Question on quora with an interesting answer
Thanos had halved other planetary populations before getting the stones.
Did his snap affect those planets a 2nd time?
Ok, so when Thanos put the Mind Stone iqnto his gauntlet you may or may not have noticed the energy surge that went over him. And I have a theory about that.
Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver were both powered by the Mind Stone. The Mind Stone, as we see whenever Vision blasts something, is a yellowish color.
When Scarlet Witch uses her powers, it is always shown as being a reddish color. The same color as the Reality Stone. She never uses her powers and gets a yellow color. It’s always red. While her powers are usually telekinetic in nature, she’s also able to warp your mind. But when she faced off against Vision, it seemed to be a bit more than that. Almost like she was preventing him from phasing.
When Quicksilver ran, RIP, he left behind a sort of bluish tinge. Again, definitely not a yellow color. And what Stone is blue? The Space Stone. If you’ve read the comics you might be aware of The Runner using the Space Stone to be as fast as he wanted. When he wanted to be somewhere, he was. He just thought he was running.
So we have two different heroes who were powered by the yellow Mind Stone, but whenever they use their powers they get a different color. And those different colors actually match up rather well with what their powers are.
Now, the reason I think this is relevant is this. I think in the MCU that the Mind Stone acts as a link to the other stones. That it acts as a sort of gateway for all the Stones. And when Hydra was experimenting on people with the Mind Stone they ended up getting powers from other Stones.
And this also could be why that Stone was saved for last. Because that is the stone that ties the Gauntlet together. It links your mind together with all the Stones. So that you are basically one with the Stones. Making using the Gauntlet easier and more natural.
On top of that, I believe that the Mind Stone also enhanced his senses. No longer is he stuck to just normal senses. Now he has cosmic senses. He can see and know much more than he ever has before. Along with those senses is the ability to sort through them more rapidly.
In other words, while the 50% culling may have been “random”, it doesn’t mean that it was 100% random with no input from him at all. It would be well within his power to only half the population of planets he hasn’t visited yet. Just like he could easily have made it so that neither him nor any of his acolytes disappeared either.
comment on his answer
Tbh, I suspect that your theory actually
IS the case just that nobody behind the scenes will be discussing it publicly to confirm it.
Not sure it’s worth adding into your answer but the other thing that would support it is proximity. Obviously, the Space Stone was on Earth for a time and it’s energies would have been present in various HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D. technologies so the Mind Stone could have had access to it’s energy and also the Aether/Reality Stone’s energy had a presence on Earth during
Thor: The Dark World which would have been around the same time that Wolfgang von Strucker was experimenting on the twins.
If, like the comics, the Stones (or Gems) interact with each other stronger based on how close they are to one another then both Pietro’s Space Stone based power and Wanda’s Reality Stone based power could be explained by the energies both being in (relatively) close proximity for the Mind Stone to tap into them.
