The Infinity War
Tony’s efforts to reinvent himself after the Civil War are remarkable. He successfully mentored Peter Parker into an amazing young hero and repaired his relationship with Pepper Potts, eventually asking her to marry him. Despite the Avengers being split apart, life was finally becoming worth living for Tony. Sadly, this peaceful time would soon be interrupted by the sudden reemergence of Bruce Banner, who had been MIA since the end of the Ultron incident. Bruce returned to Earth with a simple warning: Thanos is coming.
When Thanos’ minions, the Black Order, launched an attack on New York, Tony was forced to team up with Peter Parker and master sorcerer Doctor Strange to repel the attack. In this battle, we once again see Tony’s incredible knack for evolving his tactics, as his armor has been upgraded with nanotechnology, heightening both his offensive and defensive capabilities to new levels. Even with all the superhuman individuals around him, Tony’s pure technological genius once again proves to be the best asset Earth has against cosmic threats. Unfortunately, Strange and the Time Stone are captured during the fight, forcing Tony to board the Black Order’s spaceship to rescue him. Worse, Peter has stowed away to try and help, putting the young hero in more danger than Tony ever wanted him to be in. Tony was now on a collision course with the Mad Titan, Thanos, and everything he cared about was at risk.
Tony’s attempts to prepare for the coming conflict were anything but smooth. First, he had to contend with Doctor Strange, whose ego was on par with Tony’s. Once they felt they had a plan, they had to adjust once more with the sudden arrival of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Though more people might seem an advantage against Thanos, Tony lacked much faith in the capabilities of these new arrivals given their shoot-from-the-hip attitude. The irony in his frustrations is that Steve Rogers once felt the same way about Tony in their first adventure together.
It is in the Battle of Titan that we truly see Tony Stark at his finest. In Tony’s last major loss, Steve Rogers had bested Tony’s advanced technology thanks to his superior skills in hand-to-hand combat. Tony has taken this ass-kicking to heart and deploys a staggering number of new weapons in this fight, including a shield, sword, and hammer designed to help him in hand-to-hand scenarios. In this way, a mere human is able to keep up with Thanos throughout the fight – only Thanos’ four Infinity Stones put him out of Tony’s league. But in the end, Thanos overpowers Tony and stands ready to kill him. That is when Doctor Strange does the one thing Tony never expected and surrenders the Time Stone to save Tony’s life. With his mission accomplished, Thanos vanishes into a portal. Mere minutes later, Thanos gains the final Infinity Stone and wills half of all life out of existence. Tony is hit by this worse than most, as he is forced to watch Peter Parker, one of the only people he truly cared for, turn to dust in his arms. Tony’s greatest failure is complete.
Aftermath
The time immediately following Tony’s battle with Thanos is not depicted on screen, but we can surmise it was a whirlwind of emotions. As the only other survivor of the Snap on Titan was Nebula, it can be assumed that she and Tony started working together to find a way back to civilization of any kind. While Nebula worked to treat Tony’s wounds and the pair of them tried to repair Star Lord’s ship, Tony certainly had much to think about and come to grips with.
It is curious that Tony is so angry with the late Doctor Strange for his actions in the Battle of Titan. After all, Strange had previously stated he wouldn’t hesitate to let Tony or anyone else die to keep the Time Stone safe. That, however, was before Strange’s preparations for Thanos’ arrival. Using the full power of the Time Stone, he viewed over 14 million possible outcomes of the conflict with Thanos and informed Tony that they only win in a single instance. This revelation frames every one of Doctor Strange’s actions going forward. Everything he does is in an effort to bring about that one scenario.
If Tony had his normal mental faculties, he would have been able to understand this. He would have been able to figure out that the only reason Strange would surrender the Time Stone was if it was required for the Avengers to eventually win in the long run. But Tony is incapable of understanding these things due to his grief over losing Peter. He had always seen himself in the young man and sought to protect Peter from his own ambition, which nobody ever did for Tony in his younger days. His failure to keep Peter away from the fight against Thanos would go on to haunt him for years.
Reality soon sets in for Tony, as he and Nebula are unable to keep Star Lord’s ship flying for more than a couple of days. They are soon stranded in space with no hope of reaching any inhabited planet in time. It is this dire situation that shows us Tony hasn’t lost his humanity. He and Nebula spend their days getting to know each other, rationing their supplies, and even playing paper football. Watching Tony teach Nebula, the abused and sadistic daughter of Thanos, how to have fun for the sake of having fun is one of the sweetest moments in the entire MCU. We even see Tony offer Nebula some of his food, only for her to decline. With her cybernetic enhancements, she knows Tony needs the food more than she does. In the meantime, Tony records messages in the event his beloved Pepper ever finds them. He is soon resigned to his impending death, and only the miraculous arrival of Captain Marvel saves his life.
After Captain Marvel tows the ship back to Earth, Tony finally sets foot on his home planet once more, only to be greeted by the one man he didn’t want to see – Steve Rogers. Though Tony initially foregoes any pettiness in favor of hugging Pepper, the debrief soon brings everything to a head. Where Steve is still focused on doing everything he can to track down Thanos, Tony refuses to mask his disgust any longer. He places the blame for their combined loss squarely on Steve’s shoulders, stating he wasn’t there when Tony needed him. He further states that his fears were right all along, that the Earth needed more advanced defenses even if they had to curtail individual freedoms and liberties in the process. Soon, Tony collapses into a coma from exhaustion and his previous injuries.
After Steve’s unsuccessful attempt to recover the Infinity Stones, the Avengers must live with the consequences of their ultimate failure. For Tony, this means moving on from Iron Man permanently, marrying Pepper Potts, and having a daughter with her. Morgan Stark becomes the light of Tony’s universe over the next five years. Despite all the damage done by Thanos, Tony has found something to live for. He seems perfectly content in his quiet retirement, which makes the eventual arrival of his former teammates all the more painful.
Five years after the battle with Thanos, Steve arrives at Tony’s home with Natasha Romanoff and Scott Lang, also known as Ant-Man. When they explain their theory of using the Quantum Realm as a means of traveling into the past to recover the Infinity Stones, Tony is immediately dismissive. While it would be easy to think this attitude is due to old wounds between Tony and Steve, it soon becomes clear that Tony simply thinks they’re trying to latch onto an impossible pipe dream that will eventually kill them all. His tone does soften to a remarkable degree as Tony says that he’s genuinely happy to see his old friends, but that they need to look forward for their second chance.
Even as Tony proclaims he has found his second chance in his family and won’t roll the dice on it, he’s still plagued with guilt over losing Peter Parker. As well, Tony is a tinkerer and a gearhead at heart. He can’t resist experimenting with a new technological toy and soon tries working out the theoretical logistics of Lang’s proposed Time Heist, even as nothing but a little game. To the surprise of Tony and nobody else, he soon discovers it to be more than theoretically possible. Of course, he still wonders if going along with this is the right thing to do and considers dropping all evidence of this research at the bottom of a lake. Thankfully, Pepper retains her role as Tony’s conscience and reminds him that he’d never be able to sleep again if he did that. Thus, the plans for the Time Heist commence.
The Endgame
As Tony officially rejoins the Avengers, he knows there is still business to attend to. The final reconciliation between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers is simply beautiful. Steve has just hit a brick wall in their own efforts to control time through the Quantum Realm and while Tony could gloat over this, (okay, he does for a moment, but we’d have been disappointed if he hadn’t) he immediately explains that he’s figured it out and is willing to help. After five years, he’s realized that resentment is corrosive. For once in Tony’s life, he is completely upfront and honest about his motivations, emphasizing to Steve that his family must remain intact after the Time Heist. Steve agrees, prompting Tony to swallow his ego and return the shield of Captain America to Steve.
Of all the parts of the Time Heist, Tony and Steve each take on arguably the riskiest and most difficult parts. While Steve manages to swipe the Mind Stone, Tony and Lang flub their retrieval of the Space Stone. But while Lang frets that they’re screwed, Tony just glances at Steve and realizes how they can still accomplish the mission. All it takes is a few short words about a military base in New Jersey to convince Steve that Tony is right. Sealing their friendship for good, Steve states emphatically that he trusts Tony and the pair disappear once more into the time stream.
Just when Tony believes he’s finished reconciling with his past, this final time jump brings him face-to-face with Howard Stark in his prime. Nervous as Tony is to face his strict dad once again, he’s pleasantly surprised to find Howard a jovial and kind man, far different than how Tony remembered him. As they chat, Tony admits that he always disliked his father, but now that he’s grown, he only remembers the good times. After all, Howard, for all his mistakes, helped mold Tony into the hero he eventually became.
Each of these sentimental moments is crucially important for Tony’s final journey. If he hadn’t flubbed the original retrieval of the Space Stone, he would never have had the chance to gain closure with Howard. Without that, it’s doubtful that Tony would have had the strength and conviction to make his final gutsy play. Ah, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Once the Time Heist is complete and a new Infinity Gauntlet has been crafted, Tony’s role in the following events actually diminishes somewhat. After Banner brings back the lives Thanos ended, a younger Thanos from the past erupts from the Quantum Realm with his ship and army, ready to take the Infinity Stones for himself. With most of the Avengers trapped in the rubble of the compound, the task of confronting the Mad Titan falls to the Big Three – Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor.
Surprisingly, Tony is knocked out of this fight relatively quickly, with Thor and Steve getting the bigger opportunities to take on Thanos. This can be seen as odd until one remembers that this isn’t the same Thanos Tony fought before on Titan. This Thanos is younger, hungrier, and has not discarded his armor and weapons in favor of the Infinity Stones. His fierce and brutal fighting style quickly overwhelms Iron Man’s preferred combat style of keeping his foes at arm’s length. But as he did before in the Battle of New York, Tony is graceful in taking a backseat once Steve takes up Mjölnir and assembles the entire Avengers against Thanos’ army.
As the battle rages, the sudden reappearance of Doctor Strange seems to have jogged Tony’s memory. No longer suffering from grief-fueled amnesia, he asks Strange if this is the one in 14 million chance that they win, but Strange refuses to say. It’s a brief exchange, but such a pivotal one for Tony. Instead of pressing Strange, Tony seems to accept that this is one thing he can’t actively control and reenters the fight. This is a remarkable move, showing that Tony can grow beyond his obsessive need for control and understanding. With this last show of growth, all the pieces are in place.
In the end, even the combined efforts of the Avengers aren’t enough to stop Thanos from getting his hands on the Infinity Gauntlet. But just as he’s about to end the entire universe and remake it in his image, Tony goes for broke. His seemingly futile effort to grab Thanos’ hand was actually a clever ploy, using his nanotech to move the Infinity Stones from the gauntlet and into the Iron Man armor. The consummate futurist with a contingency plan for everything has just deployed one last contingency to top Thanos. With the power of creation itself flowing through him and knowing full well the likely consequences, Tony smiles at his greatest adversary and delivers one final quip for the ages.
“And I… am… Iron Man.”
Conclusion
Steve Rogers once referred to Tony Stark as Earth’s Best Defender. Why was that? What made this man so vital to the safety of Earth and its people? He didn’t have enhanced strength or senses like Captain America or Black Panther. He wasn’t a god-like warrior the likes of Thor or Hulk. Hell, Tony didn’t even have a lifetime of combat training like Black Widow or Hawkeye. He was just a man with unlimited financial resources, untold creativity, and one of the most brilliant minds on the planet. In the end, that was exactly what Earth needed in its darkest hour.
Tony Stark’s final sacrifice was the sum of his experiences and traits – his guilt, his need for control, his lack of trust in anyone but himself, his overwhelming ego, and his ability to adapt himself and his tactics endlessly no matter the strength of his opponent. Even his awful mistakes, such as Ultron and the Sokovia Accords, put him exactly where he needed to be to save the universe when it mattered. Everything he did and experienced on his Hero’s Journey made this final moment possible. Tony was, to be sure, a deeply flawed individual. Those flaws were what made such a difficult journey necessary. He didn’t begin as a hero, even after building the Iron Man suit, but Tony Stark grew into the role of a hero so well that, in the end, nobody else could even be considered Earth’s Best Defender.
I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the character of Tony Stark. Robert Downey Junior’s portrayal of the character is nothing short of transcendent, and it was so fun to revisit all the key moments that made his work so worthwhile for all of us as fans and as storytellers. I don’t know if any of my heroic characters could ever rise to the level of the MCU’s Tony Stark, but it’s certainly something I aspire to as an author.
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