Avengers: Infinity War - How Will The Soul Stone Be Introduced?

When asked why Black Panther didn't appear to feature the Soul Stone, director Ryan Coogler had this to say (via IGN):

“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."

Aside from the fact that you should never trust anything a director says about their big movie (remember when J.J. Abrams said Benedict Cumberbatch wasn't playing Khan?), Coogler never outright states "the Soul Stone isn't in Wakanda".

He says it wouldn't have felt right to throw in another special object, but he could just be covering his tracks - or, he might not even know that Marvel cleverly had him plant the Soul Stone in his own movie.

This is just one Soul Stone theory that has a lot of evidence behind it, but it's highly likely that the final Infinity Stone exists within the Vibranium meteor that crash-landed on Earth millions of years ago, upon which Wakanda was built.

This would explain several things in the movie - the magical powers of the heart-shaped herb, the transportive abilities of the orange sand, and the overall focus on the afterlife/souls that's seen throughout - as well as explaining why Thanos' army is invading Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity War. Gotta get dat Stone!

The sand and the herb have to be drawing their power from something, right? We're led to believe that this source is the Vibranium within the meteor, but isn't Vibranium just a metal? How could it create the heart-shaped herb, or give the orange sand its powers?

So, what if the meteor contains something else, something that's slowly been transforming the very land upon which Wakanda rests, altering the properties of its earth and creating the herb and the sand in the process?

What if it contains the Soul Stone?

For starters, the orange colour of the sand matches the orange colour of the Soul Stone, a parallel that's easy to draw. The sand also has the power to transport people to a realm where they can interact with the souls of the dead - that seems like a power the Soul Stone would grant, right?

If the meteor does contain the Stone and it's been warping Wakandan land for millions of years, this also explains how T'Challa is able to access the Soul World by using snow later in the film. It's not just the sand that grants this power, it's Wakanda itself; its land, its earth. The herb could also a contributor, as T'Challa consumes some each time he visits the Soul World.

In addition, a recently revealed LEGO set offers another piece of evidence that the Soul Stone is in Wakanda. The back of the box clearly shows Bruce Banner leaping for an orange gem, with a Wakandan skyline and mountains visible in the background.

But that's not all. There's a final piece of the puzzle involving Vision, and more specifically, what happens to him in Avengers: Infinity War.