When Marvel Cinematic Universe supervillain Thanos shows up in “Avengers: Infinity War,” he’ll be pursuing a singular goal: gathering all six Infinity Stones.
The special gems, created from the singularities responsible for the Big Bang, have incredible power. Thanos is looking to unite them all in his Infinity Gauntlet. And when they’re all joined, the stones will be able to reshape the fabric of reality itself.
Over the last decade and throughout the 19 movies of the MCU, the six Infinity Stones have popped up in various forms. Thanos doesn’t have any just yet. Here is where each of the six Infinity Stones were last seen in the MCU.
Space Stone
The stone that has been the biggest part of the MCU up to now is the Space Stone, which is hidden in a blue cube called the Tesseract. Last time we saw it, it was in Odin’s vault on Asgard in “Thor: Ragnarok,” where it was placed after Thor took possession of it at the end of “The Avengers.” However, as of the end of that movie, Asgard isn’t there anymore.
Toward the end of “Thor: Ragnarok,” Loki was in the vault to use the crown of Surtur to bring about Ragnarok, destroy Asgard and stop Hela. He stopped when he spotted the Tesseract, which heavily implied he took it from the vault before Asgard was destroyed. That would put the Tesseract, and the Space Stone inside, on the spaceship bearing Thor, Loki, Hulk and the people of Asgard to Earth. Trouble is, a mid-credits scene at the end of “Thor: Ragnarok” showed that ship being intercepted by the massive warship commanded by none other than Thanos himself.
Reality Stone
Since the Asgardians already had an Infinity Stone in their vault, they figured it was a bad idea to keep two there. After Thor recovered the Aether from the Dark Elves in “Thor: The Dark World,” he took the stone to the Taneleer Tivan, the powerful and ancient Elder of the Universe also known as the Collector, on the criminal outpost Knowhere. The idea was for the Collector to keep the Aether and protect it.
We haven’t seen the Aether since then, so it’s presumably still on Knowhere and still with the Collector. However, who knows what the Collector might have done with it.
Power Stone
The Guardians of the Galaxy got hold of the Power Stone, which was formerly secreted in the round silver object referred to only as “The Orb,” after defeating Ronan the Accuser, who Thanos sent to retrieve it. In “Guardians of the Galaxy,” the team left the Infinity Stone on the planet Xandar, in the care of its military, the Nova Corps. It’s presumably still locked up there for safekeeping.
Mind Stone
The Mind Stone is more than just a powerful object: it’s also a person, at least in its current form. The stone is on Earth and was used by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner in “Avengers: Age of Ultron” to create Vision, the part-biological, part-artificially intelligent robot Avenger.
Vision last appeared in “Captain America: Civil War,” which showed him living with the other Avengers in their compound in Upstate New York. When Thanos comes for the Infinity Stones, he’ll have to take the Mind Stone out of Vision’s head… and we have no idea what that might do to him.
Time Stone
Doctor Stephen Strange has the Time Stone on Earth in a powerful amulet he wears around his neck called the Eye of Agamotto. Strange used the amulet, which he didn’t know was an Infinity Stone at the time, to defeat the interdimensional entity Dormammu after the sorcerer Kaecilius tried to bring forth Dormammu’s Dark Dimension to take over Earth. Strange traveled to the Dark Dimension and used a powerful artifact called the Eye of Agamotto to manipulate time, trapping Dormammu in an endless time loop until it agreed to undo the damage Kaecilius had done.
Strange’s ally, the sorcerer Wong, revealed that the Eye contained the Time Stone, and Strange has kept it ever since. He was last seen wearing it in “Thor: Ragnarok,” when Thor and Loki traveled to New York in search of Odin and met Strange in the New York Sanctum.
Soul Stone
Though we’ve seen all of the other Infinity Stones in some capacity through the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is one that has never popped up in any movie: the Soul Stone. There are some theories, however.
First, the Soul Stone could be hidden in Wakanda. In “Black Panther,” audiences saw that T’Challa was able to visit a spiritual plane populated by his ancestors when he consumed the Heart-Shaped Herb. It could be that the meteorite filled with Vibranium that crashed into Wakanda in Earth’s distant past and which gives the Heart-Shaped Herb its power, could actually contain the Soul Stone — which would make sense with the spiritual aspect of its power.
The stone could also be on Titan, the moon of Saturn. Thanos is originally from Titan and we know from trailers that events in “Infinity War” take place there. The reason several of the heroes and Thanos wind up near Saturn, then, could be to retrieve the stone.
Apart from the stone we’ve never seen, the last known whereabouts of the Infinity Stones place two on Earth, one on Xandar with the Nova Corps, one on Knowhere with the Collector, and one on Asgard — probably on the Asgardian spaceship. Trailers suggest Thanos will have two of the stones by the time he shows up on Earth: the Space Stone that it seems Loki will give him, and the Power Stone, which we last saw on Xandar. What happens to the rest of the stones after that, however, is still anybody’s guess.