Thanos and the Mind stone

[Cikomyr2]

So, as far as we understand the timeline, the Mind stone was already in Thanos's possession from the beginning of the Avengers saga.

He then entrusted it to Loki so he could use it to open the way for an invading army. However, the Age of Ultron stinger hinted at the fact that Thanos probably considered the stone itself to be his agent on Earth, not Loki.

When Ultron (a manifestation of the Stone's will) was defeated, it is only then that Thanos considered his Earth invasion failed and decided he was going to take matters in his own hands.

So I was wondering. If Thanos controlled the Mind Stone for a while, how much of the character and the crowd of character around him were dependent on the Mind Stone?

Thanos had a gathering of very powerful individuals under his absolute, almost fanatical control. He had a rather crazy bonkers agenda of wiping half the population of everything. You don't recruit that many people with that kind of crazy agenda.

What if Gamora.. Nebula... and all other Children of Thanos were all brainwashed by the Mind Stone? Thanos losing it after The Avengers (2012) is what paved the way for Gamora and Nebula's rebellion in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Also, the way Loki rambles about "what is coming" and the powers hes seen beyond the universe could indicate that he might also have been under the influence and control of the Mind Stone during The Avengers. Hulk's beatdown might have broken through the conditioning at the end.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Thanos had a gathering of very powerful individuals under his absolute, almost fanatical control. He had a rather crazy bonkers agenda of wiping half the population of everything. You don't recruit that many people with that kind of crazy agenda.

TBH I figured most of them were in a similar boat to Ronan - Thanos shows up wanting to wipe out half of life on their planet and they join up to make sure it’s the half they don’t like.

[Ramza00]

Just a reminder from 2005 to 2015 there was no real plan with the MCU movies. It is pure IMPROV.

Sure Thanos is introduced in Avengers 1 in 2012 but lots of balls were moving at the time. Why those years specifically?

Remember that Disney did not own Marvel till December 2009 (it announced its goal to buy them in August 2009.) But even though Disney acquired future movie rights they had to settle for past and future movie "sharing" which it more and less settled with two deals. In 2010 it was the sharing deal future future movies with Paramount such as The Avengers, and in 2013 Disney bought past distribution rights for Iron Man 1 and 2, Thor and Captain America.

But before Disney in 2009 it was still in flux. Remember until the year 2005 with the Meryl Lynch deal, Marvel did not have plans for a MCU. In 2005 Meryl Lynch said if Marvel wanted to make Marvel movies they would partially finance them up to 10 movies for a little more than half a billion dollars if all 10 options were exercised. Well this deal made other finance deals possible and thus this deal birthed the MCU. Before that well there was no concept of the MCU, and Marvel was considering selling even more superhero IP like Captain America which it recently obtained in a settlement in 2003. Other Marvel properties were in flux in the 00s like New Line Cinema owned Iron Man from 2000 to 2004 and Marvel got it in 2005 for New Line never made a movie, and before New Line Fox owned the rights but decided it had enough on its plate with X-Men and the Fantastic Four. So the Disney acquisition did not produce Chaos, there was already lots of Chaos going around with how the whole reason the MCU got set up. It was not planned, it was Improv.

So it was Age of Ultron (released in 2015) and the disaster of how that movie operated back behind the scenes that caused Marvel to do a reorganization that same year placing pretty much all control under Kevin Feige with marvel movies (not other marvel stuff like comics, tv, merchandising, games, toys, etc) with Feige answering to Disney C suite of executives. This in turn made the MCU a whole lot less chaotic with the planning department. They knew where they were going story wise, they had a cast of characters whose rights they knew they exercised, they had also streamlined how these movies get made with them being filmed at pretty much the same locations, with the same type of cameras, where one team would do one movie and then they start working on another marvel movie, so on and so on. No more twins problems where it is unsure if Disney owns the right to Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch with Fox. A problem that was ended when Disney bought Fox in 2019.

------

Before AoU we saw Thanos in Avenger 1 but the Infinity Stones were in flux from a writting perspective, it was only later with Age of Ultron did we "backport" the concept that previous important things like the Tesseract the Scepter could actually be relevant for future movies. This is because the 2015 reorganization we had too many cooks in the kitchen with making these movies. Age of Ultron really suffered from this for a large amount of its screen time is used to set up other movies that would come after Age of Ultron.

For example AoU set up.
The Twins with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.
Klaw / Andy Serkis with Wakanda aka Black Panther.
Infinity Stones with Avengers 3 and 4.
Thor Ragnarok with bad things are about to Happen.
Bruce leaving Earth.
Civil War with Steve and Tony fighting.

There may be another thing I am forgetting that made it in the final film. Whedon even wanted to do some nonsense where we see a computer animated Captain Marvel in an earlier version of a script even though they had no script, no movie plan, and no actress hired to be Carol Danvers. Everything after 2015 was tried to be made a little more consistent.

[Cikomyr2]

I am certainly not advancing this theory on a Doylist point of view: it was certainly not planned that way. There was no actual forethought about any of the above theory in the writers mind when they wrote these movies.

I am just saying that this is what the story that developed over the years seemed to indicate.

Edit: ooooohhhhh apparently Marvel.com has, at one point, confirmed the Brainwashed Loki theory :

“Arriving at the Sanctuary through a wormhole caused by the Bifrost, Loki met the Other, ruler of the ancient race of extraterrestrials the Chitauri, and Thanos. Offering the God of Mischief dominion over his brother’s favorite realm Earth, Thanos requested the Tesseract in return. Gifted with a Scepter that acted as a mind control device, Loki would be able to influence others. Unbeknownst to him, the Scepter was also influencing him, fueling his hatred over his brother Thor and the inhabitants of Earth.”

[Kitten Champion]

Eh, to me that's like the "What if we're all in the Tommy Westphall Universe?"-kind of statement.

I would respond with three points

1. If this was intended in any way they would've clearly dramatized it on screen. Especially for Loki, whose culpability in the plot of the Avengers is pretty significant to his overall character.

2. Thanos has existed for centuries, was a reigning tyrant on his own world with a strong charismatic presence, has a bizarre but plausibly alluring universe-reshaping ideology he espouses, and is just an enormously powerful individual even in a Universe of powerful beings. I never got any implication that he needed anything beyond his force of personality to gain fervently loyal followers.

3. Thanos is very much of the "you'll see it my way eventually" outlook, his actions aren't conditional that you do believe him so much as he firmly believes you inevitably will as they're clearly right. At least that's true until Endgame. After seeing those others were not, in fact, grateful for his supposed gift to the universe. That's when he decided to just reshape all life in the universe into having no choice in the matter.

[Cikomyr2]

Eh, to me that's like the "What if we're all in the Tommy Westphall Universe?"-kind of statement.

I am not sure what that is suppose to bring to the conversation

[Kitten Champion]

I am not sure what that is suppose to bring to the conversation

It's a thing where you can't really dispute it through any reasonably argument (this work of fiction is actually a very detailed simulation in the head of an autistic child) as it goes into elements which aren't perceptible within the work itself but could be equally valid if you're willing to accept it as head-canon.

I just think it adds nothing to these assorted Marvel characters to second guess whether or not they actually had agency or were secretly reprogrammed via a magical rock.

[Spacewolf]

I don't know about the mind stone controlling his servants as it seems like they follow him out of free will. However I do think that Thanos was put onto his path by the mind stone, in the same way it used Tonys fears against him leading to the creation of ultron and nearly causing him to breakdown it also caused Thanos to become obsessed with his balance.

[Cikomyr2]

It's a thing where you can't really dispute it through any reasonably argument (this work of fiction is actually a very detailed simulation in the head of an autistic child) as it goes into elements which aren't perceptible within the work itself but could be equally valid if you're willing to accept it as head-canon.

I just think it adds nothing to these assorted Marvel characters to second guess whether or not they actually had agency or were secretly reprogrammed via a magical rock.

We are going to have a Loki series soon, starring a Loki who only lived his life up to the Avengers movie. His state of mind during the invasion (which was basically yesterday for him) is relevant I'd say.

[Psyren]

Edit: ooooohhhhh apparently Marvel.com has, at one point, confirmed the Brainwashed Loki theory :

Well it makes sense that Thanos wouldn't just hand some Asgard nobody a whole-ass Infinity Stone without some kind of insurance policy. Thanos knew or at least suspected that Earth had possession of 1-2 of the other stones if not more, but not where they were - so conquering the planet so that he could search it at leisure was a reasonable approach.

Thanos also may have had some kind of connection to the Mind Stone still, to be able to realize when Ultron failed at decimating the population.

With that said, the Marvel quote reads to me as though "Brainwashed" is a bit of an overstatement. Loki was acting on his own, just with his passions inflamed a bit - similar to the effect the Scepter had on the Avengers themselves inside the helicarrier.