Fans will know from the ending of Avengers: Infinity War that half of all human life on Earth vanished once Thanos got all six infinity stones. Considering the nature of his crusade, where he claimed to be motivated by the famine and lack of resources that plagued his home world of Titan, it begs the question: did all life vanish at his snap?
Marvel big man Kevin Feige was asked this question. And his answer confirms that Thanos indeed wanted to end half of all life everywhere.
“Yes!” he said. “Yes, all life.”
In further regard to this dilemma, directors Anthony and Joe Russo have explained why they chose to only focus on the loss of all the human lives at the end of the film:
“It was always a plan to show beyond that because when we made the decision to have the snaps themselves,” Joe Russo said. “that’s a plot trick to cut to black after an incident like that happens. And it doesn’t give you any emotional resonance or catharsis. What he said thinking about it realistically; the true heartbreak doesn’t lie in the fact that he snapped his fingers, it lies in the fact that people have to watch loved ones, and we have to watch characters that we care about die. And that’s where the real heartbreak lies for the characters who live in the Universe and for those of us watching the movie.”
This isn’t just true to the film. Fans of the comics will remember that Thanos took animals as well in ‘Infinity Gauntlet’ when someone claimed that half their cows disappeared! This revelation gives a new angle to some of our potential environmentalist sympathies with the Mad Titan.
It’s true that the animal kingdom would do better with fewer humans around, but if he took animals as well, then that negates certain justifications we could reason for him, because that means endangered vital pollinators and other species that better the ecosystem are in even few numbers.
So what does that mean for our sympathies for Thanos moving forward? Will the loss of animal life play a role in the next film at all? And what does this mean for Thanos’s motivations moving forward? Is it possible he’ll consider the possibility that he made a mistake? Tell us your thoughts below!