Space Stone (Earth-199999)

The Space Stone is one of the six Infinity Stones. It glows bright blue, and embodies the concept of space. The wielder of the Space Stone, with proper understanding of its powers, can use it to teleport vast distances instantaneously, making space travel trivial. For much of its existence, the Space Stone has been housed in a small cube known as the Tesseract, though exactly how this came to be is unclear.

History

20th century

Some time after its creation, the Space Stone became housed inside of the Tesseract, which became a centerpiece of Odin's treasure room on Asgard. It eventually found its way to Earth, in the small village of Tønsberg, Norway, where it was looked over by generations of caretakers. In 1942, as part of his quest to achieve mythical power, Hydra head Johann Schmidt and his forces stormed a temple in Tønsberg, where he found the Tesseract hidden away. Schmidt put his lead scientist Arnim Zola to work uncovering the power of the Tesseract, using it as an immensely powerful energy source to power a new arsenal of weaponry. The newly established hero Captain America put an end to Hydra's efforts, however—in his final confrontation with Schmidt on board the latter's Valkyrie, Schmidt attempted to utilize the power of the Tesseract, but wound up sucking himself through a portal into space. The heated Tesseract burned through the hull of the plane, plummeting into the sea below. Cap and the Valkyrie also crashed into the sea, seemingly killing him. Howard Stark, while searching for Cap, later recovered the Tesseract on behalf of the Strategic Scientific Reserve.

The SSR and its spiritual successor, S.H.I.E.L.D., studied the Tesseract and its powers for decades as part of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. Leading scientist Wendy Lawson, who was in fact the Kree Mar-Vell in disguise, worked toward using the Tesseract's power to develop a lightspeed engine, and held it in her space lab orbiting Earth. In 1995, after Mar-Vell's death, Carol Danvers led an effort to recover the Tesseract and protect a group of refugee Skrulls whom Mar-Vell had sheltered in orbit. Goose, a cat-looking Flerken brought along on the mission, swallowed the Tesseract as Danvers and others fought nefarious Kree forces. Eventually, the Tesseract was returned to S.H.I.E.L.D. custody—after Goose finished regurgitating it.

Loki's invasion

S.H.I.E.L.D. continued to study the Tesseract and its potential. In 2011, Director Nick Fury brought on expert scientist Erik Selvig, fresh off of an encounter with Thor, to study it. Selvig however was quickly compromised by Loki, who used his scepter—equipped with the Mind Stone—to influence Selvig. In 2012, Loki had Selvig use the Tesseract to open a portal into a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. base, allowing Loki to invade from space. Loki claimed the Tesseract and stormed out with it in tow. He had come to an arrangement with Thanos to deliver him the Tesseract; in exchange, Thanos and his Chitauri army would conquer Earth and allow Loki to rule it. To allow for this invasion, the Chitauri required a portal above Earth, which Loki sought to create with the Tesseract. After a series of confrontations with S.H.I.E.L.D. and their associated heroes, Loki was able to gather the components to open a portal of the necessary size above New York City, prompting a large-scale Chitauri invasion. The new team of heroes known as the Avengers—Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and the recently reawakened Captain America—repelled the invaders, defeated Loki, and recovered the Tesseract. Thor took his brother and the Tesseract back to Asgard, where it was returned to Odin's treasure room for safe keeping.

The Infinity War and the Time Heist

In seeking the Tesseract, Thanos in fact intended to claim all six Infinity Stones and use their collective unmatched power to eliminate half of all life in the universe, ostensibly to preserve resources and curb overpopulation—in his words, to "bring balance." In 2017, during Asgard's destruction at the hands of Surtur, Loki recovered the Tesseract and fled the realm toward Earth with Thor, Hulk, and the other surviving Asgardians and allies. The journey was a long one, and Thanos and his fleet attacked their ship several months later. Thanos and his Black Order killed half of the refugees and allowed the other half to flee per his standard tactics. Already armed with the Power Stone, Thanos easily defeated Hulk in combat, killed Loki, and destroyed the Tesseract, allowing him to claim the Space Stone within and place it within his Infinity Gauntlet. Thanos went on to gather the remainder of the Stones and successfully turn trillions of living beings to dust with a snap of his fingers, despite the best efforts of many powerful heroes.

Thanos teleported away from Earth to his haven planet known as the Garden, where he used the Stones once more to destroy themselves, ensuring that no one could undo what he had done. The Avengers tracked him down hoping to do just that, but were too late. Thor cut his head off for simple vengeance, but Thanos's mission remained accomplished. The universe spent the next five years coming to terms with the incalculable loss, until a chance occurrence caused Ant-Man to return from the Quantum Realm in 2023. Ant-Man teamed with the Avengers to use the bizarre physics of the Quantum Realm to travel back in time, recover the Infinity Stones, and bring back all of Thanos's victims. As part of this quest, known as the Time Heist, Captain America, Iron Man, and Ant-Man went to 2012 New York during the Chitauri invasion and attempted to recover the Tesseract without exposing their plan or otherwise disrupting the timeline. In the end, things went awry, and the alternate-timeline Loki was able to grab the Tesseract for himself and teleport away undetected. Iron Man proposed an alternative plan to recover the Tesseract from 1970 Camp Lehigh, a confidential S.H.I.E.L.D. base at the time. He and Cap used the last of their Pym Particles to travel there and get the Tesseract along with more Pym Particles to return to their own timeline. The Avengers managed to recover the remaining Stones and gather them into their own gauntlet—in the process, the alternate Tesseract was itself destroyed. The Hulk harnessed the power of the Stones to successfully resurrect everyone Thanos had killed five years ago. Due to a complication in the Time Heist, a version of Thanos and his army from 2014 came to 2023 and battled Earth's greatest heroes—Iron Man used the Stones to kill Thanos and his followers once and for all, sacrificing his own life in the process. Traveling through the Quantum Realm, Captain America returned the Stones to their proper place in the alternate timeline, though the Space Stone returned sans Tesseract—exactly what Cap did to accomplish this remains unclear.

Loki the time variant

In his haste, the Loki of the alternate 2012 was teleported to the deserts of Mongolia, where he was briefly confronted by some confused people there. Moments later, agents from the Time Variance Authority arrived through a dimensional portal and apprehended him, much to his annoyance. As Loki was processed through the TVA's system, outside of conventional time and space, the Tesseract was carelessly thrown into a drawer along with a number of other Infinity Stones, apparently from various timelines. Loki used his cleverness and wiles to sneak out of observation and find the Tesseract: upon discovering that it and the other stones (like his magic) were utterly useless in this realm, he became crestfallen.