Tony Stark is the MCU’s most beloved character. Robert Downey Jr. donned the mantle of Iron Man in 2008, playing the titular character in the film, and his character singlehandedly changed the trajectory of the franchise.
Not only was Tony Stark a leader, with his scientific contributions helping the Avengers every step of the way, but he was also a cornerstone of the team. He was reliable, and he was a leader worthy of respect in every way.
However, Stark had to grow into these traits that defined him in the later films. A recent theory suggests that time travel played a part in it.
Why did Iron Man and the rest of the Avengers have to time travel?
During Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos was on a quest to collect the infinity stones. The time stone was one of them. Once he got his hands on the gems, the mad Titan managed to eradicate half the population of the world during the Blip, including a few key Avengers.
The rest of the team had to deal with the fallout of Thanos’ actions in Avengers: Endgame. Before the Avengers could undo the damage that Thanos had wreaked by taking the infinity stones back from him, he had already destroyed them. The team had to come up with an alternate way to go back in time, and Iron Man, played by Robert Downey Jr., had a key role in the breakthrough: traveling through the quantum realm.
Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Ant-Man travel back to 2012, during the Battle of New York. At the time, Loki had two infinity stones with him: the mind stone and the space stone. Unfortunately, the team failed to get the tesseract from Loki, so they traveled back in time further.
The group then went back to 1970, when Tony Stark’s father, Howard Stark, was working for the military. This brought Tony face-to-face with his father, even if it was for a brief moment. They managed to steal the stone and bring it back to the present timeline.
Did the meeting between Iron Man and Howard Stark shape the future?
The MCU has given rise to several theories over the years, and each one is intriguing, to say the least. The possibility that Tony’s time travel in Endgame determined his future is one of them, even though it is just speculation. So how does this theory work?
When Howard Stark met his son in the lab, he supposedly recognized that his son, Tony, was the man from the future who paid him a visit in his lab. This just made Howard determined to mold his son’s future, eventually becoming the hero the world came to love so much.
This theory might be far-fetched, but there is a hint of sentimentality to it. It also plays with the idea that Tony Stark shaped his own destiny when he traveled back in time. Iron Man was a crucial part of the MCU, and he was the hero who died to save the world. His sacrifice did not end in vain, as the team managed to bring back those who had turned to dust during the Blip.
Robert Downey Jr. left an indelible mark with this role. Iron Man may have died, but there is hope that the hero can still return one day. While this chapter of the MCU might be over, the fact that fans still speculate so much proves just how loved the stories are.
