In the wake of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, numerous theories came out pointing toward the various other ways in which the Avengers could have won. While there were multiple ways where lesser sacrifices could have been made, and characters could have been saved, one question keeps on popping up: Why did the Avengers not destroy the Infinity Stones?
The Infinity Stones were the key to Thanos’ plans. However, every single one of the gems needed to be acquired by Thanos, so that he could accurately commit genocide which was random and not targeted. All the Avengers needed to do was destroy just one of the gems, or all of them, to prevent Thanos from coming.
Avengers could have thwarted Thanos easily
Thanos’ hunt for the stones would have had a major setback if the Avengers had been successful in destroying the Infinity Gems. Even getting rid of one could mean that Thanos would be unable to fulfill his goal of bringing Balance to the universe. Had the Infinity Stones been destroyed, the Avengers would probably find themselves on equal footing with Thanos, able to beat the Mad Titan with their combined efforts.
However, there was still the fact that the Avengers were split up at the beginning of Infinity War. Even if Infinity Gems had been destroyed, a disassembled Avengers would have had a tough time fighting another alien invasion, given that half of them were fugitives from the law and the other half were still reeling retiring from the superhero life come the beginning of Infinity War, there was no official team of Avengers.
The Avengers did plan on destroying the gems, but it didn’t work
The theory, posted on Reddit, chided the Avengers for not doing the obvious, and destroying the Infinity Stones. Except that’s exactly what they did. The Avengers became aware of the Infinity Stones at the end of Age of Ultron after Thor did some research on them. The next time the infinity stones played a major role was when the Hulk crashed from the sky, to inform the others that Thanos was looking for the Infinity Stones.
By the time the plan to destroy one of the stones was concocted, the Avengers were already hurtling in two different directions. While the contingent led by Steve Rogers was busy preparing for an assault in Wakanda, Tony Stark was making his way to Titan with the Time Stone.
By the time it was decided that the Stone would be destroyed, Thanos had already acquired a host of other stones, all of which would allow him to reconstruct any of the destroyed stones. The only way that destroying a stone would stop Thanos was if it was the Time stone that was destroyed, which was an important weapon for the sorcerers of the MCU.
