Mind Stone (Earth-199999)

The Mind Stone was one of the six Infinity Stones. It glowed bright orange and could be used by its wielder to control the mind of any target. It was capable of extremely sophisticated cognition far beyond any manmade computer. For some time, it lay in the head of a scepter that made its intense power easier to control. From 2015 to 2018, the Mind Stone was the "brain" of the synthezoid Vision, sitting prominently lodged in his forehead. Thanos ripped the stone from Vision's head and used the six Infinity Stones to wipe out half of all life in the universe in an attempt to bring balance and conserve resources. He then destroyed the stones using their own power shortly before the Avengers found and killed him. In 2023, the Avengers performed the Time Heist, retrieving past versions of all six stones and successfully resurrecting those Thanos had killed, ending the five-year period known as the Blip. When a version of Thanos and his army from 2014 unexpectedly came to 2023, Iron Man was forced to sacrifice himself by using the stones to defeat them. With victory over Thanos finally secured, Captain America was tasked with returning the stones to their proper times. Though precisely what occurred isn't known, it is presumed that he did so successfully. As a result, no version of the Infinity Stones exist any longer in the central timeline.

History

Chitauri invasion and aftermath

The earliest known use of the Mind Stone came in 2012 when Loki invaded Earth with a scepter (granted him by Thanos) that held the stone at its tip. How the stone came to be in the scepter, or how long it had been there, is unknown. Loki used the Mind Stone to sway Hawkeye and Erik Selvig to his cause. He also used the scepter to stab and kill Phil Coulson, an event which proved to be a rallying point for the budding Avengers. During the Battle of New York, in which Chitauri forces invaded through a wormhole that Loki and Selvig opened using the Tesseract, Black Widow took control of the scepter and used it to sabotage the portal machine. Upon Loki's defeat at the hands of the Avengers, the scepter was claimed by S.T.R.I.K.E. forces led by Brock Rumlow, who were in fact secretly aligned with Hydra. The scepter came into the control of Baron Strucker and his men, including Doctor List, who conducted various human experiments using it. Most subjects perished, but two—Wanda and Pietro Maximoff—survived, gaining remarkable powers.

Ultron and Vision

After the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra in 2014, the Avengers sought out the scepter, and reclaimed it in 2015 after taking down Strucker's base in Sokovia. Tony Stark conducted research on the scepter at Avengers Tower, and was excited by its cognitive potential. He saw it as the linchpin to his Ultron protocol, a program designed to protect the Earth from alien invasions and make heroes like the Avengers obsolete. He and Bruce Banner, without notifying the other Avengers, experimented with the scepter through the night, which inadvertently resulted in a malicious artificial intelligence—Ultron—hijacking the Stark Industries database and spreading throughout the global internet. Ultron used one of Stark's own Iron Legion robots to steal the scepter, and later brought it to Seoul to meet with Dr. Helen Cho. Ultron used the scepter to mind-control Cho into doing his bidding, and used her Regeneration Cradle to combine vibranium and synthetic tissue into a powerful physical body. He broke the Mind Stone out of its housing in the scepter and implanted it in the new synthezoid's forehead to act as its brain. Ultron intended to transfer his consciousness into the new frame, but repeated interruptions by the Maximoffs and the Avengers prevented him from doing so completely. The Avengers managed to steal the Regeneration Cradle and brought it back to Avengers Tower. There, seeing another opportunity to do something good with artificial intelligence, Stark and Banner infused the synthezoid body with J.A.R.V.I.S., the Stark Industries assistant software. The being that resulted, Vision, proved to be extremely intelligent, powerful, and even benevolent. Following Stark and Banner's disastrous creation of Ultron, the other Avengers were hesitant to trust Vision, but he quickly proved his worth by lifting Thor's hammer Mjölnir. He went on to form a romantic relationship with Wanda Maximoff.

Infinity War

The Mind Stone remained in Vision's forehead until the Infinity War in 2018, when Thanos sought out the Infinity Stones in order to eliminate half of all life in the universe. Knowing that Thanos would be on his way to take the Mind Stone, the Avengers thought to destroy it first. Vision was willing to die for the cause, but Captain America refused to "trade lives." Instead, they took Vision to Wakanda, where expert scientist Shuri attempted to rewire his processing such that the Mind Stone could be removed safely—an extremely challenging and time-consuming task. Thanos's forces arrived in the fields outside Shuri's lab, and the many heroes present fought them alongside Wakanda's armies to buy time. In the end, Thanos himself arrived with the other five stones in tow, making an already formidable foe virtually invincible. Vision implored Wanda to use her energy powers to destroy the Mind Stone—she did so with great remorse, shattering it and killing him. However, Thanos used the Time Stone to rewind events: he restored the stone in Vision's forehead just long enough to pull it out by force, killing him once more and leaving him a lifeless grey husk. Thanos installed the Mind Stone in his Infinity Gauntlet, and after a brief failed assault by Thor, used the full power of the Infinity Stones with a snap of his fingers to turn untold trillions of beings to dust. He then teleported to his refuge on planet 0259-S, satisfied with what he deemed his just and noble aim.

Time Heist and Thanos's defeat

See also: Time Heist

Some days after accomplishing his goal, Thanos destroyed the Infinity Stones with their own power so that nothing could reverse his actions. The energy released was colossal, nearly killing him in the process. Meanwhile, the Avengers, traumatized and desperate, decided to track down Thanos and use the stones to undo what he had done. They found him via the large energy signal and successfully ambushed him, but were crestfallen to find that the stones were no more. Thor decapitated Thanos with Stormbreaker, gaining a futile revenge. With no hope left, the Avengers—and the rest of the universe—came to terms with their new way of life for the next five years. In 2023, Ant-Man emerged from being trapped in the Quantum Realm since the moment of the Snap to find a desolate, depressed world. He came to the remaining Avengers and told them of his belief that the mysterious Quantum Realm held the secrets of time travel. He suggested that they could go back in time, retrieve the Infinity Stones, and use them to bring back everyone Thanos had killed. Tony Stark did some research into Scott Lang's claims and found that the idea held water. After much research, the Avengers figured out a way to travel to the past and back in a limited capacity. They went in small groups to different points in the past in an attempt to get the six stones in as few trips as possible. Iron Man, Ant-Man, Captain America, and the Hulk traveled to New York in 2012 during the Battle of New York to retrieve the Mind, Space, and Time Stones. Captain America was tasked with securing the scepter containing the Mind Stone, and did so by feigning allegiance to Hydra and taking it from Brock Rumlow and S.T.R.I.K.E. In the end, all six stones were returned to 2023, though an unforeseen complication in Nebula's wiring led to the exposure of the Avengers' plan to Thanos and his crew from 2014. Thanos's still-loyal and malicious "daughter," Nebula, posed as her future self and came to 2023 with the others.

With the Infinity Stones in hand, Stark developed a new Infinity Gauntlet, and Hulk stepped up to bear the brunt of the stones' power. He donned the fully equipped gauntlet and snapped his fingers, successfully resurrecting everyone Thanos had killed five years prior. All such people returned to the exact spot they had been at that moment, in an event known as the Blip. Moments later, Nebula successfully operated the Avengers' time machine to bring Thanos's 2014 fleet and army to the area and promptly initiate a massive attack. Having seen via the future Nebula's memory banks what became of his future self, Thanos decided that destroying half of all life wasn't enough of a solution to the universe's woes. Instead, his goal was to use the Infinity Stones to destroy the universe entirely and create a new one in his image. As Thanos's forces sought out the gauntlet, the shocked and disorganized Avengers did their best to keep it away. Soon, thanks to a large series of portals devised by Doctor Strange and other sorcerers, countless heroes, soldiers, and allies arrived on the new battlefield. Those present hastily decided that they needed to return the stones to their original times, and tried to relay the gauntlet to the quantum tunnel as best as they could. Thanos's forces made this impossible however, and he soon got a hold of the fully-powered gauntlet. Iron Man managed to wrest the stones from him without his knowledge however, magnetically installing them in a special sleeve in his suit. Iron Man snapped his fingers, obliterating all of Thanos's forces. The demoralized Thanos sat and sighed at his defeat as he faded to dust. The power of the stones was too much for the human Tony Stark to bear, and he died minutes later. Captain America was tasked with returning the stones to their original times. Little is known of what occurred after he went back in time: rather than returning to 2023 as planned, Cap lived out his life in 1945 with Peggy Carter. Nonetheless, he is presumed to have successfully returned the Mind Stone and its five counterparts to their appropriate times.