'Avengers: Infinity War' Directors Debunk The Soul Stone Theory

These days, a fan theory can't even get a few weeks in the cycle without being debunked immediately by the directors who may have started it in the first place. Or rather, "clarified." Joe and Anthony Russo are clarifying their comments on the final scene in their film Avengers: Infinity War, and in the process, may have just debunked the popular Infinity War Soul Stone theory and the stone's role in Avengers 4. Oh well, at least we got to dream.

Major spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War follow.

Those kids at the Iowa City High School Q&A with Joe Russo really knew what they wanted to ask. That Q&A gave us a week's worth of juicy details and new theories to chew on — one of which was the Soul Stone theory. The theory was launched to popularity when Russo confirmed that the final scene of Thanos and young Gamora speaking took place within the Soul Stone. The orange glow surrounding them and the restored vision of Titan may have been hint enough, but Russo explicitly stated, "he's inside the Soul Stone." When probed if that meant that Gamora was in the Soul Stone too, Russo answered, "She is, in fact is, yes."

This set off a tizzy of speculation that this confirmed the existence of Soulworld, a pocket dimension within the Soul Stone that, in the Marvel comics, contains the souls of people captured by Adam Warlock. If Gamora was alive within the Soul Stone, who else could still be living in there?

But alas, the Russo brothers have debunked that theory. The characters that dissolved into dust after the snap heard around the universe in Avengers: Infinity War are, in fact, dead, the Russos told ComicBook.com. And the young Gamora we saw in the Soul Stone was in fact "a spiritual representation of her." Joe Russo said:

"The power that it took Thanos to click his fingers, he's so dramatic that if you look closely at the film and the damage of the gauntlet. You look closely at the very last scene, it damages his arm dramatically. And that moment when he clicks his fingers sends him into this ethereal plane inside of the Soul Stone where as part of his quote unquote hero's journey in the film, he has one last moment to convey a sense of guilt about what he's done. It illustrates what a complicated character he is. So, to clarify, it's a spiritual representation of her and obviously that's something that the Soul Stone has power to do. But really it's there to illustrate his pain and his guilt. I wouldn't read much more into it beyond that."

All right, Gamora is dead and there's no hope. We get it. That still leaves us with seven other Avengers 4 fan theories that have yet to be debunked by the Russo brothers. How likely those are is still up in the air, but we've got another year to find out.

Avengers: Infinity War is currently playing in theaters. Avengers 4 opens in theaters on May 3, 2019.