Avengers: Infinity War is, simply put, the story of how Thanos got his big purple hands on all six Infinity Stones. Well, actually, that’s not technically true, as the mad, bad Titan already has one of the mighty gems plugged into his Infinity Gauntlet by the time the film opens: namely, the purple Power Stone. It’s later explained by Thor that Thanos “decimated” the planet Xandar and retrieved it from the care of the Nova Corps.
The moment that Thanos finally got hold of one of the Infinity Stones, beginning his quest to wipe out half the universe, seems like a pretty important part of the overall story. So, why didn’t we get to see it in the movie? Well, the answer was revealed by Infinity War directors Joe and Anthony Russo while they were holding a Q&A with some very lucky high school students in Iowa. As it turns out, there were just too many Stones to juggle.
“Because we thought it’d be one too many. There’s so many stones he has to collect and you get into a trap and we thought — we knew where it was in [Guardians of the Galaxy], so it was easy to deal with it off screen.”
For those that wish to see at least the aftermath of Thanos’ attack on Xandar, don’t worry, as there’s a good chance this could be explored in a future MCU movie coming up in Phase Four. After all, the destruction of the Nova Corps would serve as the perfect introduction for Richard Rider AKA Nova, a human hero powered by the Nova Force.
Kevin Feige has already teased that Nova has “immediate potential” in the MCU, so it definitely sounds like there might be more to the decision not to include the Power Stone’s capture in Avengers: Infinity War than the Russos are letting on. Avengers 4 would probably be too soon, but we can certainly see Nova showing up in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.