Marvel Theory: Thanos Secretly Saved The MCU From A Much Worse Villain
Remember all of that knowledge that Thanos claims to be cursed with during his Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 3 tussle with the Avengers? What if one piece of that burdensome data in his mental library had to do with a past run-in with one of the biggest baddies in all of Marvel? What if Thanos met Galactus before he erased half of life in the universe?
One elaborate fan theory posited this very thing not long before "Avengers: Endgame" came out, and even after the movie's release, it still makes a lot of sense. Redditor jlefrench kicks off the bold theory by stating, "So what if Thanos has been right this whole time, what if we he was doing this to protect the universe? What if he isn't crazy?"
From there, the Redditor, who openly claims not to be a "scienc-y" person, embarks on an epic retelling of Thanos' on-screen origin story, specifically honing in on the demise of his home world, Titan. By the time we see it in "Avengers: Infinity War," Titan is an abandoned planet. It has no signs of life, and its gravity is off-kilter. The theory posits that this utterly epic destruction isn't the result of global warming, overpopulation, or even war. It's a destruction that even wows the Guardians of the Galaxy (who have seen some pretty bad stuff). One natural explanation could be Galactus.
"Galactus is a being who goes to planets and sucks out the biospheric energy of the planet," the Redditor explains. "That means, all life 'energy' on the planet. What happened on Titan? It is completely sucked dry of all life, and is just a desolate rock. I'm sure Starlord has seen planets that were embroiled in war before and he is still shocked by Titan's condition."
Galactus is a better motivation for Thanos
One of the primary selling points of the "Thanos is protecting everyone from Galactus" fan theory is the way he goes about wiping out half of life in the universe. As Redditor jlfrench points out, if Thanos was truly trying to restore balance and prevent famine, he wouldn't have killed off half of all livestock. Destabilizing food chains isn't helpful in restoring planetary peace.
The other less dramatic solution Thanos could have taken was doubling food supplies across the universe, and the Galactus theory has an obvious answer for that, too. "This also explains why Thanos doesn't just double the resources because this would actually just draw in Galactus even faster."
The next step for the MCU's antagonistic roll call is unclear since the studio dropped Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror at the end of 2023. While there are plenty of potential villain replacements, the impending Fantastic Four film makes Galactus (who is a major villain for that franchise, in particular) a juicy prospect. Linking their debut to the Thanos timeline could make the connection even better.
The Reddit theory even offered a clean way to link the two, and it comes through the ever-involved Dr. Stephen Strange. "One other way this could impact the story is Dr. Strange's 14million future LSD trip," Redditor jlfrench explains. "Maybe the reason it was so hard to 'win' was because that would include beating Galactus AND not killing half the universe." Perhaps stopping Thanos was just the beginning of the one-in-14-million success story version of events. Maybe that epic storyline won't conclude until our intrepid cinematic Marvel heroes take down Galactus in this timeline, too.