Functionally speaking, Thanos wasn’t wrong when he said that he destroyed the Infinity Stones. As he explains to the Avengers early in “Avengers: Endgame,” he used their unrivaled power to reduce the gems to mere atoms. While this made it basically impossible for the heroes to take them and use them to undo the Mad Titan’s destruction, they weren’t entirely wiped from existence. The events of 2023’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” seemingly reveal that Thanos’ description of the Infinity Stones’ new state wasn’t mere hyperbole.
During Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), and Hope van Dyne’s (Evangeline Lilly) trip to the microscopic Quantum Realm in the film, they run into all kinds of creatures. Among these is a group of small humanoids with different colored heads very much resembling the Infinity Stones. Thus, the apparent implication is that the Infinity Stones have literally been reduced to atoms by Thanos and now wander the Quantum Realm as sentient beings. Are these creatures really the stones? If so, have they lost their power? Alternatively, did their destruction result in their power transferring to specific characters and items present in the MCU?
As if it didn’t have enough questions to answer already, hopefully, the MCU’s Multiverse Saga sheds more light on the fate of the Infinity Stones and the status of their once-awesome power.
