Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame were extremely cool movies, but since their release, we’ve seen a bunch of art depicting amazing scenes that never made it into the final cut. One of the most interesting sees Tony Stark and Doctor Strange temporarily swapping costumes, with Stark donning the Cloak of Levitation and Strange using the MK50 Iron Man suit to escape from Ebony Maw’s torture.
Now, to mark Halloween, Robert Downey Jr. has released a short clip of him smiling in the cape on the set of Infinity War. Judging by the background, he’d have used it during the battle with Thanos on Titan, though I doubt the outcome of the fight would have changed. The contrast between magical powers and advanced technology makes them an odd pair, though, so it would have been fun to see Stark grappling with mystical artefacts he can’t quite understand.
We saw the flipside to this scene in some concept art and set pictures showing an alternative ending to the ‘needle torture’ sequence. In the movie, Spider-Man and Stark figure out a plan (based around the finale of Aliens) to suck Maw into outer space. However, it seems that the other option was for Tony to somehow get his nanotech MK50 armor onto Strange and allow him to bust free and overpower the villain.
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Capes, broomsticks, cauldrons… Happy All Hallow’s Eve… #halloween #happyhalloween
It’s an undeniably fun idea, but it doesn’t really make much sense for Strange to instantly master the workings of Stark’s nanotech suit while being tortured. Plus, if the MK50 is powerful enough to defeat Maw, then why couldn’t Tony just do it himself?
There’s a chance that scenes similar to these may end up in the Disney+ What If…? animated show. In the original comic (issue #113), we saw what the Marvel Universe would be like if Tony Stark became the Sorcerer Supreme. The answer is that it’s pretty awesome, and Stark’s motivation for learning the mystic arts is to redeem himself for causing Strange’s hand injuries while drunk. After mastering magic, he goes on to create badass ‘Sorcerer Armor’ and battles Dormammu in defence of Earth.
But even if we don’t get to see that, the existing footage and images make it easy to imagine the neat parallel paths that Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame could have taken.
