‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Theory Claims Thanos Used the Soul Stone to Keep From Killing Star-Lord, Drax, and Nebula

Avengers: Endgame may be coming to theaters in just few more months, but that hasn’t taken away any of the interest in the details of Avengers: Infinity War. Fans have been poring over the film looking for all kinds of clues and now one fan may have found something that suggests Thanos deliberately spared several of the Guardians — at least until the snap.

As fans of Infinity War know, Star-Lord and Drax ultimately ended up dusted when Thanos snapped his fingers while Nebula survived. However, as one Reddit user notes, during the battle on Titan Thanos had every opportunity to kill those characters and yet he didn’t — and it doesn’t appear to be an accident.

Per the theory, which you can read in full here, while Thanos had shown that he can control the intensity of the Power Stone, on Titan when he came out of the hypnotic-like state Mantis was holding him in he was full of rage. Like, he threw a moon even. That’s pretty ragey. He even takes down Star-Lord, Drax, and Nebula with a blast from the Power Stone, but as this fan noted when he went back to look at the scene frame by frame, he noticed that in the next shot the Soul Stone is briefly glowing and activated.

The takeaway? Thanos activated the Soul Stone in order to keep Star-Lord, Drax, and Nebula alive — at least until the snap could make the choice as to who lives and who dies for him.

The idea that Thanos would spare them at least temporarily is one that oddly works. As fans learned in the film, the Mad Titan truly loved Gamora. Having just come off of sacrificing her for the stone, he might have some sort of weird sense of honor that would prevent him from killing those Gamora was close to. Grief is kind of an unpredictable thing, after all.

It’s also possible that Thanos simply wanted to avoid killing anyone simply so that the snap would do its work to create balance organically. Some fans have pointed out that Thanos is a lot less aggressive in the second half of the film when he really could have just killed his way to the stones he needed.

If there is an element of grief and sentimentality to Thanos using the Soul Stone to temporarily spare Star-Lord, Drax, and Nebula, it gives the character a bit of humanity for a lack of better term something that ties in well with another recent fan theory: that Thanos will eventually be redeemed and become an anti-hero of sorts in the MCU.

What do you think? Do you think Thanos deliberately spared Star-Lord, Drax, and Nebula until the snap? Let us know what your take on this new theory is in the comments below.

Avengers: Endgame opens on April 26th. Other Marvel Studios movies out this year include Captain Marvel on March 8th and Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5th.