(Warning: Major “Avengers: Infinity War” spoilers ensue.)
So what happened when Thanos obtained all the Infinity Stones and snapped his fingers in “Avengers: Infinity War?”
At the end of the film, Thanos is seen with a young Gamora in an orange dreamlike world after he snaps his fingers, “killing” half of the universe’s living beings. Director Joe Russo said on the podcast Happy Sad Confused that the much debated scene does indeed take place in the soul world within the soul stone.
“It is [in the soul stone], it’s an orange world that they’re in,” said Russo of the scene with Thanos and young Gamora. “Because he’s in the Hero’s Journey in the movie, we did point that out that there’s a correlating journey in the film between Thor and Thanos. Certain characters make very human choices in the movie that are very tragic that shift the direction of the storytelling,” added Russo.
The”Hero’s Journey” is a theory of comparative religion articulated by philosopher Joseph Campbell, which describes a series of challenges, setbacks, and successes said to be experienced by protagonists in myths and legends across varying human cultures. The concept became known in popular culture after it was explicitly used to develop Luke Skywalker in the original “Star Wars” trilogy.
“For Thanos at the end of the movie, this is part of his Hero’s Journey, we once again put him face to face with the only thing that he cared about, where he has to own up to the emotional cost of what he’s done in the movie,” added Russo of the supervillain’s relationship to Gamora.
One of the popular fan theories floating around online is that there is a soul world within the soul stone and souls are trapped within it. Could it be that in “Avengers 4,” the survivors trade “a soul for soul” to bring back the many heroes who disintegrated at the end of the hit movie?
We have a year to think about it. “Avengers 4,” which still doesn’t have a title, opens in theaters May 3, 2019.