If Quill didn’t ruin the plan and they had gotten the glove off Thanos, would that have been it? Would they have won?
What would they have done with the glove? Would they have subdued Thanos indefinitely once they got the glove off?
That’s what many assume. But as Strange mentioned, giving the Time Stone to Thanos was presumably “the only way” for them to win. After he went through 14 million possible outcomes, there was only one he foresaw which resulted in The Avengers emerging victorious. Strange knew what was coming (he looked perturbed when he said his last line) and so he acted accordingly.
So if Strange was right, then getting the Gauntlet off wouldn’t have made a difference. Somehow Thanos would have been able to get back the Gauntlet and defeat The Avengers.
I'm hoping Avengers 4 resolves the Thanos issue and/or the infinity stones' existence, permanently
Then I could accept this particular failure more easily. As in, Strange foresaw that getting the gauntlet off would only delay the snap, maybe by years or even centuries, but not prevent it. He was more interested in permanent victory, which meant letting Thanos think he won, before undoing it all somehow.
What issue is there to resolve? There were probably a few million instance sin which the Avengers didn't even get far enough that they got a hold of the gauntlet to begin with. There were probably a few million more in which Quill screwed up in some way, another few thousand in which one of the other character screwed up, and probably a few hundred in which they did manage to get it off. Considering Thanos was capable of kicking the shit out of Hulk, it's fair to say that, in those instances, he got the gauntlet back. All we need to know is that plan doesn't work.
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Remember, too, that only Dr. Strange could've kept Quill from going nuts. Tony tried, but he was destined to fail.
At least that's how I figure, since only Strange himself could bring about any of those alternate futures. He's like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day." There'd be no point exploring futures beyond Strange's own control.
So that means, to me, that only Strange could've prevented Quill from blowing the deal. And in many of those alternate futures, he probably tried and maybe even succeeded at keeping Quill calm enough for them to remove the gauntlet.
My guess is, in those futures, Thanos either gets it back right away or even years later. He's clearly very hard to kill and functionally immortal. Perhaps there were futures where the Avengers win, only to have Thanos return a century or two after they're nearly all dead.
Instead, Dr. Strange guided them to the one future where Thanos is decisively defeated and the stones are removed entirely from temptation. Unfortunately, that future required Tony to die, which meant that Tony had to survive on Titan.
So he let Thanos have the gauntlet back, and let him have the time stone, all so Strange could extract Thanos's promise NOT to kill Tony Stark.