Marvel fans are piecing together a fairly convincing argument for how the franchise’s most beloved fallen hero could have been brought back by Doctor Strange — albeit in a rare window of opportunity that has already come and gone.
Still, it’s interesting to think about whether Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man truly had to remain dead at the end of Avengers: Endgame after he sacrificed himself to defeat Thanos using the Infinity Gauntlet.
A Reddit user on the r/MarvelStudios subreddit put forth the hypothetical scenario that Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange could have used the Time Stone one more time to restore Tony Stark at his funeral. And even though that sounds silly at first, it actually makes a lot of sense the more I think about it.
In 2016’s Doctor Strange, there is a scene in which the titular sorcerer uses the Time Stone-powered Eye of Agamotto to restore the flesh of an apple from a rotten core. Remember, even though Stark died in Endgame, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts still had one of his earliest Arc Reactors after he upgraded the prototype in a previous movie. This old Arc Reactor, which was prominently displayed at the funeral, would essentially serve as the “core” for Stark, in theory, around which his body could be restored by Strange’s use of the Time Stone.
But hang on, wasn’t the Time Stone out of commission by the conclusion of Endgame? Though Josh Brolin’s Thanos destroyed the stones at the beginning of the movie, the Avengers subsequently went back in time to retrieve them from the past. After using the stones in the present to destroy Thanos, it was the commitment of the Avengers that they would place each stone back in their respective places on the timeline so as not to cause branching alternative universes.
However, at the time of Stark’s funeral in the movie, Chris Evans’ Captain American had not yet gone back in time to return the stones yet. That means they were available during that time, and in theory, Strange could have used his mastery of the Time Stone to revive Stark.
So is this a plothole? Well, a couple of other Reddit users had explanations about why this wouldn’t work. For instance, Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk said he tried to revive Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, but the stones disallowed it. This could mean the stones can’t reverse a death that they themselves caused.
Another good point that was brought up is the simple fact that undoing Stark’s death could risk undoing the “snap” that destroyed Thanos in the first place.
At the end of the day, the writers could probably find a way around any limitations in order to bring Stark back. After all, characters get resurrected in comics all the time. However, there are real-world reasons why the creators probably didn’t want to revive Stark. Namely, Downey Jr. likely wanted to give his character a proper send-off and didn’t want to renew his contract for starring in more Marvel movies. However, maybe we could see this plot unfold one day in a future episode of the What If…?