For the past several years, we’ve been seeing Thanos inch ever closer to the impending collision with the Avengers, and even at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron, we see him saying, “Fine, I’ll do it myself,” as he put on his then-stoneless Infinity Gauntlet. However, there was a solid few years that passed between each film…so what took the dude so long? Why was it until the movie itself that Thanos finally decided to strike?

Luckily, Avengers: Infinity War co-screenwriter Stephen McFeely gave us some insight into this in the commentary for the latest Avengers release. Here’s what he had to say about Thanos finally gathering the Infinity Stones when he did:

“The catalyst for the whole movie was when Thanos figured out where the Soul Stone was because he captured Nebula on his ship [after she went after him at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2] and rooted around in her brain and found out that Gamora knew where the Soul Stone was.”

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I suppose that makes sense. Why strike before you have to, right? He had to assume that there would be others who would seek to take any stones away from him if he tried to gather them one at a time, and Thanos isn’t a man who wants power for power’s sake. So it made sense for him to wait until he knew where they all were.

McFeely added:

“Normally you want, you know, your inciting incident, the catalyst for this to maybe be on screen and maybe be first. But given how we wanted to approach the story we buried it to basically the midpoint. And, you know, again, it keeps you off balance, but it’s definitely there.”

Was this aspect of the story buried too much for its own good, or does it ultimately not matter? Let us know your thoughts down below!

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