For more than a decade, the Tesseract has been a crucial force behind the actions and
motivations of many of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's major players.
Let's take a look at some of the lesser-known or little-remembered facts about the origins,
powers and timeline of the story thread which has bound the Marvel movies together.
The Tesseract traces its origins as far back as time itself.
In the MCU, the Big Bang brought about six primal elemental singularities: Time, Reality,
Soul, Mind, Power, and Space.
“One down, five to go.”
The essence of the universe itself was forged by mysterious cosmic beings into the Infinity
Stones.
The Space Stone came into the possession of several ancient civilizations, including the
Celestials.
At some point, its power was harnessed by a crystalline cube casing : the Tesseract.
The origin of the cube has yet to be revealed, but its purpose was to tame the raw power
of the Space Stone, making it more easily controllable.
At some point, Odin, the ruler of Asgard, came into possession of the Tesseract and
housed it in his own vault, as the crown jewel of his collection of some of the most powerful
cosmic weapons and artifacts in the universe.
Odin captured and stored in his heavily guarded vault any weapon or relic he thought could
possibly bring about end times also known as Ragnarok and the Tesseract definitely fit
that bill.
In The First Avenger, Captain America fights the Hydra super-soldier Red Skull aboard the
airship Valkyrie during the film's climactic battle.
As the Valkyrie speeds toward New York City armed with nuclear warheads, the Red Skull
attempts to turn the tables on Cap by barehanding the Tesseract but it doesn't exactly go well
for him.
A portal opens, blasting Red Skull out of the ship and carrying him off to parts unknown,
while the Tesseract burns through the hull of the Valkyrie and descends into the depths
of the ocean.
Poor Steve Rogers isn't far behind, as the entire airship plunges into the icy water,
where Captain America would remain frozen for the next 70 years.
“Is there anything else about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?”
“You should’ve left it in the ocean.”
It was nearly a decade before Red Skull appeared in another MCU movie.
In his Infinity War cameo, the character is portrayed by Ross Marquand of The Walking
Dead fame, replacing The First Avenger's Hugo Weaving.
During the film, it’s revealed that the Space Stone transported Red Skull to Vormir
and somehow imprisoned him there.
The Red Skull explains that his quest to control an Infinity Stone led it to reject him.
He's now intrinsically linked to the Soul Stone, as its guardian, but is never able
to possess it.
Sometime after Cap's fateful battle with the Red Skull, a deep sea expedition led by Howard
Stark recovered the Tesseract in the cold waters of the Arctic Ocean, while searching
for the body of Steve Rogers.
The brilliant inventor had been instrumental in creating the scientific process that transformed
Rogers from a scrawny weakling into a super soldier.
While in possession of the Tesseract, Stark researched and studied its nature.
The Tesseract's official first onscreen appearance comes in a stinger following 2011’s Thor,
but the MCU’s first Tesseract reference is actually in Iron Man 2.
During a scene in which Howard's son Tony is flipping through his father's notebook,
the audience is able to catch a glimpse of a drawing of the Tesseract.
Project PEGASUS was formed in the 1980s as a joint operation between the United States
Air Force and NASA, once the Tesseract came into possession of the U.S. government.
The project had been mentioned in other MCU films, but Captain Marvel was the first to
shed more light on the top secret undertaking.
Mar-Vell, a Kree scientist posing as human Dr. Wendy Lawson on Earth, is able to obtain
access to the Tesseract and attempts to harness its power to produce a lightspeed engine.
When a test fighter flown by Carol Danvers and Lawson is shot down by Kree Starforce,
Danvers destroys the powerful engine and, in the process, absorbs the cosmic power of
the Space Stone.
In Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers gains full control of her powers and memories in 1995,
six years after her crash and subsequent abduction by the Kree.
She's then able to thwart her pursuers and uncover the Tesseract in the hidden space
station in Earth's near orbit.
Once recovered, the Tesseract is kept safe by Mar-Vell's beloved pet "cat," Goose.
Of course, Goose is actually a cat-shaped Flerken who stores the artifact in a pocket
dimension in her stomach.
Flerkens just so happen to resemble Earthly felines in many ways, except for the many
toothy tentacles they can release from their mouth.
The tentacles enable the deceptively deadly Flerken to devour large prey or objects to
teleport or store in stomach lining pocket dimensions.
Later, Goose horks up the Tesseract onto Nick Fury's desk, and Project PEGASUS is revived
to further study the object.
It is soon relocated to a SHIELD facility in the Mojave Desert to unlock its full capabilities.
The Tesseract has appeared in at least 10 Marvel Cinematic Universe films.
That's the same number as Iron Man and one more than everybody's favorite Boy Scout,
Captain America.
Following the wild success of Joss Whedon's The Avengers, Marvel began to plot its storytelling
much more carefully than it had before.
With the this recalibration, Marvel decided to make the Infinity Stones the central story
elements of Phases 1 through 3.
As a result, the Tesseract was retconned to contain the Space Stone.
This pivot towards the Infinity Stones as the binding agent of the MCU will go down
in Hollywood history as one of the greatest production moves of all time.
And with a storyline more than 10 years in the making finally coming to a close with
Endgame, it may indeed prove to be the end of an era.
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