Does he? Or does he realize, he’s not going to keep the Time Stone anyway at the end (because Thanos is capable of destroying them all)?
I suppose the “Tony must live” thing is right, but I somehow prefer a chess sacrifice like notion that surrendering the Time Stone is itself somehow what sets the winning plan in motion. Perhaps because Strange can still control it (but it is now with Thanos) - who knows.
I do recognize it makes more sense that this is a good way to keep Tony alive to dramatic kill him to save the universe in the next movie, because RDJ kind of wants to be done with this, but I’m not fond of “this actor wants to leave, let’s set up a big emotional save the universe death for him.”
I suspect the entirety of that scene - how Thanos knows the name Stark, why and when Strange gives up the stone, and how that event is part of the chain that leads to the timeline where they win - will be explained in Endgame.
I’ve only been this excited for a movie a couple times: Star Wars: Episode 1 and the second Matrix movie. I really really hope this doesn’t disappoint at the level of those two movies!
Is this really a mystery? Thanos was the one ultimately behind the Chitari invasion in the first Avengers movie, and Stark stopped it. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was the end-credits scene for Avengers where Thanos finally decided he would take control and start collecting the Infinity Stones himself.
Edit, nope, but we do get introduced to Thanos there.
Potentially? The way he responds to Tony asking about it is weird. He says “You’re not the only one cursed with knowledge.” Not something like “You stopped me the first time.” I might be reading too much into it, but to me it implies some sort of more interesting connection.
I assume it referred to Tony’s Mind Stone induced vision from the beginning of Age of Ultron. The one that reinforced his decision to create Ultron in the first place.
So here’s my wild theory, regarding Strange and the Time Stone.
It’s tangential to Tony. But it’s really about Captain Marvel. See perhaps Strange sees they may be able to hold him off today, and they very nearly do until Peter botched things. However Strange knows that, ultimately, they can’t stop him forever at this point. And that to actually win requires Marvel. And the only way to get her involved requires Fury to contact her. So in order to get that, as we see in the post credits scene, the Snap needs to happen.
So the reality is that Strange knows that to win, actually permanently win, requires bringing her into placed and the only way to do so is via losing today.
In this theory, since Stranges vision shows that this indeed brings Marvel into play, whether she has some kind of immunity is pretty much moot. That she survives is all thats important, not how.
I’m more inclined to think that Strange saw no possibility of victory (even temporary) on Titan, other than he frustrates Thanos for a bit longer because all the heroes on Titan are dead and the stone is in some pocket dimension. It’s not like they were, at the moment Thanos had Tony, winning. The only real outcome of Strange not handing over the stone at that moment would Tony being dead and all the other heroes on Titan with him, shortly thereafter.
If Fury contacting Marvel was the key and temporary victory on Titan a possibility, one would presume there are easier ways that Strange would have seen, beyond getting the world snapped. Temporary victory would have bought time for Stark to contact Fury, for example.
To be clear, I’m not disagreeing that Marvel will play a pivotal role in the ultimate win (heck, all the heroes should be necessary for the win). I just don’t think that “Fury will only contact Marvel for us if the universe gets snapped” is the way that Strange would have thought about it. Rather, it’s more something like “all paths starting with us winning or frustrating Thanos (temporarily) on Titan leads to ultimate failure, hence we must lose on Titan since it sets us on the branch of possibilities that includes the single, victorious path”. From there, the odds are still incredibly crappy, victory is not preordained, the other heroes must all step up in a hundred different ways, but victory is still at least a possibility. Strange is acting to preserve the chance of victory, he isn’t acting to guarantee it, unless he somehow turns to be omnipotent.
This is akin to what I was saying. That Strange sort of had a “this path of direct confrontation here is a futile, losing path,” realization. That giving up the Time Stone was a part of that realization. That to me seems to be at least one possible direction.
I think the heroes are going to attack Thanos pretty early in Endgame, with Captain Marvel and Thor being the linchpins of that plan. They’ll lose, badly. In fact I expect Carol to pull a Starlord and fuck up the entire plan, because she’s a bit arrogant. She’ll probably get humbled, just like they showed Thanos throw down with Hulk at the beginning of Infinity War.
That’s when all the quantum realm shenanigans come into play.
In the moment, he absolutely is relinquishing the stone to spare Tony’s life. He literally says “Spare his life and I will give you the stone”, Thanos doesn’t kill Tony (he had him down, told him he hoped humanity remembered him, and was aiming at him with the gauntlet before Strange intervenes).
We can speculate all day about hidden motives, and it could certainly turn out that one of those theories is right. But to your original question, I would still contest the idea that it “seems painfully clear” that Strange is going to be a focus of the whatever plan they have in Endgame. What’s plainly on screen is only that Strange has seen a lot of futures, and that after Stark protests Strange giving up the stone to spare Tony’s life, Strange seems at peace with the decision and gives his line about how “We’re in the endgame now”.
Maybe Strange had some hope that their attempt to beat Thanos on Titan could succeed, and it wasn’t until Stark was finally down for the count that Strange knew that plan had failed. Maybe “plan B” involves Thanos inevitably getting all the stones, and while neither Stark nor Strange is personally key to the new hope of Thanos’ undoing, in the moment, Strange simply (and understandably) decided that if Thanos is getting the stones eventually, he’d rather see Stark spared than murdered in front of him.
Stark might be key to it all, Strange might be key to it all, or they might both just play their parts in a group effort. The movie absolutely encourages this kind of fun speculation, and so do I. I just disagree with the certainty you have that anything we saw on screen points to Strange being the focus of the plan.
I really, really hope not. I hate every theory that boils down to “we needed Captain Marvel because she’s stronger than Thanos”.
Thor was stronger than Thanos by the end of Infinity War. A heavier hitter had better not be Thanos’ undoing. It had better be more clever than that, or more significant than that. Captain Marvel amounting to a macguffin is the worst way I can imagine for Endgame to go; it would be a disservice to Infinity War and to Captain Marvel.
edit: I realize what I’m against isn’t necessarily what you’re saying. Strange’s hope for the future could be something that absolutely requires Captain Marvel, and also requires half a dozen other very specific things to fall into place, and allowing the snap to happen was the only thing that put that in motion. I’m not against Captain Marvel being important, I just hope she’s not the whole plan. And I wanted to acknowledge you might not be saying that either.
Capt Marvel will absolutely not be the key to beating Thanos. Marvel has had this movie planned for at least 5 years, and I don’t think they decided to bring in Capt Marvel until recently.
I can see a situation (LOL out of context comic page below) where the team rallies and takes down Thanos pretty early using both heavy hitters of Thor and Captain Marvel resulting in a situation like the below, but then realizing that doesn’t actually change things snap-wise and they need to do quantum shenanigans to reconstruct the Gauntlet to resolve the snap.
It probably is right that for a truly happy ending (if we are to get one) Thanos needs to be defeated and those who were snapped somehow need to return.
I really hope that in one form or another, the old guard and the newer heroes (so mostly the survivors and the ones snapped) get to share a significant amount of screen time and the snap isn’t just undone in the final scenes. It’d be a shame not to get everyone together again for at least a little while and mix it up with the fun combinations of heroes you don’t otherwise see.
