Though Avengers: Infinity War is quickly approaching, we still don’t know where the sixth Infinity Stone is.
The Space, Mind, Time, Power and Reality Stones that Thanos will be coming to collect have all been accounted for in previous movies but the Soul Stone is still out there somewhere. As such, fans are going into overdrive in an attempt to second-guess what form the Stone will take, and a new theory might just win the prize for being the wildest one yet.
First of all, an intriguing new piece of promo art for the film (seen below) gives us a big hint as to who’s connected with the Soul Stone. While the rest of the hero-Stone pairings in the piece make sense with what we’ve seen in the MCU so far, it’s a bit of a revelation that Iron Man has something to do with that enigmatic sixth gem. But what could it mean?
Well, how’s this for a theory: Tony Stark is the Soul Stone.
What kickstarted this idea is Howard Stark’s comment to his son in Iron Man 2: “What is and always will be my greatest creation, is you.” What if he wasn’t being sentimental here and was hinting that Tony was artificially created from the Stone? The thinking goes that, just as S.H.I.E.L.D. got their hands on the Tesseract, they also came into contact with the Soul Stone, which the genius Howard Stark experimented on.
Other bits of evidence include the fact that Howard and Maria Stark had Tony fairly late in life. Likewise, Howard – either the young playboy portrayed by Dominic Cooper or John Slattery’s workaholic – never seemed like he was interested in becoming a father. It’s also worth bearing in mind that Tony recently learned he was adopted in the comics.
An alternative, slightly saner, twist on the same theory is that Tony’s Arc Reactor is the Soul Stone. Again, this tech was created by Howard, though with the help of Anton Vanko this time.
Its cosmic power could explain why Loki was unable to mind-control Tony back in The Avengers and, if you really want to stretch it, Iron Man’s armor, which is powered by the Arc Reactor, employs similar sound effects to the Tesseract-derived HYDRA weapons from Captain America: The First Avenger.
In under two months’ time, the answer to this and many other questions will be revealed when Avengers: Infinity War hits cinemas on April 27th, but until then, fans will continue to speculate endlessly and we can’t wait to see what else they come up with.