Why doesn’t [SPOILER] appear in Black Panther?

One of the things many MCU fans expected to happen in Black Panther did not, so its director explains why.

Note: This article contains spoilers for Black Panther, though talking mostly about what something that doesn’t happen in the movie instead of what does. Here’s your courtesy heads up anyway.

One of the biggest talking points from the opening night audience with which this writer saw Black Panther on the way out of the theater was about something we expected to see, at least in one of the post-credits scenes, but did not.

Where, oh where is the Soul Stone?

To date, the Soul Stone is the only one of the six Infinity Stones not to pop up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Considering that Thanos is about to kick his quest to gather all the Stones into high gear in Avengers: Infinity War, it was logical to expect that the Soul Stone would be seen in some fashion in Black Panther, seeing as its the last chance to introduce it before May.

We even formulated a fun fan theory that maybe the Soul Stone was responsible for helping to grow Wakanda’s heart-shaped herb, which might explain why Black Panthers can use it to talk to their ancestors — which seems like a very Soul Stone thing to do.

But according to director Ryan Coogler, not so much. Not only did he tell IGN that indeed, the Soul Stone is not in Black Panther, he even explained why:

"“I love the Infinity Stones as much as any comic book fan, it’s just Wakanda already has its thing, which is Vibranium. For us, that was special enough, so to throw in something like another special thing didn’t feel right. It felt like we should stick with our one MacGuffin for the country and explore that, let that be the important thing because, frankly we didn’t need to have another piece like that. [Marvel Studios] never really was interested in putting a stone in there, either.”"

There’s two pretty interesting points here. The first is the idea that a movie doesn’t need two MacGuffins, an opinion with which many film buffs would no doubt agree.

The second is Coogler’s assertion that Marvel “never really was interested” in setting things up for the Soul Stone before Infinity War. That’s 100 percent believable, and since it’s not all that clear if all of the MCU heroes even know how many Stones there are, could set up a situation where Thanos manages to get his hands on five of them and Avengers 4 becomes a race for the final one to prevent him from obtaining a full-fledged Infinity Gauntlet.

Next: See our Black Panther review here

Only time will tell, and not the Time Stone but the few remaining months before Avengers: Infinity War arrives in theaters on May 4.