Kevin Feige Explains How ‘Ragnarok’ Retcons ‘Thor’s Infinity Gauntlet Tease

SPOILERS for Thor: Ragnarok follow. 

There’s one teeny little thing that’s bothered those Marvel fans who obsessively keep up with the continuity of the MCU: the fact that the Infinity Gauntlet, sans gems, appears as an Easter egg in Odin’s vault in the first Thor movie, and then later on in the series it appears that Thanos has it. How could he have it if it’s supposed to be in the vault? Were we just supposed to take for granted that he could sneak in there between post-credits scenes and steal it? Now that we have Thor: Ragnarok, that problem has been solved: as it turns out, the Gauntlet that Odin has in his trophy room is nothing but a fake.

The line, presented as a throwaway but possessing explosive implications for the Marvel universe, is said by Hela as she’s leading her crony Skurge through Odin’s palace. She tells him how she and Odin used to be the rulers of the realm, taking what was theirs with fire and blood (okay, wrong franchise, but you get it). But Odin, she says, is nothing but a liar, and when they get down in the vault she knocks the Infinity Gauntlet off its pedestal with a dismissive “Fake!”

Kevin Feige spoke to /Film, explaining that the line was a fun way to go back and fix something that had been needling the MCU for a while:

Going all the way back to Phase One, where Infinity War was a barely a glint in our eye, we were working on Avengers and trying to just put that all together for the conclusion of Phase One.  And it’s in one shot. It’s in one shot in the background.… So Odin put a fake and he goes, it’s fine, I got it. Look, it’s fine, it’s in our vault, don’t worry about it. And it’s not until Hela goes down there. It was fun being back in that vault, by the way, for the first time since Thor 1. It was just the opportunity to call it a fake. So for people like yourself, and like all of us at Marvel Studios who were paying attention, that answers that question. And for people who have no idea that an out-of-focus Infinity Gauntlet appeared in the back of Thor 1, it just showcases her knowledge and her sort of disgust with the way Odin had handled things on her way to the true power that is below the surface.

So, there you have it. One lingering problem with the series’ continuity erased with a flippant line from a villain that neatly sets up the next storyline. Hela might not have saved Asgard, but she sure saved the rest of us a lot of head-scratching.

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