10 MCU Plot Holes Everyone Just Ignores | CBR

After over a decade’s worth of films, television shows, and countless other properties and titles, the MCU is bound to have slipped up a few times here and there. Even the comic books —perhaps, especially the comic books— have quite a few plot holes, after being around for so long. With a number of different creators working together on several stories with a large and varied cast of characters, there are bound to be major differences that will sometimes create problems.

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While the MCU has tried to retroactively patch up a few of these plot holes, still some of them remain, and in fairly obvious ways. For better or for worse, everyone typically just ends up ignoring these MCU plot holes so they can better enjoy their favorite franchise.

10 Extremis Apparently Stopped Existing Completely

The film Iron Man 3 actually introduced a very important medical advancement in the MCU, not that anybody would know this moving forward in the franchise. The Extremis tech exhibited in Iron Man 3 is shown to be capable of a number of different things, including regrowing flesh, as well as entire limbs.

Pepper Potts’ life is saved by the Extremis technology, which then never appears again in the MCU. When other characters in the franchise lose limbs or are gravely injured, they are not introduced to the Extremis technology to heal them. This seems like a major oversight for a franchise that will bend over backward to downplay its heroes’ real-world impact.

9 Thanos Gave Up His First Infinity Stone To Gain A Different Infinity Stone

The ultimate quest of Thanos is, of course, to obtain all the Infinity Stones, create an Infinity Gauntlet, and use them to wipe out half of all life in the universe. However, when Thanos is first introduced, he gives Loki the Mind Stone in a scepter that Loki can use to obtain the Space Stone.

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Not only is this bizarre behavior for Thanos, but the Mind Stone is also the only Infinity Stone that Thanos had up until that point. The idea that Thanos gave the only Infinity Stone he had in his collection to Loki —who, of course, immediately lost it— is downright absurd, and doesn’t make sense for Thanos’ character or story at all.

8 The Arc Reactor Just Never Makes Sense In The MCU

Each movie that Tony Stark appears in uses the arc reactor in a different way. However the arc reactor best served that film’s plot, that is how the arc reactor would be depicted. At first, Tony Stark needed the arc reactor to survive, and if it was replaced or removed in any way, he would die very quickly.

Then, a different arc reactor could be made, because the one Tony had was poisoning him. However, it then was revealed that Tony apparently didn’t need the arc reactor at all, and it was removed in a surgery that went very well and seemed to have no negative after-effects. The arc reactor is drastically walked back for no apparent reasons.

7 Thor Doesn’t Necessarily Need The Bifrost To Travel

Thor ends up stranded alone on Earth with the humans in Thor because he can’t access the Bifrost to come home. In the climax of the film, Thor chooses to destroy the Bifrost, even though, in doing so, he knows he will possibly never see Jane again. Of course, this is because the Bifrost is the only way that Thor can return to Earth.

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Despite this fact, Thor shows up on Earth in The Avengers, and a passing mention of dark energy or dark matter is used to explain how this is possible. Thor is able to travel pretty much anywhere, eventually, without needing anyone, let alone the Bifrost. By Thor: The Dark World, the Bifrost was fine again, and Thor could travel at will without any problems —not that he was stopped previously.

6 Howard Stark Inexplicably Left A Puzzle Behind For Tony To Solve

Iron Man 2 slides under the radar a lot of the time, which means many people forget exactly how absurd the plot puzzle’s most essential piece was. Tony Stark is dying, and he needs to create an entirely new element in order to save his life. As it turns out, he conveniently discovers that his father already discovered the exact element that Tony needed.

Not only that but, for some reason, Howard Stark hid this information in a number of coded puzzles that Tony would need to randomly find at some point in his life to ever uncover. As far as a deus ex machina goes, this is perhaps Marvel’s clumsiest attempt to date.

5 King T’Chaka’s Comments On Violence & Recklessness Come Back To Bite T’Challa (Except They Don’t)

Before King T’Chaka was killed in Captain America: Civil War, he made an important comment that countless viewers have pointed out since. He said, “Our people's blood is spilled on foreign soil. Not only because of the actions of criminals, but by the indifference of those pledged to stop them. Victory at the expense of the innocent is no victory at all.”

This, of course, reads as a fairly obvious condemnation of superheroes like the Avengers and their callous recklessness and occasional wanton destruction. Despite his comments, T’Challa proceeds to wreak similar havoc by flipping cars, destroying buildings, and likely killing bystanders in Black Panther, walking back on his own father’s dying principles.

4 Thor Has Never Come To Earth Before, Except He Had To Have

When Thor is sent to Earth, he is partially bewildered by the planet because he has never been there before. Midgard, as he calls it, is a foreign concept to him, and he doesn’t know what the people are like, nor does he know how to communicate with him. However, Earth does have the legend of Thor.

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In the Marvel universe, Thor came to Earth —as did other Asgardians, like Odin and Loki— and these early interactions were the basis for those Norse legends about the characters of the same names. Thor implying that this is the first time he has ever been to Earth, then, would be extremely inaccurate.

3 Doctor Strange Was Mentioned Before He Actually Rose To Prominence

Fans were excited when Dr. Stephen Strange’s name was mentioned for the first time in the MCU. In 2014, in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, “Stephen Strange” is listed as a potential threat to HYDRA, alongside people like Steve Rogers and Bruce Banner.

However, in MCU’s own timeline, Doctor Strange is still just a medical doctor at this point, and nowhere close to becoming the Sorcerer Supreme. Discussing him as if he’s already the Sorcerer Supreme just further messes up the MCU’s timeline, which they have already destroyed in an attempt to correct and over-explain it.

2 Tony Stark Destroyed His Iron Men, Then Immediately Replaced Them

Along with destroying his arc reactor, Tony Stark also destroys all of his Iron Man suits. Every robot, every suit, every bit of Iron Man tech —all of it, completely destroyed. Despite the fact that this happens in the movie, as a part of the plot, and on the screen, Tony’s right back in the Iron Man suit by Age of Ultron.

Later on in the MCU, he’s got just as many Iron Man suits as before, if not even more variants of the suit. Pretty much everything that happened in Iron Man 3 could be considered a major plot hole, but this was one of the most heinously obvious.

1 The Pym Particles Ultimately Don’t Make Scientific Sense

The MCU attempted to go out of its own way to explain the more scientific sides of things in their stories. While most fans are more than happy to accept hand-wavy science and the existence of fictional elements such as “Pym particles,” a small —but loud— segment of viewers always want there to be a “logical” explanation for things.

Of course, Ant-Man could never logically exist, but that doesn't bother these aggressive viewers. In trying to explain Pym particles to these fans, the MCU stated that Pym particles let Ant-Man shrink because they actually make the distance between each atom smaller. However, the Quantum Realm requires Ant-Man to be smaller than an atom, which he literally can’t be, based on their own science. They wrote themselves into a corner and didn’t even bother to write themselves out.

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