Avengers: Endgame Fan Spots Major Iron Man Callback That We All Missed

Avengers: Endgame might be out of theaters already, but fans are far from done picking apart the movie on Blu-ray to extract every ounce of meaning from the film, from the tangible to the imagined. A plethora of theories have emerged on social media to explain different parts of the pic and this trend doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon.

Recently, a fan put forward a theory connecting Tony Stark being able to wield the Infinity Gauntlet in Avengers: Endgame to a scene from the original Iron Man, writing:

Or something REALLY big for 15 seconds. It just dawned on me how Tony was able to not only wield the stones but also do so without immediately being incapacitated like the Hulk was. His Arc reactor took the bulk of the energy.

According to the theory, the reason that Iron Man, an ordinary mortal, was able to wield the gauntlet for even a few seconds without getting overwhelmed was no accident. The gauntlet was the most powerful weapon in existence, containing the six Infinity Stones that created the universe itself.

The entire Guardians of the Galaxy team couldn’t even hold on to one of the Stones in their first film without immediately beginning to disintegrate, and immensely powerful beings like Thanos and Hulk suffered irreversible damage wielding the gauntlet. And yet, Tony was able to not only withstand direct contact with all six Infinity Stones through his earth-based gauntlet, but was even able to use its power to snap Thanos out of existence. How was this possible?

Well, as this theory explains, at the beginning of Iron Man, we hear Stark’s ally in captivity remark that the arc reactor in his chest was immensely powerful, capable of powering his heart for 50 lifetimes, to which Tony added: “Or something really big for 15 minutes.” In that film, he was referring to the first giant Iron Man armor that he was building.

But in retrospect, the arc reactor, which presumably underwent massive upgrades over the years, was probably also responsible for absorbing the incredible amounts of energy unleashed by the Infinity Gauntlet and redirecting it away from doing harm to Tony’s body. Unfortunately, however, even the power of the arc reactor couldn’t prevent him from ultimately succumbing to the gauntlet’s power at the end of Avengers: Endgame.