Avengers: Infinity War: The only recap you'll need.

The biggest cinematic event of 2018 is clearly the release of Avengers: Infinity War. The 19th installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the culmination of almost 10 years of careful planning and teasing. Putting together almost every superhero of the franchise against one single threat; the titan Thanos. Teased in many Marvel post-credit scene, Thanos is the most iconic villain of Marvel Comics and many fans have awaited his fight against the protectors of the universe. In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know if you’ve been slacking off on your MCU screenings so you’re not lost when you see the movie. This article will contain spoilers of the previous MCU movies.

The infinity stones.

As we’ve known for a while (and as the title of the movie indicates), Thanos is after the infinity stones. These six stones hold the power of various parts of existence: power, space, time, soul, mind and reality. Together, they allow their user to possess infinite power. Thanos is seemingly the only one in the MCU who can control the power of the stones through his tailored-made Infinity Gauntlet. So where are the infinity stones? In the MCU so far, we know the whereabouts of five of them.

• The first one we’ve seen is the space stone stored inside the Tesseract. The cube fell into the hands of Hydra in the person of Johann Schmidt, aka Red Skull, the villain of Captain America: The First Avenger. During the final clash between Cap and Red Skull, the nazi tried to use the Tesseract but failed and was seemingly transported away from Earth. Recovered by the S.H.I.E.L.D, the cube was then stolen by Loki to open a portal which would invite the army of Thanos on Earth. After his plan failed, Loki and the Tesseract were safely stored on Asgard until its destruction after the events of Thor: Ragnarok. The cube is now in Loki’s possession on the spaceship Thor used to save his people.
• The second one was the reality stone, in the form of the Ether, appearing in Thor: The Dark World. After possessing Thor’s girlfriend, Jane Foster, the Ether fell into the hands of Malekith, a dark elf trying to remove the light from all the realms. After Malekith was defeated by Thor, the reality stone was given to the Collector, a space merchant, by the Asgardians as keeping two stones in Asgard’s vault would be too dangerous.
• The third stone was the power stone, discovered by Peter Quill aka Star-Lord on some dead planet in Guardians of the Galaxy. Coveted by Thanos, the titan sent his ally Ronan the Accuser to bring him the stone. Once in possession of the power stone, Ronan turned on his master and decided to use the stone to get revenge on the Nova Corps of planet Xandar. Xandar was saved by the Guardians of the Galaxy who were able to use the stone to kill Ronan and left the power stone in the Nova Corps’ care.
• The fourth stone is the mind stone. Stored inside a Chitauri scepter, it was in Thanos’ possession without him realizing it. Trusted to Loki during the events of Avengers, the Scepter was supposed to help the fallen God to take control of Earth and bring the Tesseract to the Titan. After Loki’s failure, the scepter was studied upon by the S.H.I.EL.D which was already deeply infiltrated by Hydra. Stolen by Hydra, the scepter was then found by Tony Stark who used it to create Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron. After Ultron's betrayal, the mind stone was removed from the scepter and placed inside a new Artificial Intelligence, Vision, who became a member of the Avengers. The stone is on his forehead.
• The fifth and last stone we know of is the time stone and is inside Doctor Strange’s Eye of Agamotto.
• The sixth stone, the soul stone, has not yet appeared in the MCU.

Everybody’s whereabouts.

Now that you know where the stones are, what about our heroes and villains? After 18 movies and many, many events, the different teams’ whereabouts can be hard to figure out.

• Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange are all in New York.
• War Machine and Vision’s whereabouts are unknown, but they are still members of the Avengers.
• Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Falcon, Ant-Man and Scarlet Witch are renegades to the U.S government.
• Black Panther and the Winter Soldier are in Wakanda.
• The Guardians of the Galaxy are venturing through space.
• Thor, the Hulk, and Loki are on a spaceship with the remnants of the Asgardian people.

In the post-credit scenes of Thor: Ragnarok, another massive spaceship appears next to the Asgardians, presumably Thanos’ ship. They could be the first to meet the titan in the flesh. To gear up for the new Avengers movie, check out our Marvel section here on Nutees!