In a lot of ways, Avengers: Infinity War was like a fast-paced heist movie. The Avengers, or what was left of their dispersed team, desperately struggled to keep the Mad Titan from getting his hands on all six Infinity Stones.
Due to a number of complications, though, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes ultimately failed. Whether you think it was due to Thor not going for the head or Peter Quill losing his chill over Gamora’s death, the gang had many chances to stop Thanos and didn’t. Incidentally, one of these involved T’Challa’s sister, Shuri, tasked with taking the Mind Stone out of Vision without killing him as the rest of the team stopped the enemies from advancing into Wakanda.
We never learned why she wasn’t able to do it in time, but a new in-universe book, The Wakanda Files, finally reveals what happened in those defining moments. In her logs, the Wakandan scientist first hypothesizes about how Vision came to be, noting:
“I conducted a full san of Vision’s entire framework and anatomy, including the Mind Stone. His structure was polymorphic, composed of overlapping layers of neurons out of sequence rather than reprogramming the synapses to work collectively. Despite the somewhat primitive and forceful way that he was constructed, Vision was quite elegant.”
Shuri further details Vision’s powers, including levitation, flight and even conjuring matter from thin air. As for why she was unable to retrieve the Mind Stone, the princess says that the task was almost impossible, writing:
“Two trillion neurons connected the Mind Stone to Vision’s processing neural network. Of course, they tasked me with removing those trillions of connections and rerouting them in the middle of a battle so that the stone could be destroyed. A task I was sadly unable to perform in time.”
Had she been given enough time, then, she may have succeeded in removing the stone in Avengers: Infinity War. But since Thanos already had the Time Stone anyway, it wouldn’t have really made a difference when you think about it.
