Why 'Black Panther' Doesn't Contain Any Infinity Stones

Marvel's Black Panther is finally in theaters, and it's clear that the king has arrived. The film has already earned tremendous critical acclaim (here's our full review), fans are loving it, and it's set to break all sorts of box office records this weekend. But with Avengers: Infinity War looming in the distance, there's an aspect that detail-oriented Marvel fans might have noticed about Black Panther: it doesn't contain any Infinity Stones.

Learn what co-writer/director Ryan Coogler has to say about the lack of Black Panther Infinity Stones below. We'll also give you a refresher of the whereabouts of every Stone in the Marvel Cinematic Universe at this point in the timeline.

In an interview with IGN, Coogler was asked if there were ever any plans to include the final Infinity Stone in his movie, and here's what he said:

"I love the Infinity Stones as much as any comic book fan, it's just Wakanda already has its thing, which is Vibranium. For us, that was special enough, so to throw in something, like another special thing, didn't feel right. It felt like we should stick with our one MacGuffin for the country and explore that, let that be the important thing because, frankly we didn't need to have another piece like that. The studio was never really interested in putting a stone in there, either."

He makes a good point. Black Panther already has enough on its plate with the introduction of Wakanda and filling out the history and traditions of the country without tossing an Infinity Stone into the mix. There's only so much an audience can take in one film, after all. Plus, one of the best parts of Black Panther is specifically that it isn't hampered by excessive connections to the rest of the MCU.

If Marvel was never interested in squirreling a Stone away in Wakanda, it seems as if they already have a plan in place for the as-yet-unseen Soul Stone. But what is it?

For anyone who might be scratching your heads about all of this, remember that the Infinity Stones are the remnants of ancient singularities – they're incredibly powerful, and Thanos (the Marvel universe's main villain) has been on a multi-movie quest to track them down so he can put them in his Infinity Gauntlet and wreak untold chaos upon the universe. Let's run through the locations of each Stone, shall we?

The Space Stone, encased within the Tesseract, was featured heavily in Captain America: The First Avenger . It has the ability to teleport its owner anywhere in the universe.

Current location: Loki snatched it from Odin's vault at the end of Thor: Ragnarok, taking it with him on board the ship that now holds the surviving citizens of Asgard. In that film's post-credits sequence, we see Thanos's ship pop up in front of it, and the trailer for Infinity War implies that Loki will offer the Space Stone to Thanos.

The Mind Stone, originally encased in Loki's scepter, factored heavily into the plot of The Avengers. It was later used to create Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, and in Avengers: Age of Ultron, it was fused with Tony Stark's artificial intelligence personality J.A.R.V.I.S. to form Vision (played by Paul Bettany).

Current location: Vision's forehead, presumably somewhere around the Avengers' high tech upstate New York campus.

Thor: The Dark World marked the first appearance of the Reality Stone, also known as the Aether. It has the ability to warp reality according to the will of whoever wields it. (If you'll recall, Malekith the Accursed wanted to use it to cover the universe in darkness.)Current location: The Collector's museum.

The Power Stone, encased in the orb seen in Guardians of the Galaxy, is capable of destroying entire worlds.

Current location: Xandar, under the watchful eye of the Nova Corps

As we saw in Doctor Strange, The Time Stone is inside the Eye of Agamotto and grants its wielder the ability to manipulate time. ("Dormammu, I've come to bargain!")

Current location: Doctor Strange's New York Sanctum.

This is the only Infinity Stone we've yet to see in the MCU thus far, so it's still unclear how Marvel Studios will choose to utilize it in the movies. Still, it's all but guaranteed that Thanos will get his hands on it by the end of the upcoming Infinity War.

Current location: Unknown.

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Black Panther is in theaters now, and you can read much more from Coogler in /Film's interview with him right here.