Loki's scepter was left with SHIELD at the end of The Avengers, but why? When Marvel Studios was planning for the Avengers to assemble for the first time, they decided that Tom Hiddleston's god of mischief would be the main villain. Although Thor thought Loki died at the end of Thor, it was revealed that this wasn't the case. Loki instead crossed paths with Thanos, who gave him a powerful scepter and command of the Chitauri army to lead an invasion of Earth.

The purpose of the invasion was for Loki to conquer the planet and obtain the Tesseract for Thanos. Loki wanted to finally have a place he could rule and was unknowingly on the verge of getting Thanos another Infinity Stone. The Avengers had Loki execute a great plan from the start. He stole the Tesseract and used the scepter to mind control Hawkeye and Erik Selvig. The two of them provided knowledge on how to split up the Avengers and craft a machine that could use the Tesseract to open a portal in space for the Chitauri army to invade. In the end, the Avengers managed to thwart Loki's takeover attempt.

Related: Avengers: The Ancient One's Refusal To Stop Loki's Invasion Never Made Sense

At the conclusion of The Avengers, the fallout of the Battle of New York saw the Avengers go their separate ways without SHIELD keeping tabs on them. Nick Fury also didn't argue with Thor's request to take Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard. This upset the World Security Council and SHIELD's Alexander Pierce, but they didn't walk away empty-handed. It was decided that SHIELD would take Loki's scepter, but The Avengers never provided a proper explanation for why. Without a definitive answer in canon, the decision to leave the scepter with sleeper Hydra agents in SHIELD is befuddling.

Loki the avengers scepter robert redford

The best explanation for the Avengers agreeing to let SHIELD take Loki's scepter is that they had no idea what its true power was, or who they were really giving it to. When The Avengers came out in 2012, no one knew that the stone in the scepter was an Infinity Stone, except for Thanos. The revelation that it housed the Mind Stone came in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Infinity Stones weren't on the Avengers' radar at the time. They didn't even know that the Tesseract was the Space Stone. But, the heroes were still aware that the scepter contained immense power, so they likely thought that it would be safe in SHIELD's hands, just as the Tesseract was safe with them for 70 years.

Leaving Loki's scepter with SHIELD proved to be a game-changing move for the MCU. It was taken by Brock Rumlow and the STRIKE team after the Battle of New York so it could be transported to Dr. List and Hydra. They eventually started doing experiments with the scepter to give people powers, which resulted in Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver becoming the only successful attempts. The scepter was then broken by Ultron so he could put the Mind Stone in the body that became Vision. Although this did leave two Infinity Stones on Earth after The Avengers (with the Time Stone in the possession of the Ancient One at the time), it prevented Asgard or even the Collector from having multiple stones. The Avengers could have avoided some headaches if Loki's scepter wasn't given to SHIELD, but they didn't know the power they were giving away at the time.

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