What If…? may be the most unique Marvel project to date showcasing different stories over the greater MCU, however, one discrepancy seemed to be too much for some fans. This issue stemmed from the appearance of Ultron in a recent episode where he was wielding the Infinity Stones.
As the community quickly brought up, traditionally the Infinity Stones don’t retain any power outside of their original universe, but as we see in the episode Ultron is wielding them both between universes and in other universes.
Fortunately, head writer for What If…? A.C. Bradley attempted to explain the situation on social media giving a simple reason for the stones to retain their strength.
Bradley claims that Ultron is able to harness the power of the Infinity Stones across universes as they originate from the same universe as he was. She continues stating that Ultron was “munching across multiverses turning them into messy universe soup.”
This explanation isn’t the clearest and does raise more questions than it resolves, but it would fall further in line with fan speculation that the MCU is steering away from the comics in their representation of the Infinity Stone’s power going forward in the MCU.
With What If…? Reaching its conclusion later this week we could potentially get a better idea of the limitations of the Infinity Stones within the show, but if not then fans will just need to wait and see if they pop up again later in the MCU.
