If you’re like me (which, for your sake, I hope you aren’t), then you’ve seen Avengers: Infinity War about twice in theaters and another 5-8 times since it came out on DVD (Blu-Ray? Streaming? What the hell do we call at-home movie releases these days?).
SPOILER ALERTS BELOW
And if you’re like me, then you’ve spent all of those hours watching Infinity War trying to figure out why the hell Dr. Strange would just give Thanos the Time Stone instead of just, I don’t know… using it?
Since Infinity War’s release, much has been made about Dr. Stephen Strange’s role in the bigger picture, or as he tellingly calls it, the “end game.”
Prior to their battle with Thanos on Titan, Strange uses the Time Stone to “view alternate futures” and “to see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict.” Ya know, time travel shit.
Anyway, of the 14,000,605 possible outcomes that Strange viewed, the Avengers were only successful in one of them, which begs the question: did those infinitesimal odds play into the way Strange chose to handle said battle (which he was the MVP of, by the way, check the tape)?
“There was no other way,” Doctor Strange explained to his new BFF Tony moments before turning into dust.
And the answer seems to be yes, according to this new (and various older) theories.
via Uproxx:
This has sparked plenty of fan theories already and now a plausible theory that ties together multiple little details in Infinity War you may not have noticed.
When Thanos’ henchman Ebony Maw (the Voldemort-looking wizard) tries to snatch the Eye of Agamotto from Doctor Strange’s neck, it burns his hand:
Marvel Studios
Strange explains that he’s already cursed it. “Its a simple spell but quite unbreakable. […] You’ll find removing a dead man’s spell troublesome.” Since Ebony Maw can’t remove the spell, he begins torturing Strange to remove the curse, but he’s ejected into space before that can happen, which suggests — according to Redditor Mynccx — that there may still be a curse on the Time Stone, and no living henchman left to warn Thanos about it.
If there is a curse in place on the Time Stone, this would explain why Strange’s green spell runes show up when Thanos adds it to the Infinity Gauntlet:
If Strange placed a curse on the stone, that might explain why the Gauntlet was so damaged after “the snap”:
Marvel Studios
Mynccx theorizes that Strange’s curse might have been intended “to destroy the Gauntlet after its ‘snap’ or to interfere with the killing of half the universe, maybe by trapping them in the Soul Stone rather than them dying.”
While what exact role Strange plays in the outcome of Avengers 4 is yet to be seen, his role his clearly a significant one as the man with the ability to look into the future would certainly have a reason behind his rhyme.
All that said, as far as fan theories go, I find this Captain Marvel-related one to be more plausible:
Doctor Strange knows what happens in the future, he sets it up in fact. He knew that Thanos had to snap his fingers at that exact right time and under all these certain conditions for them to win. He’s setting up Captain Marvel’s return to Earth. I believe he’ll appear in the CM movie and tell Fury it is vital for him to carry around with him the pager to contact Captain Marvel.
Nick Fury, knowing about Steven Strange, lists him as an ally to SHIELD which, of course, is how Hydra knows about him despite him being a neurosurgeon (anyone who is an ally of SHIELD is a threat to HYDRA).
He (Strange) warns him of an event in the future [referring] to the people turning to dust without warning, this is why Fury’s instant reaction to seeing Maria Hill turn to ash was to run to the pager, but what our good friend Sorcerer Supreme didn’t mention was the fact that he does not survive hence the “Mother Fu…” at the very end. We should also take note that the way he says it isn’t [panicked] or scared, he’s confident that Strange knows what he’s doing.
The currently untitled fourth Avengers film (some suggest it may be called Avengers: End Game) is set to hit theaters on May 3, 2019.
