What Was That 'Thor: The Dark World' Credits Scene About?

Did you walk out of Thor: The Dark World wondering what the deal was with that credits scene? Who was? And why were? And what the?

OK, spoilers ahead. If you haven't seen Thor: The Dark World yet, go ask your parents to let you go this weekend.

In the first of Thor: The Dark World's two credits scenes, we see Jaimie Alexander's Sif and Ray Stevenson's Volstagg meet a mysterious white-haired person, who they hand the Aether over to. The duo leaves his bizarre place of business, and as they do, the man whispers to himself, "One down, five to go."

So what's going on here? The mysterious man is The Collector, and he's played by Benicio del Toro. In the comics, The Collector, well, collects things, both living creatures and items of value. At one point, The Collector expanded his collection to keep creatures safe from the wrath of Thanos, the big purple alien we saw during the credits in The Avengers.

When handing over the Aether to The Collector, Sif and Volstagg said that they were doing so since they already had the Tesseract in Asgard. Marvel now considers the Tesseract to be an Infinity Stone, just like the Aether. The Asgardians realize that it wouldn't be safe to keep two Infinity Stones in the same place, but it seems like The Collector has other ideas.

Marvel boss Kevin Feige has revealed that the Tesseract and the Aether are the first two Infinity Gems needed to form Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet, a powerful weapon that in the comics, Thanos used to wipe out half the life in the universe. According to Feige, we'll see the Infinity Stones play a role in Guardians of the Galaxy and Phase Three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.