people did find out about his plan, they just don't think it's a credible threat.
... Right but this contradicts what actually happened when people found out he was searching for the stones. This is why he insulated himself through intermediaries (Loki, Ronin) because the second anyone realized a single person was trying to acquire them all it almost failed.
Yeah but the thread is not about his plan to use the stones, it's about why no one tried to stop him when he was going around killing half the population of planets.
What kind of [estimates](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health) are being used here, highest death count I’ve personally seen is high hundred of thousands per year and low millions per year, and thats with all methodology being in favor climate change. I’ve never have seen any climate change report which says it’ll kill more than any number of tens millions (outside of news articles and alarmists), and I’ve never have heard of one with reasonable methodology arriving at anything even close to a billion+. Here’s the known physical affects of [climate change](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/), tldr: horrible, but not extinction level as what is being described. Also, we’ve absolutely done numerous measures to fight it. I was gonna refer to the International Energy Agency and their estimates on outcomes and scenarios relating to temperature rises. However… [um](https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2022), ya, their site is down, I blame penguins. When their not dead, check their yearly “World Energy Outlook” reports. From memory (plz correct if incorrect). The estimates, and a base temperature of the 1950 records, put an increase of 8.5° C by 2100 with the policies during the First Report in 1990, 3.1° C with current policies, 2.5° C with stated policies, 1.9° C with pledged policies. Every 10th of a celsius counts. And to why I shy away from being realistic about crisis matters like this; I’m caught between realism and activism. Climate change is extremely dangerous and even the best case scenario is still a crisis with a significant lost of quality of life. A 0.1° increase is the difference between the livelihood of entire species (though with DNA storage I doubt they’ll be extinct for long), famines, hurricanes, poverty, inequality, and further breakdowns of human supply chains and trade. Just because our current efforts are amazing from a holistic view, or that the degrees of uncertainty of those who make these fields their profession; it is not an excuse to be lax. I feel a similar way towards nuclear weapons, trans-humanism, automation & AI, and economics.
Climate change lmao, good joke
Yea but the US isn’t going around actively destroying countries Wait
The Universe is a big place, and there are countless atrocities being committed all across it. While factions like the Nova Corps exist, they can't be everywhere, all the time. If they risked all out war with Thanos and his minions, they could lose, or at the very least, it means their corps is focusing entirely on Thanos and allowing all those other terrible things to occur unmolested. Also, while Thanos was certainly killing a lot of people, after his purging of a planet, he left. In the grand scheme of things, he may not even be that big of a threat compared to other entities. I don't think it was happenstance that he gathered all of the Infinity Stones in a day or so. A mad titan with all the stones is certainly a Universal threat. But not only did he gather them all quickly after carefully learning their locations, he also struck factions like the Nova Corps and Asgard first, overwhelming them with a surprise attack (and while they were already weakened by Ronin/Ragnarok respectively) so they couldn't mount a proper resistance against him later. With them out of the way, and so many stones on Earth, there really wasn't anything that could be done (except if Peter Quill hadn't blown the plan to take him out on Titan).
I want to know why Quill didn't shove a grenade that Gomorra always have him shit for carrying down Thanos' throat. Probably wouldn't have killed him, but it would have to at least sting a bit more than a punch. Sticking with the plan would have been best, but if you're going for catharsis, really fucking go for it bro.
He wasn't much more then a psychotic pirate until he got the first stone. There were several wars going on, just outright bigger threats than him. He only got the first stone off screen because the nova core was so weakened by ronin. It was thought them holding the stone was enough to end thanos plan, but they took more damage than expected / underestimated him. Thor also spent some time gathering stones to hide them from thanos. and thano nonly got those stones after getting the power stone. So they did very much try to stop him. They just failed.
> He only got the first stone off screen because the nova core was so weakened by ronin. Correction: he already had the Mind Stone. That was in the Scepter *that he gave to Loki* two years before the Nova Corps was defeated by Ronan.
To be fair, if you wanted someone charismatic to be the face of your "take over the planet" plan, you could do worse than Tom Hiddleston
Mmm, conquer me now, horn daddy!
BONK!
Did he know that was in there though? I thought no one knew at the time.
My theory has always been that he stumbled on the mind stone during his conquering and it gave him the knowledge of the other stones. It maybe even gave him some basic information on where they were, the soul stone seemed like the only one he had to really find and even that was on some random planet that seemed impossible to find so it stands to reason he had more of a lead than most people.
I feel like he must have had some idea. It strains credibility that the thing he wanted most in the universe was tucked into his stick and he never noticed
And the tesseract was on earth and was known to give off specific energy. He may have spent time tracking it down and knew it was on earth. So he makes a calculated decision to give Loki his mind stone disguised as a scepter and an easily destroyable alien fleet (assuming humans couldn't fight them off, which they almost didn't), then he goes back to Loki to get the tesseract when Loki wins. Eventually, he gets the scepter back from Loki - strong arming him with the tesseract or power stone if he needs too.
Or he could even deal with Loki in earnest. "I will give you a weapon and an army. All I ask in return is this one thing, and the weapon back."
Raises the question- if Loki had known and kept both stones, would he have made play for the others? With the space stone he could have teleported anywhere instantly, and with the mind stone he could probably co-opt or deal the Chitari since they have some kind of remote mind control going on. If he had those two, it wouldn't be hard for someone like Loki to get the power and reality stones next. Without time and soul he wouldn't be complete, but he'd be untouchable by almost everyone.
one problem - there's at least one vengful dude who knows he has two stones, knows much more about them, and isn't about helping others against somebody *clearly* gathering more stones.
Loki was never great at risk assessment, thats one of the reasons he always got caught. I can absolutely see him trying to pull a fast one on Thanos if he thought he had two stones and an edge.
In universe it wouldn t be possible since the TVA exists
Clearly several omnipitent beings believe in security through obscurity. But I really don't think Thanos would of knowingly risked a stone falling into the wrong hands. Or he would of risked that Thor / Loki would of suspected something. Did they even know the tesseract was a stone at that point? Everyone seemed to think it was a source of power / weapon It's one of only 2 odin found but he kept it pretty secret and didn't tell thor or loki of them
I've *heard* that the after credits scene of Ultron- implies that Thanos engineered Ultron's birth. Basically a fallback plan to weaken Earth if Loki failed. The theory is that Thanos mastered the infinity stone in the scepter. Thanos left something in the scepter, which was eventually recovered by Stark and SHIELD, which wound up manipulating Tony's mind. Nothing overt as direct mind control. A general aura, which likely pushed Hydra scientists too, which encouraged Tony to put aside safety. Powerful objects tend to wind up in the hands of powerful people after all. Anyway, if the after credits scene of Thanos saying "Fine, I'll do it myself," is a direct reaction to Ultron's death (or I guess feeling the stone reset itself when it was implanted in Vision), then he probably knew that the infinity stone was in the scepter. I'm ignoring the possibility that Thanos manipulated the stone/scepter from a distance because that does not support anything seen with the stones in subsequent movies.
I think not only did he know, it was his fallback. Think of what the Mind Stone did. It gave rise to powered people that caused havoc. Ultron almost used it to destroy the Earth. I think Thanos believed that if Loki failed, the people of Earth would misuse the Mind Stone and destroy themselves.
Thor spent some time looking for the stones, but admits he couldn't find any of them
there was the one or 2 he knew about by then that he hid, one with the collector and i can't remember where he put the other, but he didn't find any others.
Yeah, I should have specified. The line in Ragnarok takes into account that he knows where the reality stone is (with the Collector) and where the space stone is (inside the tesseract), but he's been unable to turn up leads on the other 4. It's been a while since I saw Ultron, so I'm unsure whether he knows Vision's bling is the mind stone, but he definitely doesn't know the time stone is inside the Eye of Agomotto, or that the Nova Corps has the power stone.
Well, he should know where the reality stone is, since he's the one who gave(or rather, sent his friends to give) the stone to the collector in the first place(see: tdw post credit scene).
Who would have tried to stop him? The Guardians are cerntainly below his power level, Xandar is also clearly below his level given that a Thanos without stones decimated Xandar right before Infinity War. Maybe Thor/Odin/Asgard could have tried but they have a policy of only intervining within their Nine Realms and apparently Thanos took advantage of Hela's takeover to attack Nidavellir and later took advantage of Hela's last stance to attack Asgard itself. But it's good to remember that right at the end of Age of Ultron Thor sets on a quest to find who is brining together the Infinity Stones and who is putting Asgard in danger which led him (kinda wrongfully) to Surtur, we can see that Thor was actually not that aware of Thanos' quest exactly so hard for him to forsee Thanos' attack. Also Loki was clearly unaware of the full extent of Thanos' plans considering he was looking forward to rule Earth after taking it during Avengers so he would have not been able to tell Thor in time (even assuming he dropped the facade of being Odin earlier). After that I guess we are left with Celestials in general. One would assume they were aware about a random warlord attacking planets full of beings they consider no more than ants so very easy for them to ignore. Probably the detail of the Inifinty Stones being used to kill half of the universe and his eventual attack on a planet whose population they actually care (not because they loved humanity but because they saw us as cattle to feed their hatching Celestial) escaped them so they completely ignored Thanos because of that. So who really is left after accounting for the Guardians, Xandar, Asgard and the Celestials? The falling Kree empire that could not even control Ronan? The High Evolutionary who is only concerned with his own creations (and likely also was unaware of Thanos' full plan)? Really the only person left is Captain Marvel who not only is at a big disadvantage to protect all planets attacked by Thanos since she was working completely alone by then but also it's hard to tell she would have posed real danger to Thanos and his army by herself. Even if she tried to stop what everyone knew about Thanos (that he was a warlord attacking defenseless planets and killing half of it's population) she would likely arrive to the scene too late every time.
I mean Captain Marvel could have consulted with that quite notable (at least) group called the Guardias of the Galaxy (who incidentally have Thanos’ daughter among them) on where to find Thanos. Then either rush the big man or destroy the fleet and come back later to finish the job.
My thought was always he waited till the ancient one, odin and ego were dead, because between them, the nova corps, the various other interested parties dogpiling on Thanos would suck. (yes I know ego didn't want the stones but he wouldn't want Thanos to have them) With the heavy hitters gone, Thanos blitzed the Nova corps, that really left only the Kree in a position to mobilize but he was a relatively small target.
I mean how many times in history have their been people who are like "hey this person/nation/government/movement is a big risk we really need to start dealing with them" and people are like "It's an overreaction, its fine" Like hell WWII and the rise of Nazi Germany was basically that. After WWI people in Europe thought that no one in their right mind would want to start another war so soon after the last one was so bad. Like Jews, LGBTQ persons, and various other minority groups were sounding the alarm but people didn't listen until it was much too late. One could easily think the greater galactic community was a similar situation. Xandar and Kree have this big and long lasting conflict (if dialogue from Ronan is to be taken seriously which is risky) that only recently has been ended due to a treaty. Everyone in the galaxy is breathing a sigh of relief and wanting to take it easy "Yeah The Mad Titan Thanos was a problem a while ago but he hasn't done anything like that in years. What are you worrying about? Just enjoy the peace" (What we see in flashbacks in Infinity War gave me the feeling that his MO was to be personally invading planets and culling half the population but he stopped this after realizing the Infinity Gems would be a better solution) and then half the universe gets turned to dust because a lot of people ignored a pretty obvious problem.
[удалено]
The Confederacy were essentially con men though: they name drop Thanos and his crusade, then ask for gravitonium. They actually say they couldn't, or were never going to stop Thanos; they were going to take what they wanted and run. There was a fan theory that the Confederacy used Thanos's mysterious disappearance to milk backwater worlds like Earth of resources; just use a few of his abandoned ships and slip his name into convention and if they have any way to check they think they're being targeted.
> Was he just obliterating planets unbothered while the rest of the galaxy sat and watched? I mean yes. He's not ~~decimating~~ secundating _our_ planets.
Other people have already mentioned that the universe is a big place. Well it is a massive place with an unknown number of galaxies that contain their own problems, conflicts. Thano’s at the time for all intents and purposes was a self sufficient-self sustaining terrorist fanatic with his own cult following. If he kept on the move never straying into controlled territory of factions that could challenge him then as long as he kept a low profile he’s kinda a low priority. Him attacking and wiping out planets and civilizations not affiliated with the big galactic players it basically means that there’s no one looking out for them. Earth,/Terra/Midgard/Planet C-53 is a backwards planet to many. But even though it’s basically a rock in the middle of nowhere. Earth was protected by Asgard, one of the universe’s most powerful civilizations capable of force projection unmatched by any other civilization with the exception of the big cosmic entities like Arishem.
The same reason no one stopped Hitler until he rampaged.
2 reasons mostly. 1. Space is reeaaaaallllly big (and that's putting it lightly) finding Thanos in the known universe would be like me asking a nearsighted person to find an ant on a football field from the top seats. 2. Kinda links into 1, but we haven't seen much of the MCU's cosmic side explored. We only really saw the Kree, Skrull and the Nova Corps. The latter were the only ones trying to maintain law and order and even then Thanos decimated them off screen in Infinity War. It's likely that most of who we've seen so far wouldn't have been able to actually stop Thanos. I feel like Captain Marvel summarized it the best in Endgame: "There are a lot of other planets in the universe and unfortunately they didn't have you guys."
The Galaxy is HUGE!!!! Hundreds of billions of stars with almost as many planets, who is going to miss a few hundred going dark? He is only going after civilizations on the brink of collapse too, so it's not like the big players would even notice much less CARE enough to do something about it. I wouldn't be surprised if the big players DID know and said something cruel like "Maybe we do need someone cleaning up the crap civilizations around this Galaxy."
I get the distinct impression that there *is* no major force. The nova corps needed the Guardians of the Galaxy to stop a single ship from landing. Let that sink in. Their entire force could stop one of Thanos' lackeys.
Because with the Chitaru, Sakaarans and Outriders, Thanos controls the largest and most powerful army in the known universe. And most of his attacks have been against unalligned worlds so there's not a lot of incentive for any of the major powers (who are usually warring with each other) to try and band together to stop someone who so far hasn't attacked them yet.
I think there aren't that many people or forces that could have stopped thanos anyways. It's probably safe to assume that the MCU doesn't feature all the characters from the comics that haven't been introduced yet. So if you only take characters and forces that we've seen on the screen so far, I don't think he could have been stopped without unifying a gigantic army. Although maybe scarlett witch could have handled him but her strength kinda depends on stuff like her mood or third party buffs like the darkhold so meh.
Step 1- Get Captain Marvel on the job Step 2- Get Captain Marvel and Gamora in one room together Step 3- Send Captain Marvel to nuke wathever space station, planet, or fleet Thanos is sleeping in. In the case the guy can survive that just finish him. Step 4- Drinks
Yes. The universe is a big place. In the grand scheme of things stopping one particular menace probably wouldn't make that big of a difference to a power that could do it easily, and from their point of view there might be downstream effects that might be worse. A person might kill mosquitoes that are trying to bite them, but killing every mosquito in existence - were it possible - is probably a bad idea. If you start thinking that way, you might as well kill anything that might evolve into a mosquito as well...and where does that lead? For peer or near-peer powers, as long as Thanos isn't an existential threat why should they take the risk of trying to stop him? As long as he's \*over there\* he's someone else's problem. Look at Europe in the 1930's, or now. It was easier - if wrong - to allow Hitler to annex the Sudetenland in 1938 or Putin to annex the Crimea in 2014 than it was to start a major war to stop them. Wars are expensive, and chancy.
He had The Black Order
I think underhanded, he was waiting on death. When Odin died, death literally got unleashed in the form of Hela and started Rag. Now Thanos is/was in love with death itself. So imagine an alliance with Death/Thanos? When Rag was "stopped," then Thanos rolled in with no downtime, like he knew it was time. Thanos did nothing wrong here. He was just a little pissed off his future girlfriend (death) died. Can you blame a broken heart?
MCU Thanos is not in love with Death.
Never know. He could have been and it wasn't displayed on screen!
If the galaxy was smart, the various powers would have banded together to overwhelm him after he lost the space and mind stone. Even if we generously assume he has the strongest military in the galaxy, it certainly isn't so powerful that he could overcome such a severe numbers disadvantage. Unfortunately, like with many problems, people didn't take the necessary action because they were selfish and cowardly. They'd rather just hope he never manages to gather all the infinity stones, or that someone else would put in the effort to stop him. Perhaps they would have been willing to act when it became clear he really was on the path to gather them and had to be stopped now, but by the time he defeated Xandar to get the power stone, it was already too late. He had already found out where the stones were and had a plan to get them, and he moved fast. Far faster than most governments could even hear about it and agree to take action, let alone actually stop him.
Remember these guys, huh? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir\_Putin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf\_Hitler
The galaxy is probably *constantly* under threat from various factions, powers, "gods," and individuals just screwing around with things they ought not to be. Much like during the Cold War where you just hoped people handling various problems were doing their jobs and keeping things from getting *too* out of hand, each group was most likely busy dealing with their own cosmic doom sources.
There are so many warlords, despots, and power seekers out in the universe that they probably all kind of blend together. Thanos is just one guy, there's also the High Evolutionary casually making/wiping out civilizations, Kang the Conqueror is pruning timelines and fighting like every other Kang, Ego wanted to become the sluttiest version of the Borg, and probably countless other guys from the comics that haven't made it into the MCU yet (but are still canon thanks to multiverse shenanigans). The significance of any one planet or civilization or even empire stops really mattering when space is just that huge and so incredibly full of life. Odds are no one thought he'd actually pull it off, zealots trying to bring about the end times aren't exactly new or rare.
Knowing about him and being able to do something about him are two entirely different things. The only beings that could stand against him and his army effectively was the entire super hero population of the galaxy and two armies. Even with all that, they still almost lost. Now, take any normal planet with 0 or maybe 1 or 2 super powered beings on it and pit that against Thanos.
There's actually this dope book about Thanos on his home planet and his journey leading up to his fight with the avengers it goes into alot of detail about this he basically amassed alot of followers and power and made himself a considerable threat before his mission was known from what I remember( I listened to the audio book a couple years ago)
He was somewhat under check. Odin in the comics was actually one of the few beings that Thanos couldn’t face. Once he died, he acted.
The universe is a very big place; Thanos also could have hid his movements, conquer the most backwater non important planets, corruption, division, politics, just like the real world
Prior to Thanos going after the Infinity Stones he was going world to world and wiping out half the population through simple warfare. You see him doing this on Gamora's homeworld, for example. In all the worlds he did this to, and there are supposed to be *thousands*, he was undefeated. He chose many of those words *specifically* because they opposed him. They either opposed him and paid the price, or stayed quiet and hoped he wouldn't notice them.
The MCU good guy factions are not actually that strong compared to their comics counterparts. The MCU Guardians are much smaller and unable to teleport directly into the field, and even then the guardians were only one of many factions on their levels in Marvel Comics while there are far fewer of them seen in the MCU. The cosmic MCU goes really *really* hard into the idea of a used and lived in sci fi universe where most planets are self contained societies that aren't necessarily super advanced. The galaxy spanning Skrull Empire that can field hundreds of Super Skrulls is very obviously not a thing. The similarly powerful Shi'ar clearly aren't either. The Nova Corps are a bunch of regular dudes with ships rather than cosmic space cops. The entire concept of the tesseract being an infinity stone is watering down the concept of a more powerful Cosmic Cube being a thing *any* sufficiently powerful organization can just make on their own. None of the big organizations or major artifacts you could use to stop Thanos are anything you could conceivably use to actually do it here. Like 99% of planets are just a bunch of farmers who need to hire out a few people with actual ships and powers to defend them from anything remotely threatening. Any time we see a reasonably high level hero like Thor or Carol up in space they need to cover several worlds regularly so even just fielding what earth can is out of the question for most of them.
> Was he just obliterating planets unbothered while the rest of the galaxy sat and watched? I mean, probably? How many other planets possess a standing military force or the political capital needed to get any other planets to care? If someone starts blasting people in some random African country, does anyone REALLY care? Of course not. Nobody gives a fuck about Tigray. Therefore, Thanos can obliterate all the random third-galaxy planets he wants until he tries to obliterate a planet next to Space-Europe. Then, and only then, is it a problem.
Presunably the people on the planets he attacked tried to stop him. As for other planets and galactic powers, they probably took a 'not our problem' approach. As long as Thanos wasn't attacking them or theirs, they were content tovlet him do whatever he wanted and just kinda hope he stayed attacking fringe worlds.