By the time Tony Stark returns in Avengers: Endgame, Iron Man will be a totally different hero from when he started his superhero journey 10 years ago, and he has his fellow superheroes to thank for that. If he survives the end of the Infinity Saga, he won’t ever be the same.
“He’s recognizing that he actually should have his eyes on the long game,” actor Robert Downey Jr. said in an official interview, featured above. “There’s a different set of principles he’s operating by than he has before. I think a lot of that has been the burgeoning affect of all these other Avengers and seeing how much they’ve put on the line.”
There’s no doubt that befriending Steve Rogers set Tony Stark on a path towards being a more righteous man, and the choices he made in Captain America: Civil War were out of guilt and a sense of responsibility, sentiments that echoed throughout Spider-Man: Homecoming as Stark mentored Peter Parker and again in the devastating moments of Spider-Man’s death in Infinity War.
Iron Man in a brief confrontation early in 'Infinity War' in New York City.
Earlier this April, Downey Jr. spoke about watching Parker’s death for the first time in the final cut of Infinity War.
“It was crazy to shoot it, but it was just another day, and then we were at lunch and doing stuff, because it’s a movie,” the actor told Cinema Blend. “But then I think seeing it — and I happened to see it with this amazing Scottish kid who couldn’t go to a theater — so I saw it with him, and his reaction really effed me up.”
When Infinity War begins, Stark is talking about having kids with fiancée Pepper Potts, and by the end he had lost a surrogate son in Peter Parker. What else is he prepared to lose to bring Parker back in Endgame? We’ll find out in a matter of days.
“We’re trying to pull off something damn near impossible,” Stark says in the latest Endgame TV spot, “and to not die trying would be nice.”
That would be really nice, but if anybody’s going to die in Avengers: Endgame, it’s probably Tony Stark.
Avengers: Endgame will be released in theaters April 26, 2019.
