If you haven’t seen Avengers Endgame, please, for your own benefit, stop reading. You have been warned.
Endgame felt like an endless sequence of huge cinematic moments, though Tony Stark’s heroic snap was undoubtedly the biggest.
What better way for Robert Downey Jr. to bow out of the MCU than by saving the entire universe?
On the surface it seemed like a relatively impulsive choice, a spur of the moment act that required the ultimate sacrifice. Did Tony Stark predict such an event more than a decade ago though?
One fan has highlighted a scene from 2008’s Iron Man, where Stark was talking about his Arc Reactor.
While discussing his new artificial heart with Yinsen, he was told that the reactor could “run his heart for 50 lifetimes.” To which Stark replied “or something really big for 15 minutes.”
Could it have been the reactor that managed to keep Tony alive for those final few moments after completing the snap? Did it help absorb some of that immense power?
Reddit user u/WolverineKuzuri93 made the observation as they shared a screenshot of the moment Stark appeared to foresee his future.
“It just dawned on me how Tony was able to not only wield the stones but also do so without immediately being incapacitated like the Hulk was. His Arc reactor took the bulk of the energy,” the Redditor wrote.
It may not be completely out of the question. The Russo Brothers once confirmed that Iron Man’s suit’s nanotech and that of the Infinity Gauntlet were one in the same.
Robert Downey Jr.’s final scene could actually have been completely different, with his famous last words not being in the original script.
“Tony used to not say anything in that moment and we were in the editing room going, ‘He has to say something. This is a character who has lived and died by quips.’ And we just couldn’t, we tried a million different last lines,” the Russos said.
“Thanos was saying, ‘I am inevitable.’ Our editor Jeff Ford, who’s been with us all four movies and is an amazing storyteller, said ‘Why don’t we just go full circle with it and say ‘I am Iron Man’? And we were like, ‘Get the cameras! We have to shoot this tomorrow.’”
It’d be hard to imagine that scene now without the typical Stark quip – it definitely adds something more to an already incredible bit of cinema and a huge shout out to Jeff Ford for suggesting it.
Featured Image Credit: Disney/Marvel