Thanos, the villain of Avengers: Infinity War, explained

Thanos in Infinity War. Marvel Studios
He’s the Mad Titan. He wrecks planets. He wants to destroy half the universe. He swats away superheroes like they’re flies on his dessert. He could very possibly end the lives of some of, if not all of, the Avengers.

His name, as the Avengers: Infinity War marketing blitz has already seared into your brain, is Thanos.

For 10 years, Marvel Studios has been pumping out superhero movies — 18 successful ones, to be exact. In that span of movies, we’ve seen the beginning of Iron Man and Captain America, the end of Ultron, Thor’s redemption, Ant-Man’s offbeat adventures, new additions like Scarlet Witch and Black Panther, and the weird birth of Vision.

But it’s Thanos, this ultimate, world-destroying villain, who marks the occasion that is Infinity War. The biggest, baddest Marvel villain of the past decade is the core of the biggest, baddest Marvel movie ever made.

Yet for all the hype, we actually haven’t been told very much about Thanos beyond his penchant for universe destruction. He’s amassed a whopping four minutes of actual screen time in those 18 movies, and the last we actually saw of him was in a post-credits scene in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.

A villain this mysterious is necessarily going to raise some questions.

Why is he coming to Earth? Is purple his real color? What’s he like in the comic books? Does he have friends? What does he like to do for fun? And most importantly, what makes him different, and more important, than all the other villains the Avengers have faced together and apart?

Since Marvel hasn’t screened the movie yet, we don’t have all the answers. What we do have is what Marvel has shown us so far of its cinematic universe, and the comic book source material the film is loosely based on. Here, then, is a brief guide to what to expect from Thanos in Infinity War:

Can Thanos have it all (the Infinity Gauntlet)?
To fully understand Thanos, you have to understand the Infinity Stones. The Marvel cinematic universe has focused more on what Thanos wants than his own backstory, resulting in a characterization defined in large part by his desire to possess the stones.

In the mythology of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Infinity Stones are six “ingots” of immense power. We learn this in 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, when the Collector explains to the Guardians (and the audience) why they’re such a big deal. He says:

The Collector goes on to say that the gems are so powerful, the people who hold them eventually blow up and die. We find out later in the film that beings have to be superpowered just to handle them.