If that's the case, why would Strange bargain for him if he's going to drop 20 minutes after he makes the trade?

Stark losing to Thanos would really drive them into a corner. He gets all the stone, wipes half the universe And they don't have Tony to help? It would be better narratively rather than dying on a ship like a punk

Sorry but not buying it. Strange saw that Tony Stark was needed as the only way to save the universe so it wouldn't make sense that he dies like that. I believe he gets saved last minute. Weather it be by Captain Marvel or Rescue (pepper potts).

The most outlandish theory I have heard was one i came up with where Tony was uploading his consciousness into the computer while he was just staring off into the unknown.

This isn't that bad. But still, why would he do this? You're using the story from Nolan's final Batman film. Both wanted normal lives, but the difference is that Tony knew normal would never exist. Him faking his death or just retiring the mantle would not allow him to rest.

Physically/mentally/emotionally Tony is dead.

Far From Home wouldnt be talking about Tony in a past tense if he was alive.

It's possible for a What If? episode, but I believe they left him dead. I don't think they want to go back and undo a moment that big

He’s dead.

> But, what if, this is an act?

But why

Well dr. Strange seems to believe he is the key, so if this scene is early on then he gets back and does some cool shit...of its an end scene, well then RIP tony. But I assume the key marvel characters that don’t have continuing contracts are going to be explosive in this movie.

A friend of mine stumbled onto the set of Spiderman: FFH and literally bumped into RDJ. If he's in FFH then he absolutely survives Endgame.

Unless they actually do involve time travel, then he could be driving one as Tony in the past.

Unless...he goes back to space. Lol.

He's not in the movie, he just officially adopted Tom Holland. He was there as a parent, not a co-star.

Or maybe Marvel have come to their senses and stopped announcing how long the actors contractual agreements are?

He’s gonna turn Nebula into an Audi...

All I know is my friend was in Italy and sent me an extremely excited message about seeing RDJ and being on a FFH set. She likes RDJ but doesn't care about marvel movies so she had no reason to lie. Maybe he was just hanging out? Who knows! We'll find out!

Yah it’s gonna end up being the end of the movie I bet like after the big battle.

Edit: I really think he will live though because seriously who else could play Iron Man? I think he might become a producer or director and just show up as a guest star now and then. But I don’t think marvel is done with Iron Man which means they can’t be done with RDJ either. Plus he’s an epic part of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and I don’t think spider man would be as good without step daddy RDJ showing up randomly which he can’t do if he’s dead. I think he survives end game but just takes a back seat with only short cameos maybe similar to Stan Lee’s thing.

Tony's journey was more relatable.

Both Tony and Luke gave up. Tony gave up because he knew something like this was always inevitable since NY. And he took Peter's death upon himself, thinking he is the cause as he was the one who recruited him. And after he tries his best but still fails to stop Thanos, he gives up, and he goes back to protecting the one thing he still has left - Pepper. But Peter's memory is again the only thing which brings Tony back and motivates Tony to try again. In the end, after learning he is the only one who can pull it off, he sacrifices himself to make the world a better place for Pepper, his daughter and for Peter.

On the other hand, Luke gives up at the first moment of failure. He hasn't even failed yet, it is heavily implied that Snoke has not even fully turned Kylo yet. Yet Luke gives up and resorts to murder as his first solution. And just completely gives up after he has failed literally just once. And there's no concrete reason why he waits until Rey comes to change his jedi robes and tells he is there to kill himself. It's just so ham fisted. And he necessarily did not even save anyone. The Resistance would have still been caught if Rey wasn't there to lift the rocks.

See the difference? Tony's sacrifice felt more earned.

So I think for some people it might feel like the same thing. However, I cried like a baby and I think there's a couple reasons why.

1. He didn't die alone: I might be biased because my favorite comic book character of all time is from queens (won't say name because of our autobot) but seeing them together with the opposite of salt made me cry. He wasn't a loner to die alone.

2. He did something that actually mattered: Luke didn't defeat anyone, he barely fought for anything and after it was all over our heroes are in a worse position then before. Needless to say that wasn't the case with endplay.

3. Metally man was still himself: They might have started in the same space but, the reasons Metallic dude was there made sense. He lost one defacto child and was now protecting another real child to fill that hole. We saw all of it! That's the key to making that kind of character shift work.

Because Tony died accomplishing something BIG. Luke died just to prank Kylo.

EDIT : also, the movie doesn't trick you in believing Tony is gonna make it, just to pull the rug under you in the next scene.

1. It was already established that their are negative affects to the user if they do the snap the snap. This was foreshadowed waaaaaaaaaayyy back in Guardians 1, hinted at during the final scene of Infinity War, and demonstrated by both Thanos and Hulk. Plus its established that Thanos and Hulk were able to survive because Thanos is a big boi and Hulk is a big boi who is immune to gamma rays

2. It feels like the scene was properly built up

3. He actually stops the threat for good.

4. He doesn’t die alone

After losing to Thanos, Tony is completely broken. He’s depressed and lost and basically hangs it all up. Then 5 years go by, he gets married and has a daughter and tries to move on, but he can’t. Tony has always been unable to leave the mission behind. Even when he doesn’t want to fight, he knows that he has to, and he can’t just give up knowing that he’s not helping people who need him. So he comes back to help in the fight, reconnects with his team, and gives his life to save the world, finally able to rest knowing that he did everything he could.

Now imagine he never came back to the Avengers.

Imagine instead of his depressive broken state lasting for 30 minutes, it lasted for 2 hours. The team comes to him for help and he refuses, but instead of deciding to come back he stays moody and cranky and hopeless. He doesn’t help build the gauntlet, doesn’t go time traveling, doesn’t do anything. He’s pretty much irrelevant until the absolute end of the movie, and in the final faceoff with Thanos, he gives some crappy speech, just kinda flies around, and then somehow dies. Sound familiar?

The reason Tony’s death worked is because he was Tony to the end. He went through the emotional ringer in this one, but he was completely in character and his death was a beautiful sacrifice that hit all the right emotional chords. Luke’s death didn’t work because it was like watching the death of a character you barely knew. After a whole movie of him refusing the call, it meant nothing to me when he accepts it in literally the final moments, just to swing his lightsaber around and then die. I cried for like an hour after Endgame, after crying the whole time in the theater. All i felt when Luke died was a sense of bewilderment, and I was more annoyed than sad.

I think I heard a related theory in which his Endgame finally somehow sets up his Doctor Doom Variant but I guess we will see. I feel like the way it’s headed, Doctor Doom with be the antithesis of Tony Stark, set up that way intentionally for contrast between the two characters and their moral compass.

I, for one, would absolutely watch a sitcom based on Tony, Gamora, Thanos, Natasha, and Hulk all trying to make it by in soul world and learning to get along. And every now and then, Red Skull would show up to give bits of wisdom. He'd be like the Wilson of the group.

You could call it "Soul Buddies" or "Stoned for Life"

It would not make sense because Thanos and Hulk both used it without their souls being trapped. FWIW I never believed it Gamora’s soul was trapped, either. It was the soul stone itself, using a familiar form to communicate with him.

Dr Doom dream walks into Starks body from another universe, then Starks soul can re-take his body after he’s released somehow from the soul stone?

Stark being a Doom variant is much more interesting than the other way around IMO. No way the OG tony comes back.

Interesting idea.

I think MCU Doom is going to end up being post endgame scared up mutilated Tony, possibly in some way merged with his nanite armor...the nanites may have repaired the damage to his body to a degree or taken over some functions.

No. Blipped people were in the soul stone (maybe, we dont know). He flat out died like everyone else

Honestly considering they are bringing RDJ back anyway I’d like to see him as the OG Iron Man once again, even if only in the Soul World

The infinity Stones was reduced to atoms as seen in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

I certainly hope you’re right! Anything to have the original Tony Stark back. Ignore the comic book nerds: The average movie fan like me just wants to see the main star of the Marvel universe back.

Coulson is dead. He died at the end of season 5.

No one has made a strong argument for why Tony had to snap and self delete himself

Writing your own story isn’t criticism. Plus, you haven’t actually written this so I prefer the actual, complete movie to a few random musings from someone who apparently doesn’t like the movie.

>in endgame the plot of the finale in the movie itself is idiotic.

You can say this about almost every MCU movie.

They're all fun, but they're stupid as hell.

Doctor strange disagrees.

And you’re sure that wasn’t one of the 14 million scenarios Strange saw that didn’t work, right?

I think it doesn't matter because the show is made by someone religious, or not religious but raised religious, at that point in Tonys life his life, his body and so on, doesn't matter- his soul matters. The show ends because all the last chances to save his sole are being stripped away from him. The ending scene is a lot of things but it mostly ends how it ends because the creator was pissed off that people insisted on seeing Tony dead or in jail.

Season 1 finale ending scene and the finale are similar- Tony in a restaurant after a storm, something makes him turn his head quickly but in season 1 we see it was the wind outside. "Someday soon, you're gonna have families of your own and if you're lucky, you'll remember the little moments like this, that we're good" - which AJ references in the last season ending sequence. The main difference, apart from the resolution, is that Tony is more surrounded by family and a sense of community in the first season- its at Arties, Christopher and Adrianne are there, as are Paulie and Sil. In the last season he's just waiting for his daughter, his son and his wife have been smoothed out into his comfortably numb existence. However there is still a chance for Meadow and therefore for Tony. Keep believing- a communion with blessed onion rings- the American dream.

Whether Tony died or not, I think what David Chase was attempting to make the viewers perceive the whole time and more or less in the last season was that its amazing that Tony has already gotten this far. If Chase added his death in the final moments of the show, I don't think it would be as big as it has become, because we all know through different characters end's, its death or jail. The ending of the show is made to be not this huge finale that we all expected, because Tony didn't deserve a poetic ending, where he gets to make it right with his family after so many reminders over the years from his therapist and even his wife, or get to live another 20 years running the streets as New Jersey's boss. The final season is the greatest in my opinion because its sole focus is Tony's near-death experience, to the normal person, they would reconsider their past life choices and thank god or a higher power they're still alive - they've been chosen. No, Tony looks god in the face and mocks the higher power(s) as a whole, especially when Paulie shares his own experience with the Virgin Mary. He's cut so many people's lives short that were loyal to his leadership, it was only a matter of time before something happened to Tony. After a few rewatches it really becomes clear as to why we never should've been rooting for him in the first place, why should he get any more 'luck,' 'sympathy' or 'hope' as any mobster he's killed in the past. Tony danced with the devil for far too long, his death was long overdue. That's why his fate doesn't matter, or should matter any more or less than the other characters that died at the hand of himself.

I the end, he died in his own arms.....Just like his owwnnn muddah!

Bleak. But then you have the sections showing AJ enjoying "college" with an M3, Carmela gathering the family for a fun night out at Holstein's, and Meadow getting into a serious relationship. Perhaps those are just to tee up the potential tragedy of Tony's whacking?