As Red Skull puts it, “the Soul Stone holds a special place among the Infinity Stones. You might say it has a certain wisdom.” While that definitely sounds cool, it doesn’t really help define what exactly it is that the Soul Stone, the most mysterious of the power gems, does. In fact, in Avengers: Infinity War, we only see it used once when Thanos employs all six Stones to wipe out half the universe when he snaps his fingers. Or do we?
It turns out that the Soul Stone’s actually utilized by the Mad Titan earlier on in the movie as well. During the commentary track for the home video release, directors Joe and Anthony Russo and co-writer Stephen McFeely discussed how the villain actually uses the Stone during his battle with Doctor Strange on Titan.
Joe: “…And I wanted to see a scene in this movie where Thanos’ full powers went against Doctor Strange’s full powers… And this is one of the only uses of the Soul Stone in the film.”
McFeely: Right.Joe: “Right there.”
Anthony: “Until it’s final use.”
To jog your memory, Strange multiplies himself to confuse Thanos and proceeds to tie him up with energy bands – the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, to be specific. However, with a blast of the Power Stone – we can tell because his left side glows purple – he breaks the bands and is able to pick out the true astral form of Strange and incapacitate him.
If you pay close attention, you can see that the Russos and McFeely are right and Thanos uses the Soul Stone to locate the real Strange. Note that his right side is glowing orange in the screenshot below.
As we said, the Mad Titan then uses the Stone again at the end of the movie, when it has the side effect of momentarily sending him into Soul World – the world inside the Soul Stone – and encountering the spirit of Gamora. It’s clear that Avengers: Infinity War only touched on what Red Skull’s favorite Infinity Stone can do, though, and we’ll no doubt get to explore more of its powers in next May’s Avengers 4.