For much of Phase Three of the MCU, one of the most hotly-contested story points was the location of the Soul Stone, the last of the Infinity Stones to be revealed. Fans had been expecting the powerful gem to feature in movies such as Thor: Ragnarok or Black Panther, but in the end its reveal was held back until Avengers: Infinity War.
Speaking on the commentary for the pic’s home video release, writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus revealed how they deliberately prevented the Soul Stone from being dropped into other films as they wanted to keep its location a mystery, seeing as the rest of the Infinity Stones were already familiar to audiences. The enigma surrounding this last, arguably most significant, Stone proved to be a useful plot point, too, as McFeely explained:
“There was a lot of speculation as to where the Soul Stone was, right? We never wanted to give that chip away. We didn’t want it to be somewhere you already knew. We didn’t want some other movie to plant it. We wanted to use it as a story point.”
As we know, the Soul Stone was ultimately revealed to be on Vormir, a barren world on which the Red Skull of all people was charged with guarding the gem. On that note, Markus explained that they wanted the world that held the Soul Stone to be of some importance, so as to make it worth the wait.
“We didn’t want it to be random either. Like it’s on Planet X. Which happens to have lots of, you know spiders on it. That would be difficult.”
The secret surrounding the Soul Stone gave the screenwriting duo a chance to mine a lot of emotion from the narrative, too, as Gamora was revealed to be withholding its location from her father – a betrayal that eventually leads to her death.
“It becomes a secret for one of our characters and therefore it becomes emotional.”
Markus and McFeely previously talked about the thinking behind how they handled the Soul Stone and said that they ruled out putting it in Wakanda as they didn’t want all of the Infinity Stones to be found on Earth. That certainly makes sense, and though the wait to discover its location was a long one, I think we can all agree that the way they handled things in Avengers: Infinity War was just perfect.
