Why Vision Is Still Alive And Will Be In Avengers: Endgame
It wasn’t a good day to be a superhero during Infinity War—wasn’t even good thing to be associated with them. Thanos turned the whole event to a slaughter. He crushed Loki’s windpipe, impaled Heimdal, and dusted pretty much everyone who originated from phase 2 and beyond. But before he could do the last, he had to pay Vision a little visit. But someone always has it worse, right? Everyone else may have had a bad day, but definitely not like Vision. Vision didn’t die just once but twice. The first time saw his brain being blown up, and the second time saw his brain being plucked from his skull. Poor Vision.
But there may be a bright side to all of this.—for vision. Because despite dying twice, the previous holder of the Mind Stone may, in fact, still be alive. How? Well, let’s take a look at it.
Vision’s Not A Real Person
Vision’s whole body is a perfect fusion between organic material and vibranium. His mind is a blend between the A.I. program J.A.R.V.I.S., Ultron, and the Mind Stone. He’s a synthetic construct through and through, the byproduct of Ultron’s failed plan for a new and more “appropriate” body. We’re saying Vision has no soul. The man is a robot in a skin suit—the three-way love product of money, technology, and a fundamental force of the Marvel Universe. With that being said, Vision is like a more malleable version of the 6 million dollar man: “We can rebuild him. We can make him stronger.” So, so long as the right conditions are meet, Vision can always come back, and if you’ve seen the title, you know that these conditions have been meet.
Wakanda: The Most Advanced Civilization
Wakanda has resources available to them that the rest of the world doesn’t, and as a result they’ve turned themselves into the most advanced civilization on the planet. Their technology and weapons even outclass that of Tony Stark’s, and that man has created a suit capable of living in his bloodstream and molding itself into an any weapon he can think of. So long as he has the Bleeding Edge armor, Tony Stark is a walking, living arsenal, and Wakanda somehow outclasses that. The country’s Black Panther armor is a symbol of that. It can be stored away like Iron Man’s but is virtually indestructible, and it can even repel kinetic energy. The helmet of the armor definitely wouldn’t have been torn away as easily as Tony’s was. All of these wonderful traits and perk are all thanks to the fact that it contains vibranium, the same substance that makes up half of what Vision is. Wakanda is full of it. The whole civilization is built off of it. It may as well be unlimited to them with how rare the stuff is for the rest of the world. The overall point is that Vision may as well be spoiled kid in a candy store. He can have an entirely new body created for him that’s possible stronger and better than his previous. His original body, while a bit damaged is still around, too, so they don’t even need to fully rebuild him if they don’t want to.
Shuri Is A Creative Genius
By “they” we really mean Shuri. Shuri is the mastermind behind most of Wakanda’s impressive technology. She’s the one who designed the Black Panther armor. While she had better resources than Tony, the fact that she pulled it off at her age makes her arguably smarter than he is. In fact, Shuri knew how to handle Vision and his design better than even Bruce Banner, one of the smartest people on the planet and one of the people who had a hand in creating Vision in the first place (along with Tony). It’s hard to debate that she’s currently the smartest character to appear in the MCU.
In her handling of Vision, she was working to make it so that he could exist without the Mind Stone. Bruce had suggested that it may be possible, commenting about how Vision was more than just the stone (he was also the union of Ultron and Jarvis as we mentioned before). Shuri was definitely eager to find out, and had made the suggestion of reprogramming Vision’s synapses to work collectively rather attaching neurons non sequentially the way Bruce and Tony did. A pretty good idea considering it had Bruce stumped. She got to work safely removing the stone from Vision’s head, and things seemed to be going pretty well, but then the Black Order showed up, and that was the end of that operation. But before she was taken down, Shuri personally shut down the operation, probably saving her work or doing other things.
Remember, Vision’s mind and personality originate from A.I. programs, as smart and aware as Shuri is, there’s no reason to think that she couldn’t have been copying down Vision’s programming while running her operation. Basically she was saving his mind on her advanced computer hard drives before Corvus Glaive kicked her through the monitors. If this is the case, then another copy of Vision’s consciousness is saved somewhere in her lab. That effectively means he’s alive, just disembodied. Added to that, both of the A.I. that make up Vision, J.A.R.V.I.S and Ultron, have a history of wirelessly transferring themselves to different places through the internet. If Vision was aware enough of what was happening to him when Thanos rewound time in order to kill him again, there’s a high possibility that his A.I. escaped into the network somewhere, maybe he uploaded himself into Shuri’s computer. Either way, we so far have both Vision’s mind and body available to us (possibly). Now all we need is the genius girl to combine them. But there may be a problem in that area.
Endgame Trailer: Shuri
If anyone would be capable of reviving Vision it was Shuri. She has the tools and mind for it. Only thing is, the Avengers have no idea where that girl is.
In the Avengers Endgame trailer, after RDJ wraps up his epic monologue we catch glimpses of the heroes in morning. Eventually, we get around Bruce and he’s looking over the profiles of the people the Avengers have deemed “missing.” On one side we see Ant-Man and Peter Parker, but right before Peter’s portrait comes up on screen we see that Shuri has been pronounced missing as well.
This can only mean one of two things: Shuri was dusted by Thanos’ actions or Shuri went into hiding for some reason. The former seems like the more likely scenario, but that doesn’t mean that the latter is impossible. For one thing, the Avengers recorded that Ant-Man was missing, and while he definitely was, he wasn’t dusted; he was just off having his own crazy adventures. He also immediately reappears in the same trailer, so the Avengers data doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve confirmed a missing character is dusted.
Still it would be weird for Shuri to go underground without telling any of her allies, but someone would have had to have seen disappear if she were dusted, right? There were other guards in her lab with her when things went down, and it didn’t look like Corvus killed all of them in her attempt to get to Vision. She certainly didn’t murder the sister of the king of Wakanda because that would have required the scene to have way may drama than it was given.
Of course, everyone in the room could have been dusted, and if that’s the case--that’s just horrible luck. But every other major character connected to the Avengers had their deaths shown on screen, so why would Shuri be any different? Why would she be the exception when she had such an important role in the movie? So both scenarios--her going underground and her being dusted--don’t makes much sense. But let’s go with the idea that she went underground. A good reason for her to do that would be seeing a weakened Vision tumbling out of her laboratory window after a black order window. It’s obvious crap has hit the fan at that point. So maybe she’s retreated down into a bunker of some sorts in order to get some things in order, like the preparations to revive Vision, or maybe even begin trying to create a synthetic mind stone. Synthetic Infinity Stones have been created before in the comics, so it’s not impossible for the MCU to go that route.
Vision Is Thanos
There’s another theory going around that’s pretty wild. The idea is that Vision survived, but not because Shuri copied him or because he uploaded himself but because he’s currently Thanos right now.
The theory’s foundation relies on the abilities of the Mind Stone.
The Mind Stone is the concept of mentality given form, and by extension it has the ability to control the minds of others if it’s wielder so chooses. Of course, certain conditions have to be in place in order for this to happen. For instance, when Loki tried to use the Mind Stone to control Tony Stark, he couldn’t because the arc reactor in Tony’s chest prevented it. This may have been because the reactor wasn’t actually a natural part of Tony’s body, so when the Mind Stone’s power tried to travel through the reactor up into Tony’s mind, it couldn’t. The Mind Stone also apparently has a sentience of its own. At one point, it warned Vision that Thanos, a threat, was coming for him. So, let’s apply all of this to the theory while keeping in mind what we know Vision may be capable of.
When Thanos reversed time and brought Vision back to life, he reached out and touched the stone with the hand that wasn’t gloved by the Infinity Gauntlet. So—recalling the situation from before—the stone wouldn’t have the same problem possessing Thanos the same way it did Tony. Also, the stone could have possibly warned Vision what was going on the moment he was brought back to life. Added further to that, Vision should have the power to transfer his consciousness the same way Ultron and Jarvis did. Of course we only ever saw Ultron and Jarvis do this with other forms of technology. But Vision could be different because Vision has the full power of the Mind Stone. It wouldn’t be too far fetched to think that he’ll tie tail had the lower to move his mind into the bodies of others.
So basically, the scenario plays out with Thanos reviving Vision; the Mind Stone warning Vision of what’s about to happen; and then Vision using the Mind Stone’s power to move his mind into Thanos’ just before Thanos finishes killing him for the second time. Thanos is allowed to complete the gauntlet and go through with the snap however because Vision, not having much control or understanding of the Mind Stone, doesn’t have the realization that he just moved himself over into Thanos’ body, and he won’t have figured that out until we see him again in Avengers: Endgame.
There’s also a comic tie-in featuring Thanos that goes over the origin of his search for the Infinity Stones. It’s called Thanos: Titan Consumed. The canonicity of the comic in regards to the MCU’s timeline is questionable, but it does still use MCU Thanos. In this story, Thanos learns about the the location of the Mind Stone, his first one, and he goes out to confront the Lore Keeper, the current owner. During this confrontation, the Lore Keeper attempts to use the Mind Stone in order to transfer his consciousness into Thanos, it nearly works. The only reason why it doesn’t is because Gamora and Nebula intervene. The point of bringing up this story is that it is possible (seemingly) for a Mind Stone wielder to transfer their mind into another being,
