Here's How Tony Stark Will Die In Avengers: Endgame
The event most of us are dreading is coming soon. Someone in Endgame is going to die, and this time, there’s going to be little hope that they end up coming back. Tony Stark happens to be one of the two primary people up on the chopping block--the other being Steve Rodgers.
Tony is effectively the first Avenger of the MCU. RDJ’s portrayal of him is what rocketed the MCU into the spotlight, kicking off every event we’ve seen to date. His presence has arguably been the most vital out of any of the other characters, but like he said in the endgame trailer: “...part of the journey is the end.” He put his situation into perspective the best.
With the release of Endgame, the OG Avengers original run will officially be over. Their ten-year story will come to an end, and the spotlight will shift itself over to the new Avengers, this would include everyone who made their first appearance in phase two and beyond. What exactly does that mean for Tony Stark though? If he’s dying, how exactly will it go down? If he’s leaving, will it include him dying at all?
Here are some of the ways we think the MCU will wrap up Tony Stark’s arc once and for all, and why we think his character will go out in these specific ways.
Sacrificial Death
This one is the most obvious way. Tony is definitely the type of person who would jump in front of a bullet if it meant saving someone else, which is weird because you wouldn’t necessarily get that vibe from him with just the way he acts. His sarcastic and sassy demeanor betray the heart of someone who’s made it his mission to keep others safe.
Tony Stark initial becomes Iron Man because he gets an up close and personal look at just how devastating his weapons can be when they're used in the wrong hands. He eventually succeeds in removing his creations from the planet, but after seeing what he can do as Iron Man, he decides to keep the mantle.
Eventually, we see him join up with the Avengers and give everything he has to try and protect New York (and the rest of the world) from Thanos and Loki’s Chitauri invasion. He actually grabs a nuke out of the sky and flies it into a wormhole in space in an attempt to kill two birds with one stone: stopping the military from cleansing New York with radioactive fire and stopping the Chitauri from succeeding with their invasion. He does this without much hesitation at all--barely even thinking about it. Of course, the event later screwed up his mental state royally, but that’s to be expected when you’re just a normal guy fighting alongside super soldiers, gods, and radioactive monstrosities in an attempt to stop both an alien invasion and another god from taking over the planet. Taking down high-tech weapons is one thing, but the Battle of New York was an entirely different beast.
Tony is also not very fond of putting his friends and allies in danger if he can do something about it. It was revealed to us in Avengers: Age of Ultron by the Scarlet Witch that Tony’s greatest fear was watching the people around him die. The vision haunted Tony so badly that he started thinking of ways that he could take his friends off the battlefield permanently. In fact, from the way he and Banner were discussing things in Age of Ultron, Tony had been thinking about ways to remove the Avengers from the battlefield since even before Scarlet Witch got in his head. All the vision did was force Tony to accelerate his plans, and use Loki’s scepter (the Mind Stone) as the power source for his Ultron Program. He played the role of "mad scientist" just to try and keep anyone from dying. Ultron, of course, turned out to be a psychotic mass murderer and the complete opposite of what Tony was looking for, but it’s the thought that counts in this case.
Tony’s goal was solely to create a replacement for the Avengers so that the Avengers themselves wouldn’t end up the way he predicted they would. He didn’t want any of them to die, and he was driven by a need to create Ultron because he felt that in doing so he could control the group’s fate.
Tony Stark’s character does not like things being out of his control, and he takes personal responsibility very seriously. This is one of the reasons why he decides to side with the government when it came to the Sokovia Accords-- even though he doesn’t care for anyone in the government.
When you take what happened to Tony in Infinity War and tack it onto his personality traits and other experiences, you get a pretty potent idea about what he'll be capable of--and what he's likely to do--in Avengers: Endgame, especially when things get out of hand (like they're pretty much guaranteed too). In Avengers: Infinity War, Tony’s greatest fear became a reality. He watched as the friends he fought so hard to save disintegrated, and he couldn’t do anything about it. All of his best efforts amounted to pretty much nothing when they collided with Thanos, an obstacle Tony had been dreading since the Battle of New York--an obstacle Tony couldn’t control or manage.
If Tony does survive being in deep space without any food or water and with his oxygen dwindling, then he’s going to be at his mental edge. If he finds out that there’s a way he and the surviving members of the Avengers can do something to change what happened with Thanos, then he’s going to be more than ready and willing to do anything. That means that if the situation calls for it, Tony will sacrifice his own life to make sure that the rest of the world is either spared or avenged.
Wedding Day = Retirement
Tony Stark sacrificing himself is one way for his story to come to a close. It’s the darker ending, but it’s one possibility. There is another, however, one that would actually give his character a happy ending and allow him to continue to make guest appearances now and again (just to a lesser degree). Like we said before, RDJ’s Tony Stark is a big reason as to why the MCU took off the way it did. If they wanted to keep his character around but still retire him, they could use his relationship with Pepper to do it.
Tony’s relationship with Pepper has been a huge part of his character. Even when Pepper says she’s not going to be there for him, she ends up being there for him. In Iron Man 3, Tony made a show of blowing up all of his armors in front of Pepper and claimed the act was meant to be an early Christmas gift to her. He doesn’t state exactly why he goes ahead and does this, but when you consider the fact that he and Pepper were having relationship problems throughout the movie that were tired to Tony being distracted by his “tinkering” and “hobbies,” it’s easy to figure out that he blows up his iron legion to show Pepper that he’s leaving the Iron Man life behind him.
He does, of course, end up falling right back into building more armors and doing Iron Man things, but we’ve kind of already been over why he does this. The point is that in this scene with Pepper, Tony really was trying to give himself a clean slate. He really did want to leave his Iron Man mantle behind, but that fear of beings like Thanos existing nagged at him in the back of his mind. But one way or another, Endgame will be the conclusion to Thanos’ story, so Tony’s fear will be faced down once and for all, and with all the new heroes that have sprung up to help him take Thanos down, he has plenty of capable hands to leave the world in once he decides to finally settle himself down.
In Spider-Man: Homecoming, when Peter declines Tony’s offer to join the Avengers--effectively tanking Tony’s plan to induct Spider-Man in front of the world--Pepper shows up, revealing that she was the one who rounded up all the reporters for Tony in the first place. Tony then reveals his backup plan, retrieving a ring that Happy had been keeping safe for him in his pocket for over nine whole years. In a way only Tony can, Tony asks Pepper if she wants to marry him, and lo and behold. Pepper says "yes." Tony had said the two of them had broken up in Civil War, so the fact that Pepper does agree to marry Tony was a bit unexpected, but not totally unpredictable. She knows how Tony is and has loved him anyway before, so it's not like that kind of connection just goes away.
Anyway, the proposal is another step Tony takes toward putting down the Iron Man armor. He wants to get married, but he knows that this will never work if he continues being Iron Man. Pepper left him over it once, so he knows she's capable of doing it. He already knows Pepper's expectations when he decides to propose. He’s probably so impressed with Peter’s development that he knows he’ll be able to pass the world onto him sooner rather than later.
Tony’s need to retire is further emphasized in a conversation he and Pepper have in Infinity War as they're walking through a park. Tony confides in Pepper that he had a dream that the two of them had a kid. The dream was so vivid that when he woke up, he thought he and Pepper were actually expecting a child, but Pepper tells him that if he wanted to actually have a kid he wouldn’t be wearing an arc reactor, which Tony tells her is just for insurance purposes. He wants to make sure that he keeps the two of them and any “future thems” (kids) safe. So now we have three different elements working toward a final conclusion for Iron Man: he’s willing to destroy his armors for Pepper, he’s getting married, and now he even wants to have kids. Basically, he wants Clint Bart’s life.
Tony even spends half of the Endgame trailer letting Pepper know that all of his choices lead back to her and that when he passes away from suffocation in deep space, the last thing that’ll be on his mind is her. So when everything with Thanos is said and done, should Tony make it out of the battle alive, he’ll definitely be putting down his Iron Man mantle to be with Pepper Pots. Endgame ending with a wedding would also be a good way to contrast the movie with Infinity War's beginning.
