If you know anything at all about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you know that it has spent more than a decade building towards Avengers: Infinity War.
The new movie centers on the battle between nearly every Marvel superhero and the Mad Titan, Thanos. Thanos has spent years upon years searching for the Infinity Stones, so that he can wipe out half the life in the universe. The Infinity Stones are the most powerful objects in the Marvel universe, and collected together on the Infinity Gauntlet they give the wearer complete control over the universe itself.
The Time Stone is one of those Infinity Stones, and as you might guess from the name, it has control over the flow of time. Like all the Infinity Stones, the Time Stone has a long and complicated history from the comics to the films. It has been used both in tandem with the other stones and on its own, and always to great effect.
It is, after all, one of the six most powerful objects in the universe, so it’s gotten up to some insane stuff in its past. This list will count down those crazy facts, giving you insight into its history in the comics, the MCU, and more.
This is 15 Crazy Facts About the Time Stone.
Power over all of time
The Time Stone gives its user dominion over time, both for themselves and others. The wielder of the Time Stone can use it for a wide array of purposes, but when using it on themselves, its most notable capabilities are for seeing the future and traveling through time.
The Time Stone isn’t just a weapon that can be used to harm people, it grants its user access to all of time itself. It has been used in the comics to travel millions of years through time, and to see events before they occur.
In one recent storyline, just a piece of the Time Stone was enough to go millions of years into the past. Imagine what could be done with it used in tandem with the other gems on the Infinity Gauntlet.
It’s inside the Eye of Agamotto (in the movies)
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been building up the Infinity Stones as its most powerful objects for a long time now. The Time Stone was one of the more obvious reveals as far as the Stones go. Doctor Strange’s sidekick Wong just outright referred to the Eye of Agamotto as an Infinity Stone.
Since the Eye of Agamotto was shown in the same movie to have nearly complete control over the flow of time, it didn’t take long for fans to figure out that it could only be the Time Stone that gave the Eye its powers.
The Eye of Agamotto doesn’t contain an Infinity Stone in the comics, but it makes sense for the MCU to put the Time Stone there, as it gives Dr. Strange a reason to be in Avengers: Infinity War, and Thanos another reason to come to Earth.
It can be used to age and trap people
When Thanos has the Time Stone, it’s a fair bet that it will be primarily used as a weapon. When the Time Stone is used like that, there are few that can stand against it, as it can be used to alter the aging process, even to the edge of life. Tony Stark has felt this effect more than once, as he was aged into dust when fighting Thanos, and was repeatedly de-aged when he held the stone himself.
One of the Time Stone’s offensives use is more immediate—it can be used to trap people in time loops.
On top of forcibly sending people through time portals, the stone can seal people into loops that prevent them from affecting the time stream of the outside world. Either way, the Time Stone is not something to take lightly.
It’s a great gardening tool
In the Marvel comics, there exists a race of cosmic beings called the Elders of the Universe. Their true origins have been lost to all memory, as they seem to have existed since the beginning of the universe itself. Several of these Elders have had dealings with the Infinity Stones in the comics, and the Time Stone was in the possession of one for uncounted millennia.
The Gardener (also known as Ord Zyonz) used the Time Stone for, you guessed it, gardening.
With the Time Stone’s power over time, he caused his plants to grow faster than they ever could have otherwise.
The stone, of course, has many powers beyond gardening, but as you might expect, it was the most important function as far as The Gardener was concerned. This came back to bite him, however, as Thanos eventually destroyed him with his own plants to obtain the stone.
It isn’t as effective against Asgardians
Thanos is a proud being. This has played out in multiple different stories with multiple different characters, but his arrogance is a constant.
It manifested in the Marvel animated universe, when he took on the Avengers while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet in the animated series Avengers Assemble. But Thanos didn’t just crush them outright with the Gauntlet. Instead, the Avengers challenged him to fight them with just one stone at a time, saying that he wouldn’t be able to do it. So Thanos tried to do just that, and he used the Time Stone to age his opponents.
While the Time Stone worked on most of the Avengers, one of them actually got stronger when he was aged.
That’s right, the Time Stone only powered up Thor, showing that Asgardians only get stronger with age.
It changed the Eye of Agamotto’s powers
Since the Time Stone has never resided in the Eye of Agamotto in the comics, it stands to reason that the artifact would have different capabilities in the MCU.
In the original Doctor Strange comics, the Eye granted an all-seeing light that pierced through any deception or disguise, among other powers that included telepathy.
While the comics version of the Eye did allow its user to relive recent events, it certainly did not grant dominion over the time-space continuum.
The MCU’s Eye of Agamotto is thus completely different, and only comparable to its comics counterpart in its name and backstory.
Like the other stones, it cannot be destroyed
The Marvel universe maintains that the Infinity Stones have existed since the beginning of the universe itself; primordial ingots of unimaginable power. As such, there has been a multitude of plots and schemes that involved using or misusing the stones, too many to name. Over the course of these stories, the stones are occasionally shattered and scattered to the farthest reaches of the universe.
The problem is, the Infinity Stones are so essential to the universe itself that they can only be broken, never fully destroyed. They re-form themselves, given time.
The Time Stone itself was broken and lost, and yet it recently re-formed all by itself.
The Time Stone eventually showed up underneath the surface of a planet, and aside from a color change, it appeared completely unscathed.
The Punisher once used it to kidnap Thanos
The recent Marvel series centered on an alternate reality where Thanos defeated the entire universe using the Infinity Stones has a lot of heroes and villains fulfilling different roles than they normally would. One of those is Frank Castle, usually known as The Punisher. In this reality, Castle lost his life and became the Ghost Rider, later referred to as just The Rider.
The Rider ended up as a servant of King Thanos, and would do his bidding. Thanos needed help to defeat his final foe, The Fallen One (aka the Silver Surfer), and told The Rider to go back through time and bring back Thanos’ younger self.
Using a piece of the Time Stone, The Rider did just that, and dragged young Thanos to the future so he could help his older self in battle.
Changing colors
Marvel frequently changes core facets of its most important characters and objects. The Time Stone is no exception, as it has undergone many design changes throughout its comic appearances.
Beyond the uncertainty over whether it is a stone or a gem (the generally accepted idea is that the Infinity Stones are refined to become Infinity Gems), the Time Stone has also changed color.
The Time Stone has been orange and blue in the comics, changing as needed, but in the Marvel Cinematic Universe it glows a vivid green.
When the golden locket of the Eye of Agamotto is used in the films, the audience can see the bright green stone inside, and perhaps because of this, the Time Stone was recently revealed in the comics to have changed color again, to bright green.
In the Eye of Agamotto, it has always opposed Dormammu
The Time Stone/Eye of Agamotto continuity gets messy here, so bear with us.
In the comics, the Eye of Agamotto has always been wielded by the greatest enemy of The Dread One, Dormammu. If the Time Stone resides within the Eye of Agamotto in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it stands to reason that we can include the Time Stone in that long history, at least as it pertains to the films.
While the Time Stone was never even involved in the fight against Dormammu in the comics, it must have been in the films. The writers of Doctor Strange may have changed most aspects of the Eye of Agamotto, but they didn’t change the fact that it is used to fight Dormammu.
Thus, it’s probably safe to assume that Dormammu has fought against the Time Stone more than once in the MCU.
Adam Warlock gave it to Gamora
In the aftermath of the Avengers’ fight with Thanos ending in defeat in the comics, Thanos was eventually overthrown and the Infinity Gauntlet was taken up by Adam Warlock, who pledged to be a better caretaker of the gauntlet than Thanos ever was. Warlock’s reign over all reality was short and uneventful, as it was quickly decided that no one entity should have all that power.
Warlock was instructed to break apart the Infinity Stones, which he did, and entrust them to those that he trusted.
Several memorable characters received one, including Gamora, The Most Dangerous Woman in the Universe and one of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Warlock gave the Time Stone to Gamora, though she initially refused it for fear of it corrupting her or vice versa.
The Super Skrull currently has it
Originally a villain of the Fantastic Four, the Super Skrull (also known as Kl’rt) has taken on a larger role in the greater Marvel comics universe in recent issues. Having become the new Skrull emperor, the Super Skrull has set about restoring his people from their past failures.
The Super Skrull was already a formidable opponent, possessing the superpowers of all four members of the Fantastic Four at once, not to mention the fact that he can shape-shift like all Skrulls.
Now the villain has also obtained the Time Stone, which he found on the planet Sakaar and took for himself.
Thanos used it against Drax
The Time Stone can be used to create portals in time, not to mention to trap the user’s opponents in time loops. The Infinity Gauntlet only magnifies the stone’s powers, and when used by an entity as ruthless as the Mad Titan Thanos, anything and everything is possible.
Thanos ended up using his gauntlet to open up one of these time portals, which swallowed up Drax the Destroyer and Firelord.
The two heroes who had been desperately fighting Thanos found themselves suddenly trapped on prehistoric Earth. Where once they had been involved in a struggle to save the universe, now they had to contend with a planet with no advanced civilization.
It can bring an entire planet back to life
In the recent continuity of Marvel comics, the Time Stone was briefly lost, as it was shattered to the cosmos and re-formed itself in an unknown place. That place turned out to be Sakaar - famous in the MCU for being the Grandmaster’s turf in Thor: Ragnarok. The Super Skrull found the Time Stone underneath the ground of Sakaar.
What’s interesting about this is that prior to the Time Stone appearing on Sakaar, the planet had been destroyed by Galactus. The planet should have been gone, but the Time Stone’s re-emergence allowed the planet to revert back to its previous state, and live again.
Clearly, the Time Stone doesn’t just affect people and small objects—it’s powerful enough to drastically change an entire planet.
It has an official emoji
Making an official Twitter emoji for a film is hardly a new idea, but it’s not every film franchise that can get away with making emojis for specific objects within the films. Three of the Infinity Stones got official emojis (the Time Stone, the Space Stone, and the Mind Stone) which were cute little portraits of the superhero/villain that currently possesses the stone.
Since the Space Stone is inside the Tesseract and Loki currently has the Tesseract after taking it from Asgard, Loki’s face will appear if you use #SpaceStone on Twitter. Since The Vision has the Mind Stone embedded in his forehead, his face appears if you use #MindStone. So it stands to reason that using #TimeStone on Twitter will get you a mini Doctor Strange! Even in our social media feeds, he guards the Infinity Stone. How heroic.
Do you have any other trivia to share about Avengers: Infinity War’s Time Stone? Let us know in the comments!
