There was only one problem: Tivan was, himself, trying to collect the stones and had contracted the Ravagers to retrieve the Power Stone, hidden inside an Orb on the planet Morag. The attempt was, as seen in Thor: The Dark World, unsuccessful, and the Reality Stone ended up in the hands of Asgard Odin, worried about storing more than one Infinity Stone in the same location, passed the Reality Stone on to Taneleer Tivan, aka the Collector. While SHIELD was, unbeknownst to most, falling under the control of Hydra - and the Scepter being moved from SHIELD control to Hydra boss Wolfgang von Strucker, who’d use it to create Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch ahead of 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, events were happening elsewhere involving other stones: the Aether - aka, the Reality Stone - was discovered by Thor’s on-again, off-again girlfriend Jane Foster before being used by the Dark Elves in an attempt to destroy the entire universe.

After Loki’s invasion of New York was unsuccessful - aside from being the event that brought the Avengers together, which was hardly his intent - the Tesseract was returned to Asgard by Loki, while the Mind Stone-powered Scepter was left with SHIELD. Loki, unwittingly, was using another of the Infinity Stones to do so, in that his scepter was powered by the Mind Stone. Selvig’s experiments alerted those seeking the Infinity Stones to the Space Stone’s location - most notably Thanos who, using the alien Chitauri as go-betweens, employed Loki to try and retrieve the stone. After a standoff with the Kree Starforce, Danvers left the Tesseract with SHIELD for safekeeping - it remained there until Nick Fury invited Erik Selvig to investigate its potential for creating an unlimited power source for humanity. Air Force scientist to develop faster-than-light transport technology for the Skrulls, before Mar-Vell was killed nonetheless, it was in part responsible for giving Carol Danvers superpowers, transforming her into Captain Marvel.

While there, it was used by Mar-Vell while disguised as a U.S. Discovered by the Red Skull in 1942 - notably, hidden behind a decoration of the world tree Yggdrasil, suggesting a connection to the Asgardians in some form - the Tesseract was used to power Hydra weapons during World War II until stopped by Captain America in the final showdown between the two, the Red Skull was teleported by the Tesseract to the planet Vormir, and the Tesseract itself was discovered by Howard Stark, who put it into U.S.

The infinity stones