One glaring Iron Man 3 mistake could've saved Tony in Avengers: Endgame

Sometimes, passion can kill, and had Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) given up his mantle in Iron Man 3 (2013), we might be seeing him giving the new Avengers some counseling today. We clearly need an explanation as to what happened between Iron Man 3 and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015).

A similar conversation sparked on Reddit where fans discussed this bit and put forth their theories and observations about the potential events that caused Tony to stay on this track. However, there came an instance where Stark finally got his family, living his life with a daughter who loves him 3000.

This was sort of a second chance for him to give up on things for good and be with Pepper and Morgan. But then he never let go of his zeal towards saving the ones who mattered, to give them the security he believed they needed.

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Fans have some theories about the events between Iron Man 3 and Age of Ultron

Iron Man 3 ends with Tony Stark seemingly destroying all his armor in a firecracker show after he defeated Aldrich Killian in a heated fight. This was something of a dream come true for Pepper Potts but then we saw him flying again alongside the Avengers in Age of Ultron.

But what exactly happened between these two films? One fan whose answer got the most number of votes has the precise theory. The user writes

"He goes on to say the truth is he never wanted to stop, and did it to appease Pepper."

Another fan has a different but longer theory about this. The user says,

"It really seems like his approach to walking away was to leave the protecting to SHIELD and the Avengers after stocking them up with his tech."

But this one user had the best answer, which sadly went unnoticed. The user pulled a dialogue from Spider-Man (2017) to clear things out.

"In IM3 he comes to accept he is more than just a guy in a suit of armour."

All in all, he was always the Iron Man, which he affirms standing on a cliff, throwing away his obsolete Arc Reactor for good. And that is what he taught his disciple, Peter Parker (Tom Holland), too.

But then it would have proven Steve Rogers right

The first time Tony interacts with his future bestie, Captain Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), it was when Stark doesn't go on the humble road in Iron Man 3. The first thing Captain America said to him during their fight in the S.H.I.E.L.D jet was,

"You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you."

Not that it was this dialogue that served as a motivation to him and he wanted to show Steve that he can do the sacrifice, but from the beginning to Iron Man's end, it is this sentence that Tony defied.

Fans have admired both the heroes as they proved each other wrong. Tony had told during this moment that,

You're a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle!

When Steve wielded the Mjolnir, he proved that he was worthy. This becomes evident in Captain America: The First Avenger when he selflessly takes on that grenade to save others. Thankfully, it was a decoy and part of training that tested the bravery of the soldiers.

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Also Read: Are Marvel's antiheroes a fresh take on storytelling, or is the MCU losing its moral direction?