Infinity War left a lot of open questions and a vast volume of open space for fan theories – which is perhaps to be expected, considering Marvel wants us to plonk our bums on cinema seats for round two in 2019. But even as the content archaeologists over at Reddit try to dig through the movie frame-by-frame to extract some kind of hidden meaning about the future of the franchise, the directors have confirmed one of the big fan theories.
The theory centres around two things: the weird orange zone that Thanos finds himself in at the end of the film, speaking to a child version of Gamora, and the Soul Stone. Fans have postulated that the hazy orange realm is in fact the Soul World from the comics, a miniature universe contained entirely within the eponymous Infinity Stone itself.
According to attendees, one of the directors Joe Russo basically 100% confirmed this theory at a high school Q&A last week. One person present posted a transcript of his chat on Reddit:
Yeah it’s – it’s implied it’s the Soul Stone. It’s all orange around, then he’s inside the Soul Stone with the amount of power that it took to snap his fingers- he has this out of body experience with Thanos. When he goes inside the Soul stone he has this kind of conversation with the younger version of his Gamora.
He also seemed to confirm that Gamora is literally still alive inside the Soul Stone, which seems like a big plot point to give away, but certainly makes a degree of sense:
She is in fact, yes… it was an attempt an attempt on our part – because we don’t like two dimensional roles or three dimensional villains, every villain is a hero in their own story. And as insane and psychotic and brutal and violent as Thanos is, he’s a more complex villain if you go on a journey with him emotionally. He does care for things and it is complicated for him to execute his plan and it cost him something. He said at the end “It cost him everything” and that it was the only thing he loved which was Gamora which is why we put him back with her at the end. I just want to reiterate with the audience that he does feel true emotion even though he is a monster.
Why is all of this relevant? Well, it adds fuel to the fire for fans who are speculating exactly what will happen to all those superheroes who casually disintegrated into ash at the end of Infinity War. Considering the fact that many of the characters who supposedly died are some of the most bankable new talent – some of whom literally have new movies coming out – it’s expected that they’ll come back in some form. It’d make sense for them to possibly be trapped in the Soul Stone too.
Oh yeah, and there’s the trillions and trillions of other life forms who died offscreen at the end of Infinity War too. I guess we should probably be speculating whether they’re in the Soul Stone too.
