Avengers 4: Is Tony Stark the key to UNDOING deaths caused by Thanos after Infinity War?

It all started with Stark in 2008’s Iron Man, with Robert Downey Jr being key to the Marvel Cinematic Universe ever since.

But with Downey Jr rumoured to be bowing out, could the demise of Thanos in the sequel to Avengers: Infinity War be his perfect swansong?

That’s certainly the jist of a very popular new theory on Reddit by user ElephantErik, which has over 1,000 Upvotes.

The theory uses as a launchpad the moment in Infinity War when Doctor Strange sacrifices the Time Stone, himself, and several other MCU favourites in order to spare Tony – hinting strongly that he was doing the right thing in the long run.

“Essentially, whatever timeline Doctor Strange foretold would need Tony as a key player,” the Redditor wrote. “But why him?

“It’s been theorised before that Stark’s arc reactor is essentially a man-made Infinity Stone. While I believe this isn’t true, it is correct in saying that Stark has developed a way to contain and stabilise a massive energy source in a container, in order to utilise said source.

“As we have seen, containers are very important in utilising the Infinity Stones. The Space Stone was in a tesseract, the Mind Stone in a staff, the Reality Stone, Time Stone, Power Stone, they were all a container.

“We know from Guardians of the Galaxy that a living being cannot hold a stone for long without the use of some container to conduct and channel it’s energy.”

They added: “This is why Stark is important, he is a living container and would be able to contain a massive energy source in his arc reactor outlet. Infinity War even makes a point in the park scene with Tony and Pepper to show him retaining his arc reactor even though he doesn’t really need it anymore.

“That is particularly interesting since the Russo brothers have said that scene was much longer before with a bunch of character cameos but they had to cut it down, and still they kept this piece of exposition in it.

“It’s still not clear what stone he will posses or if he will be the vessel for all the Stones to undo the Snap. The Infinity Gauntlet is destroyed and can’t be reused for this, and it’s even hinted that Thanos’ arm got messed up with it. There is a reason people haven’t used the Gauntlet before, because the use of all the stones together had such a huge cost and would kill a normal living being.

“My prediction is that Tony will the be the one to undo the Snap and he will be the major casualty of Avengers 4.”

The writer went on to reason that it would make narrative sense, since Shuri is being set up as a tech expert who could succeed him. Plus a sacrifice of that scale would tie in to his ongoing efforts to atone for past mistakes.

Very little is still known about the plot of Avengers 4, not least the alive-or-dead status of half of its cast.

But after the box office record-breaking success of Infinity War, it’s safe to assume it will be one of the big cinematic events of 2019.

Avengers: Infinity War is out now. Avengers 4 follows in May 2019.