Snap Into Marvel: Infinity Ultron And The Theft of Thanos’ Schtick

First Appearance: What If? Season 1 episode 8, “What If… Ultron Won?” (September 2021)

Powers and Abilities: Having taken the synthezoid body of Vision, Infinity Ultron possesses all the same abilities, including flight, density control, and superhuman strength. As a wielder of six the Infinity Stones, Infinity Ultron possesses god-like abilities to manipulate the fabric of space, time, and reality.

Comic Book Chronicles

The answer to the question, “what if MCU Thanos, but Ultron?”, Infinity Ultron, like Captain Carter, is a character who originates in the animated What If? Disney+ series. Debuting in the first season episode “What If…Ultron Won?”, the episode follows an alternate reality is which the Avengers fail to stop Ultron during the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron. He then transfers his mind into the body of Vision (which contains the Mind Stone), and wipes out humanity. When Thanos later arrives on Earth looking for the Mind Stone, Ultron kills him, and takes the rest of the Infinity Stones for himself, becoming Infinity Ultron.

Infinity Ultron proceeds to use the stones to wipe out all life in the universe. Having fulfilled what he believed was the purpose of his creation, a despondent Ultron discovers the existence of the multiverse, at which point he works to continue his mission to eradicate all life throughout all realities. This leads to the first multi-part storyline in What If?, as the Watcher assembles a team (the Guardians of the Multiverse, of which Captain Carter is a member) culled from various realities to battle — and ultimately defeat — Infinity Ultron across subsequent episodes.

Unlike, Captain Carter, however, Infinity Ultron has not as of this writing crossed over into the comic book world, largely because this particular iteration of Ultron is tied so tightly to specific events within the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s interpretation of the character. The general idea of an alternate-reality, world-conquering Ultron does have precedent in the comics, however.

The 2013 crossover Age of Ultron by Brian Michael Bendis and Bryan Hitch involves the Avengers fighting to prevent a futuristic Ultron from conquering the past (while it shares a name with the second Avengers film and features Ultron just like the film, the similarities largely end there). However, it’s hard to argue that there is much of the animated Infinity Ultron in the comic book Ultron from Age of Ultron aside from the name and general motivations; as the Marvel Snap card makes clear, it’s truly the “Infinity” part of Infinity Ultron that sets the character apart.

Fit & Finish

With little comic book history — or, frankly, much history at all — to draw on, the initial Infinity Ultron variants all largely just riff on the general idea of the character, presenting him in different poses. I do appreciate the emphasis on the cape in all of them.

Form & Function

Appropriately enough, Infinity Ultron takes as its gameplay inspiration the mad Titan himself, Thanos. Just like Thanos, Infinity Ultron also comes along with Infinity Stones (with the ability of each suitably-corrupted by Ultron). But rather than shuffling all the Infinity Stones into your hand, Infinity Ultron is an On Reveal card, and under normal circumstances, only drops two of the Infinity Stones into your hand when played.

Obviously, this relative limitation is an attempt by the designers to make Infinity Ultron more than just a Thanos Redux, but if we’re looking for a narrative explanation for the change, perhaps we can also read the change as a commentary on Infinity Ultron’s status an alternate reality character; that is, it is a riff on two existing characters — Ultron and Thanos — but as an alternate, it is still not quite the same character as either of its inspirations.