'Avengers: Infinity War' Reveals How Thanos Would've Conquered Earth in 'Avengers'

Six years ago, the Avengers came together for the first time to successfully fight off the Chitauri invasion of Earth. Now, in Avengers: Infinity War it's revealed what the world's fate would have been had the invasion been successful.

Warning! Major spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War below this point! If you don't want to be spoiled for the movie, now would be an excellent time to check out some of our other pieces. You've been warned!

When the Other, on behalf of Thanos, lends Loki a Chitauri army to invade Earth with, the Earth's mightiest heroes manage to fight them off. The Chitauri fleet is destroyed, and Loki's plan to take the Tesseract -- really the Space Stone -- is thwarted with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) taking him and the Tesseract back to Asgard. It was a huge victory for the newly-formed Avengers, but had the heroes not been successful Earth would have suffered a very different fate, the same one Gamora's (Zoe Saldana) home did.

While fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have always known that Gamora's family was killed by Thanos when she was a child with the Mad Titan adopting her and raising her to be an assassin as an adult, the exact details weren't made clear until Infinity War. After Thor reveals to the Guardians that Thanos attacked the Asgardian ship and killed seemingly everyone he encountered before he took the Tesseract, the full measure of Gamora's history is shown. Like Earth, Gamora's home world was invaded by the Chitauri but instead of having heroes to fight the invaders off, Gamora's people were quickly overwhelmed with half the population slaughtered on Thanos' order. Gamora survived only because she appeared unafraid, marching through the crowd of invaders and her own people demanding to know where her mother was. It caught Thanos' attention. He distracted her while her people were slaughtered and then took her for his own daughter.

Thanos, after capturing Gamora so that she can take him to the Soul Stone, reveals to her that because of his actions the children of her home world are now living good lives. Hunger and struggle is no longer an issue there because he removed the burden of overpopulation. It's a chilling reveal, but what's more chilling is that it reveals what Earth's fate would have been had Loki been more successful. It's likely that, had Loki collected the Tesseract and the Chitauri not have been defeated by Iron Man redirecting a missile into their mothership, Thanos himself would have ordered the mass murder of much of Earth's population before moving on to the next world he deemed in need of balancing.

Thanos' need to balance the universe clearly has harsh consequences but getting to see what Earth narrowly avoided for six years wasn't just sobering for audiences. It also helped give audiences a reason to invest themselves in Thanos.

"It's our responsibility to carry forward the story as it's been set out," co-director Anthony Russo told Vulture. "You're spending two-and-a-half hours with this many characters, so then adding in some character that the audience has no relationship to, having to explain the backstory of that character, making you care about that character, making Thanos care about that character, making that character interesting to the other characters..."

Avengers: Infinity War is now playing.

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