MCU For Dummies

Thanos and his shiny rocks

Once there was a large purple alien called Thanos. He enjoyed making sure that there was exactly half of everything, he thought that this would save the universe from destruction, isn't he silly?

He always made sure to steal, no, kidnap, no, adopt at least one child from every race he annihilated, no, saved. He kept these children as his own, and had them fight each other and other people in his name. His two most successful children were Gamora (rip) and Nebula.

But Thanos had one singular goal, a goal that he spent like 12 MCU films working towards. A goal that he enslaved the Most Good Looking God to help achieve. Thanos wanted to collect 6 shiny space rocks that would help him half the entire universe when wielded in the Infinity Gauntlet.

The stones were:

The Space Stone:
Another name for it is The Tesseract. This stone was once kept in Odin (one of Marvel's many bad fathers)'s treasure room, but it was moved to Earth to be guarded by Asgardian (Norse gods) worshippers. In 1942 an evil organisation called Hydra stole this stone and used it to power enhanced weapons. But Captain America (the Avengers' chief Boy Scout) managed to knock both the stone and the leader of Hydra at the time into icy water. The stone was recovered by Howard Stark (another member of Marvel's bad father club, it's a very expansive group) who gave the stone to a place called Camp Lehigh (not that important really) where it was kept until at least the 1970s. Long story short, shape shifting Skrulls (they're cool, don't believe the reputation) took the Tesseract, it was passed around to a couple people, including Howard again, Captain Marvel essentially owes her start to that space cube... well, it eventually wound up at S.H.I.E.L.D (they're the good guys). In 2012, the Most Good Looking God, our Lord and Saviour Loki, took the Tesseract under Thanos' orders (remember him?) and used it to command an army of bad guys called Chitauri, effectively bringing the Avengers together for the first time. So everyone, say "thank you Loki." Thor got the cube after the battle, it went to Asgard (home of Norse gods) for a while, through some shape shifting trickery Loki got it put in the Asgardian Vault and eventually Thanos got it, crushed it, and revealed the space stone within. All that for a glowing blue rock? Seems like a lot of needless backstory, but okay. The other stones don't have this much backstory, so is this like the most important stone?

The Time Stone:
The Time Stone was contained within the Eye of Agamotto, a magical artefact. It was guarded by the Masters of the Mystic Arts and eventually became a fancy necklace for one Doctor Steven Strange, a guy who basically ruined the universe because he texted whilst driving. That's essentially it, the stone was GIVEN to Thanos to save Iron Man's life (which totally didn't happen, rip Tony), so it was given up pretty easily.

The Power Stone:
This stone was kept in an orb by an irrelevant magic guy before a sequence of events led to it being taken by the Guardians of the Galaxy (what a bunch of a holes). The orb was given to the Nova Corps for safe keeping, but that didn't really work out, because Thanos got it in 2018 and added it to his stone collection pretty easily.

The Mind Stone:
The Mind Stone was stored in a Sceptre that Hydra stole and used to give powers to the twins Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Pietro got super speed (he didn't see Ultron coming, lol) and Wanda got reality bending magic that could one day damn us all if she didn't want to use it to save her fictional kids (don't ask, even the CONCEPT of Billy and Tommy Maximoff gives me a headache). After Hydra "fell" the Sceptre was taken by the Avengers, then by an evil robot called Ultron who smashed the Sceptre to uncover the stone within. The stone was used to power another robot called Vision (he had children with Wanda. How? How would that work? How could-) but eventually poor old Vis had to have his head smashed open so that Thanos couldn't take the stone. That didn't work either, Thanos used the Time Stone to turn back time and take the stone, killing Vision AGAIN.

The Reality Stone:
This was in more of a liquid form, and these creatures called the Dark Elves kept it in this black sludge thing called the Aether, but Jane Foster (the complete and utter MORON) accidentally absorbed it into herself, starting a conflict that was only ended after Thor's mother died. Thor took this sludge stuff to a madman called The Collector who kept it in his museum on the planet Knowhere. But once again, as is a common theme, Thanos took the sludge and solidified it into the Reality Stone.

The Soul Stone:
This stone caused two Avengers to die, Gamora and Natasha. Basically, to get it, you have to sacrifice someone you care about. So Thanos yeeted his favourite daughter (WHY is Gamora?) off the cliff to acquire the stone. Yes, Thanos is a paying member of the MCU bad fathers club, he bought the T-shirt and bakes cookies for their meet-ups.

So with these stones, Thanos snapped half the universe away (Mr Stark, I don't feel so good...) the Avengers solved it twice (thanks Bruce, thanks and rip Tony) and the world was semi safe. So what have we learned? Hydra is bad, Thanos is bad, aliens really like magical stones and if your father is alive in a Marvel movie, there's only a small chance that they won't try to kill you at least once.