Avengers: Endgame Writers Considered Ways to Let Iron Man Live

The finale of Avengers: Endgame certainly brought tears to all of our eyes when the film arrived in theaters earlier this year, as we were all forced to say goodbye to Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark. By snapping his fingers and defeating Thanos once and for all, Iron man sacrificed his life, saving the rest of the universe in the process. His death and funeral make for an incredibly powerful ending to the movie, but as it turns out, there were other options explored while writing Endgame. There were options on the table that would’ve allowed Tony to survive.

Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely went through several different iterations of every scene in Avengers: Endgame, making sure to get every single beat of the movie as perfect as possible. That includes the ending for Tony Stark, as a death that big had never before occurred in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

While speaking to Canada.com, the writers said that they were asked to explore all options with all characters, and allow them to live if there was a way that worked better with the overall narrative of Avengers: Endgame. But at the end of the day, saying goodbye to Iron Man was simply the best choice for the story.

“We weren’t there to just kill characters off,” said Markus. “We were told, ‘If the story demands it, you can take people off the board. But if there’s a good story to be told and no one dies, go ahead and tell that one too.’”

“In Endgame, we were trying to finish arcs and for Iron Man/Tony Stark to give up his life and sacrifice himself for the good of the universe seemed like a really good narrative closure for the billionaire playboy who had been learning over the course of several films (to be a better person),” he added.

The topic of “which characters should be killed” was discussed quite a bit between Markus, McFeely, producer Kevin Feige, and directors Joe and Anthony Russo.

“It’s a topic of conversation that we all — Joe and Anthony Russo and Kevin Feige and ourselves — had together,” McFeely said. “We didn’t waver very much. I think we talked early on about how we could have gone either Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) or Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) on that cliff on Vormir. But we felt Black Widow’s death was better for the arc we were trying to give her.”

What did you think of the endings of Iron Man and Black Widow? Was killing those characters off the right call? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!