Why the Infinity Stones' Energy May Still Be Shaping the MCU After Avengers: Endgame

Vision's appearance in the Disney+ series WandaVision comes with one colorful detail that has me more perplexed than anything else, and it isn't Vision himself. It's the yellow rock on his head: the Mind Stone, one of the six Infinity Stones that Marvel seemed resolute about being done with.

New details and further research have led me to conclude, scientifically, which use of the Infinity Stones we need to look at more closely, and why. It's the moment in Avengers: Endgame (2019) when Thanos destroyed them. Spoiler warning, in case my theory is right.

Why Vision's Mind Stone in WandaVision has me perplexed

Even if this Vision is some kind of mental projection rather than his former physical self, we wouldn't need the Infinity Stone accessory to know it's him. So the stone's presence stands out.

The return of an Infinity Stone is important for a bigger reason. It brings us back to the mystery of what effect these things had on the universe going forward, beyond the ways Thanos, Hulk and Tony intentionally used them. I've argued many times that one of the four snaps seen in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame could have had lasting side effects on things like mutants. That question came back to me as I started thinking about how the stones' presence might still be active in some way in the MCU.

Avengers: Endgame's Infinity Stone plot hole and the Ancient One's warning

Avengers: Endgame opens with the Avengers discovering that Thanos had used the stones again on his garden planet, for the purpose of destroying the stones themselves. In his view, the universe required correction, and after that the stones served no purpose beyond temptation. "I used the stones to destroy the stones. It nearly killed me. But the work is done," he tells them.

But Endgame also created its own plot hole through the Ancient One's description of the stones. "The Infinity Stones create what you experience as the flow of time," she explains. Remove one of the stones and that flow splits. In the new branch reality, she warns, without their chief weapon against the forces of darkness, their world would be overrun and millions would suffer.

So the Avengers gathered alternate versions of the stones from the past, used them to snap everyone back and snap Thanos and his forces out of existence. Then Cap returned all those stones back in time. That left the present day MCU in exactly the darkest timeline without stones that the Ancient One warned about. Whoops.

The Russo brothers say the stones were reduced to atoms, not erased

After the movie came out, the directors did a Q&A clarifying this plot hole. Because movies are meant to be three hour experiences that require clarification through director Q&As and books to fully process and appreciate. Sure.

They singled out Thanos saying the words "reduced to atoms" to explain that he only reduced the stones to the atomic level, so the stones are still present in the universe. According to them, the universe maintaining effects of these stones remain. The stones reverted from tangible gems to the intangible concepts of space, power, reality, soul, time and mind, still flowing through the cosmos. What's gone are the rock forms the size of a quarter that could be used and weaponized. That part is never going to happen again, we think, aside from showing back up in Vision's head, or maybe Ant-Man shrinking down to one of those atoms and using it. I'm confused, but that's a question for another day.

Marvel later went further, confirming through social media posts that labeled each stone as destroyed that the stones in their stone form are finished. That leaves us with the Russo brothers' explanation that the effects of those stones remain an ever thriving, ever tinkering, ever evolving force of nature. So how exactly does that effect continue to poison this universe? Thanks to science, I think we have answers.

The MCU has always tied the Infinity Stones to gamma radiation

Marvel has given us a specific scientific language for how the stones work. From the very beginning, the Infinity Stones have been classified as radioactive, emitting gamma radiation. That's the same kind of radiation that turned Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk, which is why S.H.I.E.L.D. worked with Banner in The Avengers, using spectrometers calibrated for gamma rays to track the Tesseract, also known as the Space Stone.

Banner reminded us of that link in Endgame too. "The radiation's mostly gamma. It's like I was made for this," he says. Unlike alpha or beta radiation, gamma radiation takes the form of an electromagnetic ray, a supercharged photon blasting off a radioactive element's nucleus and striking nearby matter. It disrupts those atomic nuclei, and in organic tissue it causes malfunctions in RNA and DNA replication, tissue damage and, in many cases, cancer. In the MCU, it makes you a superhero.

I'd argue Marvel wants us to apply this science, given that it drops terms like Planck scale, the Deutsch proposition and the EPR paradox into its dialogue. Doing so means that while the radioactive stones may be gone, the radiation they emitted lingers on in the universe. That explains why Carol Danvers still has her powers, even though their original source, a wave of energy derived from the Space Stone, is no longer present. It explains why Scarlet Witch still has her powers despite them being activated by the Mind Stone. It's not the stone itself. It's the radiation that comes off the stone.

The law of conservation of energy points to Thanos's second snap

When we're talking about energy, there's another concept in physics to keep in mind: the law of conservation of energy. It states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another. That means the total energy the Infinity Stones contained must have transferred somewhere and taken new forms the moment Thanos destroyed them.

That's why, when we look at the four snaps of Infinity War and Endgame and speculate on possible side effects, we have to look at the second one. That's the one where Thanos destroyed the stones, reducing them to atoms in his words, but in the form of a shock wave that spread out from the garden planet and registered on Rocket's sensors.

Every other time, the stones' energy was redirected to a specific thing we saw happen across the universe: the dustings, or reversing the dusting, which would have required an enormous amount of energy. The law of conservation of energy holds up there. Except this one time, when the stones were destroyed, that energy spilled somewhere and we didn't see what it did. Assuming that shock wave was made of gamma radiation, all the cosmic energy in those six stones, the ability to teleport, to move matter telekinetically, to fire energy blasts, to mind control, to create time loops and to manipulate reality, must have transferred somewhere. Maybe into someone, or some ones.

Could Infinity Stone energy explain mutants in the MCU?

That's why this remains such an important potential clue to how groups like the mutants could suddenly exist in the MCU. Mutants, as we know from the comics, can teleport, move matter telekinetically, fire energy blasts, mind control and manipulate time and reality.

I've wagered before that small numbers of mutants might have already existed before all this, with people born with a natural dormant X gene. That would explain why the Maximoff twins were chosen for experimentation to begin with. The relatively new book The Wakanda Files made it very clear that the X gene plus Infinity Stone radiation yields powers. But this floodgate of gamma radiation across the universe was a unique, single event that, according to the Russos, had lasting consequences, at least at an atomic level.

So the full destructive power of the Infinity Stones, despite no longer being capable of being wielded in stone form, must, according to science, have been redistributed in the MCU's greatest trade off. And a new wave of superheroes may have awoken as a result.