WMG / MCU: Magic Science And Technology

The new element in Iron Man 2

Was the same as the Tesseract in Captain America and the casket in Thor

• According to the prequel comics at least, Tony wants to name the new element Badassium.

The Satan's Claw will appear

As HYDRA survived into the modern day, it's leader Baron Wolfgang von Strucker (Who was around back in World War II)'s left arm is replaced with a nasty red, demonic-looking thing that can suck the age out of someone and replenish the user's called the Satan's Claw. Seeing how in the trailer, those goons around Loki looked like new-age HYDRA soldiers, either the Red Skull did die and his former Lieutenant took over, and found the Claw somewhere and has kept himself alive with it, or the Red Skull did live, found the Claw somewhere in Asgard, and got back control of HYDRA.

• Although Strucker is indeed supernaturally long-lived in the MCU, as he appears to still be around and not as old as he should be for a World War 2 Hydra Commander in the 2010s, he does not have a demonic hand as far as we can see.

The Arc reactor was an attempt to reproduce the Tesseract energy-generating capability with Earth technology

Taken more or less straight from Captain America: The First Avenger: the Tesseract could produce a lot of energy, enough to solve a lot of problems but it does have major drawbacks. There is only one, so whoever controls it would become a major target and they might even fall into villainy themselves, to say nothing of villains deliberately taking control of it in the first place. The thing is basically an unknown source of energy - what if it just stops working one day? But if some measure of that energy-creation could be reproduced, not only would humanity be a bit closer to understanding the energies behind it, but the monopoly of power it provided would also be averted. Thus, studying it, leading to ideas that Tony later developed, refining it into Arc Reactors that, while they seemed impractical with then-modern technology, could be made a bit closer to the ideal with the extra work and even more advanced technological work of Tony's eventual Iron Man concept...

The Infinity Stones

Obviously, they're different in this continuation. So...

• The Tesseract is either the Mind stone or the Space Stone, since it can do both (bets on the Mind stone, since that was blue as well).
  • No, it just opened portals. Loki's spear controlled minds. My guess, Fury only thought the spear was powered by the cube because they both give off the same cosmic energy.
• Confirmed. It's the Space Stone.
• The Aether is the Reality stone, as Malekith tried to use it to change reality.
  • It could also be the Power stone, since it gave him far greater power and glowed red.
    • Well, Kevin has confirmed that the Tesseract is the Space Stone according to Crave Online (though personally, I expected it to be the Power Stone, with how people keep using it as a battery. Oh well.) and the Aether is the Reality Stone. That leaves four. One will factor into GotG as a McGuffin. Normally, I'd call Space, but since that is taken it's probably Mind, Power, or (less likely, though potentially interesting) Time. (I read somewhere that, whatever it is, it'll factor into AoU too.) The Eye of Agmotto seems like a likely candidate, almost certainly Soul. Then, if GotG doesn't use it, I guess the Mists in Inhumans will be the Power Stone. (Although, didn't Odin say the other "stones" were solid? Maybe the Mists work like a sauna, the coals are the Stone? Y'know, like that episode of Smallville where a coach gains pyrokinesis from a kryptonite sauna.) That leaves Time, assuming it isn't used in GotG. The simplest way to introduce it would be through Kang, but I don't see him turning up before Avengers 3. Maybe it would be the subject being heisted in Any-Man. Probabely not, I suppose it could be one which Thanos gains at the beginning of Avengers 3 or whatever the Infinity Gauntlet movie is. Hoo, well that's my theory!
    • My guesses on what the Infinity Stones are: 1. Tesseract is the Space Gem. Initially I thought it was the Power Gem until you realize that it's really an inefficient, roundabout source of power. It was also used to bridge space in the Avengers movie. Hawkeye's comment about the Tesseract pulling energy from deep space also lends itself to that fact. When the Red Skull picked it up, it seemed to just transport him rather than empower him in any way. The Bifrost might have been based on study of the Tesseract, and it also bends space. 2. The Aether is the Power Gem simply based on Thor's taunt about "For all that power, I expected you to hit harder." If it was the reality gem, I would be expecting more chaotic changes to reality when it was used. It seemed to express itself simply as waves of force instead. That, and it's red. 3. The Mind Gem was already seem as the gem on Loki's staff. It took control of people's minds, and could shoot telekinetic beams. 4. The Time Gem will be featured in Age of Ultron and will be used to transport the Avengers to the Dark Future. The rest may already be on the Infinity Gauntlet in the Asguard.
    • The Soul gem could be one of Dr. Strange's artifacts.
    • And maybe it's the Eye of Agamotto. Why not combine another well known Marvel relic with an Infinity Gem? The nature of the Soul Stone makes it a perfect fit for being introduced in Doctor Strange and it would also mean Thanos would have to go through Strange to get the fifth stone which is a confrontation I want to see just as much as Thanos vs the Vision.
    • Let's not let the color of the artifacts be too big of a deciding factor here, since this picture◊ of the Gauntlet shows 2 blue gems and a white gem, so it looks like they won't all be the same color as the comics.
  • If they ever get around to making that Runaways film they've been talking about, the Pride could have control of the Soul Gem or the Power Gem. Their evil scheme involves stealing souls, and their backstory involves receiving a massive power boost from an outside source. I'm not sure there's a corresponding artifact that could fit, but they could just make one up like the Aether.
  • More like Wishful Thinking than Wild Mass Guessing, but... the Days of Future Past movie shares a character with the Age of Ultron movie (yeah yeah, I know, a different actor, just hear me out). Days of Future Past obviously involves time travel. The previous X-Men movies were pretty solidly NOT in the current MCU, so if, theoretically, they wanted to insert it into the current MCU, they would have to retroactively change the X-Men continuity. So, in the events of Days of Future Past, the effects of the time travel change the X-Men movie history in such a way that it places it in the new MCU. And how do they achieve the time travel in the first place? With the help of a mysterious cosmic object that allows them to control time, ie, the Time Gem. Scarlet Witch is in Age of Ultron, but not Days of Future Past, so maybe she doesn't exist in the current X-Men continuity, because in the current X-Men continuity, Magneto begets Quicksilver with a different mother. The time travel means that for whatever reason, he doesn't meet that woman, but another one, who ends up giving birth to twins instead of a single baby boy, hence the change in actor. Quicksilver looks different between the two movies because, technically, due to time travel, he is a different person.
    • If this happened my life would be made. Yep.
  • Ant-Man is supposed to be a heist film, so the thing they're stealing could be one of the gems.
    • Seems a bit unlikely, since that would put two Gems on Earth and Ant-Man seems to be pretty Earth-centric.
    • Jossed.
  • In the new trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Star Lord looks to be stealing something pretty important...
  • Now that the Mandarin is confirmed to exist in the MCU, what are the possibilities that his rings are one of the stones? We've already established that the stones aren't strictly solid/whole, or they could be forged from one of the stones.
• As of Doctor Strange, the Infinity Gems so far:
  • The Space Gem: The Tesseract — can open portals and teleport beings to other realms.
  • The Reality Gem: The Aether — under the right circumstances can unravel all of reality.
  • The Power Gem: The Orb — vastly enhances the strength and powers of beings that aren't destroyed by it possessing them.
  • The Mind Gem: The Scepter — can exert mental control over others and grant sentience to artificial beings.
  • The Time Gem: The Eye of Agamotto — can reverse time and create closed loops of time.
  • The Soul Gem: Unrevealed.
    • Something to note thus far is that all of the infinity gems seem to be capable of generating large amounts of energy and granting power to their wielders, thus "enhancing strength" is something not unique to the Power Gem (though it probably does it better and/or grants more power than the others).
    • Well, there's probably a good explanation. Where the Tesseract is concerned, someone (can't remember who) explicitly mentions "energy from space" (quantum physics — how do they work?), which needed to be mechanically harnessed for any practical purpose, so that's keeping with a theme. Meanwhile the Aether seems to just rewrite the rules of what matter is, while the Orb just gives off a whole bunch of destructive energy. (Or the writers didn't expect a big epic with all the Gems, so didn't consider giving each unique characteristics. Nah, definitely the other thing).
• As this video points out: The Space Stone is the Tessaract, the Reality Stone is the Aether, the Time Stone is the Eye of Agamatto which Strange wore as a Necklace, the Power Stone was in the Orb, and the Mind Stone was in Loki's Scepter. This suggests that the Soul Stone's heretofore unseen container would be in something with an "H"^note So as to spell out THANOS, of course. Funny, Heimdall can see souls across the Nine Worlds, and his eyes are the same color as the Soul Stone.
  • Avengers: Infinity War shows that the Soul Stone did not have a container, essentially jossing the T.H.A.N.O.S. theory at first. It did have a guardian, however, who turns out to be Red Skull in the present, who was the leader of HYDRA; thus ultimately confirming this theory to an extent.

The Time Stone was/will be used to create the Inhumans.

The Time Gem will be merged with an artifact used by the Kree known as the Forever Crystal. This artifact was used by the Supreme Intelligence to help "evolve" the genetically stagnated Kree race. I don't think it's a coincidence that the two films coming out between the two Infinity War films are Captain Marvel and the Inhumans: both stories require the Kree to be major players. I fully expect the Kree to be important in Infinity War as well. What if the Time Stone was an artifact used by the Celestials to tamper with the natural selection of various races by speeding up, slowing down, or even reversing and restarting their evolution? What if they'd used it on many planets, deliberately guiding various lifeforms to become the humanoids we see on so many worlds? And what if The Time Stone (or Forever Crystal, or whatever they end up calling it) ended up with the Kree, who figured out how it works (mostly) and experimented with it, leading to the creation of the Terrigen Mists and, ultimately, the Inhumans? I'm toying with the idea that it's actually the Time Stone that led to the creation of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, too... Their powers even seem kind of time-based to me, if SW can see the future and maybe QS moves quickly by speeding up time around himself.

A prediction, then: The Time Stone is currently on Attilan, the Inhuman headquarters on the Moon. During Infinity War: Part One, Thanos joins forces with (or just conquers) the Kree Empire and leads a huge army of Chitauri, Kree, and others across the galaxy, seizing the stones from Asgard, Xandar, and elsewhere even as the Guardians and Avengers try to stop him. Ultimately, this culminates in Thanos and his army's arrival in Earth's orbit, either at the end of that film or in Captain Marvel or Inhumans. He's already the most powerful being in the universe, and now he's going to get the last stone, destroying Attilan in the process and leading to a final showdown, on and around Earth, with a fully Gauntleted Thanos in Infinity War: Part Two.

• Jossed. Inhumans got changed to a TV series (since Feige only had the movie on the line-up to get Perlmutter to agree to Black Panther and Captain Marvel movies; after the Marvel Creative Committee was jettisoned, Feige dropped the idea, and Perlmutter rushed it out the door), and no Infinity Stone showed up.

The real Mandarin has the Mind Gem.

The Mind Gem gives the user psionic powers. In the comics, the Mandarin's left ring finger has a ring that allows him to use mind control. The diamond-shaped gem in the ring is blue, just like the Mind Gem in the comics.

• Jossed, possibly. Loki's staff may contain the Mind Gem, but that doesn't mean the Mandarin can't get his hands on it at some point.

Asgard's lack of communications technology

Though Asgardians are Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, they don't seem to have long-distance communications tech similar to Earth (Cell phones, Internet, etc). For example, when Heimdall summons Sif and the Warriors Three in Thor, he sends messengers rather than calling them on a phone-like device. This method of communication is less efficient but also less vulnerable to hackers or wire-tapping. It's possible that Asgard may have invented long-distance communication in the past but Odin or a previous ruler banned it.

After the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Fury will start using LMD's for both him and some of his highest operatives.

LMD's are 'Life Model Decoy's, essentially robotic Avatars.

• Confirmed! As of Spider-Man Far From Home. Although Nick Fury & Maria Hill are actually using Skrull S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents as their L.M.D.s rather than a relaunch of the old robotic kind that they used to use.

Should Disney manage to finalize acquisition of FOX's Marvel film rights, Captain America's shield will be discovered afterwards to not be pure Vibranium as everyone thought.

Someone—likely Wakandan—will examine the shield and realize it's actually an alloy of Vibranium and another metal. One that Marvel Studios had just gained the film rights to.