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'Avengers: Infinity War' Writers Debunk Popular Fan Theory On Thanos

'Avengers: Infinity War' Writers Debunk Popular Fan Theory On Thanos

Give me a T-H-A-N-O-S! What does that spell?

Meh, never mind. It doesn’t really matter now anyway.

Crazy theories about “Avengers: Infinity War” keep cropping up, since so little is actually known about the movie. Some people think all the dead characters are coming back, while others speculate that all the past villains could make an appearance.

But in the lead-up to the new movie, one theory has risen above the rest: The name of the main villain, Thanos, has been secretly revealing the locations of the infinity stones.

There are six infinity stones. There are six letters in Thanos’ name. Thanos is after the infinity stones. It just makes sense.

It even seems to line up, as Nerdist laid out:

T is for Tesseract, the Space Stone

A is for Aether, the Reality Stone

N is for Necklace, the Time Stone

O is for Orb, the Power Stone

S is for Loki’s Scepter, the Mind Stone

Fans have been using this theory to try to figure out the location of the final missing infinity stone, the soul stone. The popular guesses are that the H may stand for Idris Elba’s character, Heimdall, or that N stands for Nebula rather than Necklace. Nebula is one of Thanos’ daughters, a character who plays a big role in the “Infinity Gauntlet” comic that served as an inspiration for the movie.

HuffPost’s Leigh Blickley asked Karen Gillan, who plays Nebula, for her thoughts over the weekend, and she was intriguingly vague.

“I can’t say whether that’s going to happen,” Gillan said of the theory. “Nebula has a significant role and has a lot of stuff to do because her father is Thanos, who is the villain of the movies. She has some serious daddy issues with him, so she has a lot to confront.”

That made it sound to us like the theory might be right. But then I talked to “Avengers: Infinity War” writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely on Sunday.

While reflecting on the wildest theories he has heard, McFeely settled on one that was “obviously crazy.” You guessed it: spelling out T-H-A-N-O-S to reveal the locations of the stones.

And just like that, the theory was O-V-E-R.

“That seems fairly random,” McFeely said.

“I don’t think that’s how you go about writing a good script,” Markus added.

“It really isn’t,” McFeely agreed, laughing and imagining what that writing process would look like. ”‘You know, it’d be great to put the soul stone here but it’s not an O,’ or whatever the hell it is.”

“We need an O planet,” Markus joked.

Look, Nebula could still have something to do with the soul stone. After all, Gillan confirmed she has a “significant” role. But it won’t have anything to do with spelling out her dad’s name.

The writers also set us straight on some other rumors and theories.

There won’t be a Sherlock Holmes joke.