What Would Have Happened If Tony Stark Didn't Die In Avengers: Endgame
After Infinity War, you’d have expected Avengers: Endgame to have gone and killed a lot more characters that it turned out to. The final tally came back with Back Widow and Tony Stark. And coincidentally the deaths of both of these characters happened in sacrifice. They didn’t just end up getting killed like some of the heroes in Infinity War, dying at the hands of Thanos and his impatience. Tony and Natasha killed themselves in order to stop Thanos and actually managed to succeed. So then, what would have happened if either or both of them didn’t die?
Clint Barton And Bottom of Vormir
Obtaining the Soul Stone meant that someone had to sacrifice something that they loved. Natasha and Clint were the only two people on the surface of the planet at the time (aside from Red Skull), and they just so happened to care about one another. They also both happened to be incredibly stubborn and highly trained assassins, both of whom would rather die than let the other one do it for them. So, of course, the situation turned into a race to see who could kill themselves first. We all know how that turned out.
So if Natasha wasn’t the one to throw herself off the cliff, it can only mean one thing: Clint managed to make it to the bottom first instead. This would be a pretty interesting change. For starters, after Natasha makes it out back to her own timeline, she would know full well that she’s about to bring Clint’s family back to the land of the living with the news that their husband and father is dead, and that she’s going to have to be the one to give it to them, something she was trying her damndest to avoid. On the bright side, though, when Past Thanos decided to launch his assault on Earth, Black Widow would have been there to lead the A-Force when it went down. You know, get some respect for breaking her back by carrying the female side of the MCU for so long.
Thanos Would Kind of be God of The MCU
Doctor Strange gave up the Time Stone for one reason and one reason only: Tony Stark. He didn’t do it because he liked Tony (although, he may have come to respect him by the time he decided to make the sacrifice, having seen what Tony was capable of in the future). Doctor Strange gave up the stone because he knew Tony was the only reason Thanos was going to be defeated. He knew that Thanos would win this round, but Tony would be the key to taking the entire war. But, of course, there was a catch.
Tony Stark could only save the universe from Thanos if he died. He was the only one who had the intellect to create his own version of the Infinity Gauntlet on Earth. The original model required the use of a dying star, mystical metals, a giant dwarf, and who knows what other kinds of magic. Tony pulled it off with just the nanomachines of his Iron Man armor. But because the Iron Gauntlet was made from Tony’s armor, it meant that Tony would have been the only one who had a chance to swipe the stones away from Thanos when the time came. Anyone else would have just ended up like Captain Marvel. Considering Captain Marvel took a headbutt from Thanos without even flinching -- in spite of Thanos having manhandled everyone else -- it’s pretty safe to say that once he shrugged her off, his second snap was definitely happening had it not been for Tony Stark.
Thanos wasn’t just going to wipe out half of the universe again either. The dude was pissed. He already voiced that his new strategy was just going to be snapping out all of existence and then remaking it in his own image. He raised the stakes clear beyond what they were before.
At least the original snap allowed for the opportunity to move on past the tragedy; the new one would have offered nothing. Tony’s insight to make the Iron Gauntlet compatible with his suit despite knowing there was no way he could wield it without dying says quite a lot about the character. Maybe he knew deep down that’s where things were heading.
Black Widow: Head of The Avengers, Bruce’s Wife?
If Black Widow wasn’t the one to die on Vormir and Tony did go through with taking Thanos out along with himself then that leaves her in a peculiar situation. Natasha had already told to Clint that she didn’t really have as much to live for as he did. She doesn’t have a family, and as far as she’s concerned she can’t have one. Her survival just left her in a world where her best friend is dead and she has to go and break the news to his family. Not a situation anyone really wants to be in. But what would she end up doing after that?
Natasha took over the operations of the Avengers because Nick Fury wasn’t there to do it. The snap that Professor Hulk performed changes that. Maybe she does go back to handling the Avengers’ operations after everything is said and done, but there’s no doubt that she doesn't also try to get in deeper with Nick Fury’s operations.
After Hawkeye, Nick Fury is probably the next individual Natasha considers herself closest to. He’s the one who gave her a second chance after everything she did in her past. He saw something in her that she was incapable of seeing in herself, a talent he seems to have for everyone considering the way he brought together the Avengers in the first place. If he’s back in action, Natasha’s going to want to coordinate her movements with him. Black Widow is also probably one of the very few people that Nick trust with his life, so he would definitely be cooperative. If he is, then Black could have been a secret-keeper to the project Nick is working on now.
As of the end for Spider-Man: Far From Home, Nick Fury looks like he’s in the middle of creating S.W.O.R.D, the space counterpart to S.H.I.E.L.D. The end credits scene of Far From Home showed him wandering around a space station that many people think might be the Peek, S.W.O.R.D’s headquarters. In the comics, Captain Marvel tends to be the head of S.W.O.R.D. Since she and Fury are tight in the MCU, it would make sense then that if Fury is working on the S.W.O.R.D project, he would trust the lead position to Captain Marvel.
Depending on how Nick wanted to handle it, Natasha very well then could have become partners with Captain Marvel. This would have been an interesting way to show off the two most prominent female characters of the MCU, one handles the Earth’s threats from space, and the other handles everything that’s local the way S.H.I.E.L.D used to. Then they coordinate accordingly.
Beyond Natasha’s work life, however, we did mention she wasn’t exactly hopeful about the idea of having a family. We think if she survived the war with Thanos, maybe she and Bruce could have actually tried something. The two of them were talking about it during Age of Ultron but never got to take it any further due to some unpredicted circumstances. With everything said and done, though, and with the way Bruce expressed how much he cared for Black Widow in Endgame, it’s not implausible that they couldn’t at least try. It would probably even work too, considering the way the two balance each other.
This would have been a nice way to give Black Widow a happy ending, bearing in mind the struggle her character’s had throughout the MCU. She tells Loki in the very first movie that she thinks love is for children. It would have been a positive change for her to actually find it once Thanos was out of the picture. You know, if she had actually lived and wasn’t at the bottom of a cliff on a planet millions of miles away from Earth.
Tony Would Have Personally Mentored Peter
It would take some weird moves to pull this one-off. Again, Thanos was only stopped because of what Tony did. It was improbable that anyone else would have been able to pull it off after Captain Marvel’s failure. But let’s just say Thanos is stopped without Tony dying. Maybe instead of snapping himself, Tony’s armor can act autonomously through Friday. He sheds it, and Friday does the snap for him. It works and Thanos and all his people are returned to the ground. Or maybe Past Thanos just never manages to make his way back to their present. Either way, it’s mission accomplished for him, right?
We mentioned earlier that Tony only came back onto the scene because he wanted to do right by Peter. By creating the gauntlet that Hulk used to snap everyone back, Tony managed to put that off. For him, it’s back to retirement, buuut, not before he takes care of one more thing. Tony thinks of Peter as his successor. He’s the future, and if we know anything about Tony Stark, it’s that he likes to focus on the future. With his new family to think about, Tony’s, of course, going to want to take a page of Hawkeye’s book and retire, but he would still want to make sure the world is in capable hands when he does. If Far From Home told us anything, it’s that Tony doesn’t trust anybody more with the job than Peter.
Now that Tony’s not a radioactive corpse, he would have personally taken it on himself to groom Peter to take over for him. It’s what he was doing before he snapped away Thanos, so why not continue? Tony would have shown Peter how to use Edith and would have erased any doubts Peter had that Tony wanted him to find someone else to wear the glasses. He may have even given Peter whatever workshop he used to tinker with his own suits all the time. He could have shown Peter how he went about building the Iron Spider-Suit or something and then left him to his own devices. Whenever Peter needed advice on something, Tony could have been there to offer it until Peter was ready to start handling things on his own.
The whole situation with Quintin Beck could have been avoided as well. For one thing, with Tony still alive, there’s no way he wouldn’t have been able to tell Peter who Beck really was. For another, he may have noticed that Nick Fury was acting a little off character as well. Tony’s almost as suspicious as Nick is with people and nearly just as insightful. If he had learned Nick was incapable of suspecting Quintin Beck’s real intentions he probably would have launched an investigation of his own. What he would have done with the information that Talos is impersonating Fury is up in the air though, but the likely answer is that he would have attacked him.
Regardless, the situation with Beck wouldn’t have gotten so out of hand that Peter would have ended up with his identity revealed and labeled a murderer. All of that would have been nipped in the bud the moment Beck started parading around as Mysterio. It’s hard to imagine Tony wouldn’t have tech that’s capable of penetrating the illusions generated by BARF.
Wrap Up
Tony and Black Widow could have both accomplished a lot if they had managed to survive. Black Widow could have potentially headlined things with Captain Marvel, and Tony could have prevented the whole Far From Home situation from happening. Ah well. R.I.P.
