Captain America: The First Avenger provides compelling proof that Marvel Studios changed plans when they turned the Tesseract into an Infinity Stone. Over the last decade, Marvel has developed a well-earned reputation for playing the long game. Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame have been sold as the ultimate payoff for 11 years’ worth of superhero adventures, bringing an end to a single continuous narrative that’s been in the works since Tony Stark suited up as Iron Man in 2008.

In reality, of course, Marvel’s approach is actually very adaptive. When they hit upon a good idea, they retcon their own history to make it work, and the Infinity Stones were one such retcon. The Tesseract itself is actually based on another powerful item from the comics, the Cosmic Cube, which was even known as the Tesseract in the modernized Ultimate Universe comics. When Marvel committed to Thanos and the Infinity Stones, they realized they’d already introduced some powerful and mysterious objects that could easily be an Infinity Stone, and the Tesseract was one of them.

There’s just one problem: when you look back at Phase One, it’s pretty clear that the Tesseract was never really intended to be the Space Stone at all.

  • This Page: Evidence That The Tesseract Was Retconned Into An Infinity Stone Page 2: Why The Infinity Stones Were Retconned

The Tesseract Wasn’t Called An Infinity Stone Until Thor: The Dark World

The retcon actually happened in 2013’s Thor: The Dark World, the first Marvel movie to explicitly reference the Infinity Stones. There are two key scenes that build up the mythology of the Stones. In the first, Odin discovered the Aether inside Jane Foster, and referred to the Book of Yggdrasil to explain what the Aether was. He revealed that there are a number of relics that predate the universe itself, most of which appear as Stones, with the Aether being an exception. The idea was revisited in the post-credits scene, in which Sif and Volstagg handed over the Aether to the Collector for safekeeping. When the Collector inquired as to why the Aether couldn’t be kept in Odin’s Vault, Volstagg gave a simple explanation. “The Tesseract is already on Asgard,” he told the Collector. “It is not wise to keep two Infinity Stones so close together.”

Thor: The Dark World, then, is an important step along the journey to Avengers: Infinity War. Odin and Volstagg effectively introduced the Infinity Stones to the average viewer, with the All-Father presenting their MCU backstory and Volstagg confirming that the Tesseract is one of them. But this was actually the first time anybody had referenced the Tesseract as an Infinity Stone, both on-screen and in interviews. Even the Red Skull - who possessed a copy of the Book of Yggdrasil, and so should have known all about the Infinity Stones - was only interested in the Tesseract. Meanwhile, in interviews Joss Whedon happily referred to the Tesseract by its original comic book name, the Cosmic Cube, another object that Thanos was obsessed with for a while in the comics.

Proof The Tesseract Wasn’t The Space Stone In The First Avenger

The Cosmic Cubes are artificial matrices that tap into the almost unlimited power of another dimension. They’re objects of tremendous power; one ancient Cosmic Cube destroyed a third of the alien Skrull Empire. Cosmic Cubes can be used to alter the shape of reality itself, warping time and space in any way the wielder wishes, or can rewrite people’s minds. Fascinatingly, a Cosmic Cube is sophisticated enough to gain a measure of sentience, but it tends to absorb aspects of the personality of its wielder. That means when a power-hungry despot gets hold of a Cosmic Cube, it becomes a terrifying force of destruction.

Both Captain America: The First Avenger and, indeed, The Avengers treat the Tesseract as a Cosmic Cube. When the Red Skull acquires the Tesseract, he recognizes it as a source of unlimited power, and Hydra tap into its energy to create weapons that are far beyond anything used by the Nazis or the Allies. An episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 1, “084,” revealed that the power contained within these weapons doesn’t degrade with time; it is every bit as dangerous in 2013 as it had been in the 1940s. In 2012, Loki creates a device to open a wormhole over New York, using the Tesseract to power it. The Tesseract, then, is clearly understood as being a source of unlimited and inexhaustible power. Incidentally, The Avengers even implies Loki’s Scepter was a Tesseract-powered object, which explains why the God of Mischief could use the Scepter to manipulate the Tesseract and transport himself to Earth in an unstable wormhole.

There are even subtle hints that the Tesseract is gaining sentience. “The Tesseract has awakened,” the Other tells Loki, and throughout The Avengers the object appears to be exerting an influence on everybody around it. In one scene, it is the Tesseract itself that tells Hawkeye to launch his sneak attack on the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. It appears to have mimicked the personality of Loki, the Machiavellian mastermind who’s wielding it at the time. That’s just what you’d expect from a Cosmic Cube, and none of this fits at all with the idea that the Tesseract is the Space Stone.

Page 2: Why The Infinity Stones Were Retconned

Why The Infinity Stones Were Retconned

Marvel’s plans tend to change and develop over time. Through most of Phase 1, the only objective Marvel really had was to get to The Avengers. That was a make-it-or-break-it moment for the entire shared universe model; if The Avengers had gone wrong, Marvel would have needed to conduct a dramatic course-correction. It was actually Joss Whedon who decided to introduce Thanos into the MCU in the post-credits scene of The Avengers, unwittingly launching the MCU in an ambitious and bold direction. As Whedon explained in an interview with Slash Film back in 2012:

“[Thanos] for me is the most powerful and fascinating Marvel villain. He’s the great grand daddy of the badasses and he’s in love with death and I just think that’s so cute. For me, the greatest Avengers was THE AVENGERS annual that Jim Starlin did followed by THE THING 2 in 1 that contained the death of Adam Warlock. Those were some of the most important texts and I think underrated milestones in Marvel history and Thanos is all over that, so somebody had to be in control and had to be behind Loki’s work and I was like “It’s got to be Thanos.” And they said “Okay” and I’m like “Oh my God!””

Marvel had originally introduced the Tesseract in Captain America: The First Avenger to add a sci-fi element to the period piece. “We then started to build the Cube into the mythology of the other movies,” Kevin Feige told Syfy Wire. “We started to realize that a lot of these films required MacGuffins like the Orb in Guardians of the Galaxy, the scepter in the first Avengers film. And the notion that all of them could be a Stone started to come about right around the time Joss wrote that little tag in Avengers 1.” The studio began to consider Thanos as the greatest villain of the MCU, and by 2014 could announce a Phase 3 slate that would take them all the way up to Avengers: Infinity War.

Viewed through this lens, Thor: The Dark World is something of a course-correction, with the Tesseract rewritten as an Infinity Stone. It’s not a perfect retcon; where does the Tesseract’s inexhaustible supply of power come from? What is the relationship between the Scepter and the Tesseract? And why do Loki and Thor need devices to use the Tesseract, rather than simply being able to open portals with it at will like Thanos? It doesn’t quite work; but there’s a sense in which that doesn’t matter. Marvel pulled it off, the viewers have accepted it, and the idea has been absorbed into the ever-evolving narrative of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

More: Thor: Ragnarok’s Infinity Gauntlet Joke Created Another Plot Hole

  • captain marvel Release Date: 2019-03-08 The Avengers 4 Release Date: 2019-04-26 spider-man homecoming 2 Release Date: 2019-07-02