Is Tony Stark getting a Wakandan upgrade come Avengers: Infinity War?
The armor-clad Avenger's suit is a perennial work in progress, its genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist inventor doling out update after update to improve the design he originally conceived a decade ago (in a cave with a box of scraps).
With Infinity War, Stark dons his most advanced and formidable suit yet: one that includes "wings," deep-space rocket boosters, and the ability to configure tools and weapons conjured at will and as needed.
As first seen in the Super Bowl TV spot, Stark's newest armor quickly and effortlessly materializes around Stark — eliminating any clunky suiting up process.
The tech on display is similar to that used by African king T'Challa, who operates with a Vibranium-clad super-suit that manifests itself from a necklace worn around the neck.
That technology was developed by T'Challa's genius-level inventor sister, Shuri, who Black Panther producer Nate Moore says is even smarter than Tony Stark.
With a large portion of Infinity War's action taking place in Wakanda, could Stark's latest armor be birthed out of a collaboration with the 16-year-old Wakandan tech genius?
A future collab between the two is possible, but it seems Tony has his newest armor up and running before ever stepping foot in Wakanda.
Moments from both trailers — in which Tony is witness to the extraterrestrial Q-Ship hovering above New York City — sees Stark, with his new armor, springing into action alongside Doctor Strange, Wong and Bruce Banner outside Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum.
That team-up seems to come early on in the movie, suggesting Tony developed this newest suit on his own — as he has fifty times before.
Tony's ever-evolving suits have always done so in a way that is reactionary: he runs into one problem in one movie and actively takes steps to debug that issue by the next suit (and movie).
Iron Man's new high-speed thrusters are likely a response to Tony's failure to catch best buddy Rhodes, a.k.a. War Machine, before the shot-down hero violently fell to the Earth — resulting in his paralysis — in Captain America: Civil War.
The suit is partially inspired by both the Bleeding Edge and Model Prime armors from more recent runs of the Marvel Comics, both of which were once again crafted by Stark himself.
Shuri is open to learning from fellow geniuses Tony Stark and Bruce Banner — and vice versa, surely — but for now, it seems Tony designed his latest suit solely on his own with one goal in mind: preparing for "the end of all things."
As seen in the official Avengers: Infinity War Prelude comic book, Stark designs the suit alone in his lab while focusing on the "real threat that's coming," hearkening back to his catastrophic vision from Avengers: Age of Ultron where Tony saw Earth's mightiest heroes killed by a then-unknown threat.
Come Infinity War, it's all-hands-on-deck and time to get the band back together as every available hero in Marvel Studios' shared cinematic universe come together for the first time to thwart the end of the universe.
Avengers: Infinity War opens April 27.