‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Writers Reveal Why They Chose To Reveal The Soul Stone How They Did

Marvel fans have been piecing together clues about the Infinity Stones for years, speculating the locations of the important gems in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with each new film. One of the biggest mysteries was the location of the Soul Stone, which wasn’t revealed until Avengers: Infinity War. The filmmakers revealed on the commentary track for the film’s home video release why it was so important for them to surprise audiences with the Stone’s whereabouts.

“There was a lot of speculation as to where the Soul Stone was, right? We never wanted to give that chip away,” co-writer Stephen McFeely pointed out. “We didn’t want it to be somewhere you already knew. We didn’t want some other movie to plant it. We wanted to use it as a story point.”

The Soul Stone was located on Vormir, a distant planet, which hadn’t previously been mentioned in other installments of the franchise.

“We didn’t want it to be random either. Like it’s on Planet X,” co-writer Christopher Markus noted. “Which happens to have lots of, you know spiders on it. That would be difficult.”

Unlike many of the other Infinity Stones, procuring the Soul Stone wasn’t as easy as locating it and taking it. The film revealed that Gamora had long known the location of the Stone, but kept it a secret from everyone she knew. Thanos went on to torture Gamora’s sister Nebula to incite the Guardian of the Galaxy to reveal the Stone’s whereabouts, which she ultimately did. Thanos then had to kill Gamora to obtain the Stone, despite having served as a surrogate father for her, against her wishes.

McFeely added, “It becomes a secret for one of our characters and therefore it becomes emotional.”

The duo previously addressed their desire to keep the Stone’s location a mystery.

“We already had that problem right? You knew a lot of places where the stones were so if you knew every one of them there was going to be much less mystery, and just on a screenwriting level, it was really important to us to have a mystery,” McFeely shared with the Fatman on Batman podcast. “What does Gamora know that you all don’t know? It’s fun, there’s a whole thing where every letter spells out Thanos’ name, like why didn’t we think of that!”

Markus did note how entertaining it was to read all of the theories about the Stone’s locations online, even if they were all ultimately incorrect.

“Sometimes you read it and go ‘that’s really quite clever…much too clever. I mean also the…I’m thinking of the theory that said it was in Wakanda. Like, they can’t all be on Earth. I know we’re a very important planet but we’re not the most. You can’t have all of them here and then we have the opportunity to go to space and…what was it, the original He-Man movie where they ran out of money and the rest of it takes place in a parking lot in Encino. Like we have the money. We can go up there.”

Avengers: Infinity War is out on Digital HD now and on Blu-ray on August 14th.

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