The MCU Just Fixed One Major Infinity Stones Plot Hole

Despite Benicio Del Toro’s The Collector dying in Avengers: Infinity War (or so it seemed at the time), his return in Marvel’s What If…? finally answers a lingering mystery around the intergalactic hoarder. The revised take on Taneleer Tivan gives him an incredible physique, a collection that suggests he’s killed several Avengers and at least three MCU villains, and, most importantly, the status as the galaxy’s most notorious crime lord.

That lofty status is thanks to T’Challa’s influence on Thanos, which convinced the Mad Titan to divert from his initial plan to collect all of the Infinity Stones and destroy half of existence. While Josh Brolin’s mega-chinned maniac continues to hang on to the great lie that his solution to saving the universe from itself would be “efficient”, he was convinced that other possibilities existed. Seemingly leaning into the raging fan-led debate over the viability of culling billions versus simply creating more resources using the MCU’s magic science. With his attention refocused on doing good, albeit with a slightly rougher edge still, the power vacuum enticed The Collector to step up.

And despite the scale of his transformation and the scary success rate his trophies suggest he had may seem unprecedented, they do tie back to The Collector’s first MCU appearance and a comment that never seemed to lead anywhere. The post-credits scene tagged onto Thor: The Dark World sees Sif and Volstagg take the Aether (the Reality Stone) to Knowhere for safekeeping in The Collector’s possession. But as soon as they’re out of ear-shot, the Elder says “one down, five to go” as if outlining his own aspirations to unite the Stones for nefarious purposes. His tone alone suggested something sinister. The problem, however, is that there’s no build on the tease: yes, Tivan wants the Power Stone in Guardians of the Galaxy, but there’s no hint of him being anything but a sot of harmless eccentric. Finally, in What If…? episode 2 it’s revealed that he is just as much a megalomaniac as Thanos; he just needed the opportunity, thus answering exactly why he wanted the Stones in the first place.

That finally also answers why the most well-versed character in Infinity Stones lore in the MCU didn’t seem to realize that having two of them in any one place would be disastrous. Odin knew it, and even he judged his might inferior to the potential consequences, but the Collector appeared to want to add the Stones to his collection for the purposes of completion. It never quite squared up. But reinventing his motives to being more like a pure power play makes that all a lot more logical.

The Collector always felt like a huge missed opportunity in the MCU, particularly given how great Benicio Del Toro’s disarming, flamboyant performance was. Not getting to see an Elder of the Universe in full flow as anything other than a glorified super-hoarder was a mistake that was only made worse by the fact that Del Toro made him as perversely charismatic as he was decidedly unsettling. And What If…?‘s reinvention of him into a swaggering, muscle-bound tyrant capable of taking down powers as significant as Thor, Hela, The Grand Master, and Malekith without so much as a stain on his furs was a great way of making that missed opportunity feel a little more fleshed out.