Thunderdome
Why Iron Man is the Greatest Avenger
“Contrary to Popular Belief, I Know Exactly What I’m Doing”
Thunderdome is a FanFare series where our writers good-naturedly debate some matter of pop culture and then leave it to the readers to decide. Read each post and vote at the bottom!Having been tasked with making the case for Iron Man as the greatest Avenger among the Big Three (Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor), I knew I faced a daunting task. It will be as difficult as proving Michael Jordan was the best player on the 1990s Chicago Bulls or that Dave Grohl is the most important Foo Fighter. As a point of clarification, I will use Iron Man and Tony Stark interchangeably here; it’s the same person after all. Let’s get started.
The one thing most Tony Stark detractors will immediately use to minimize his importance is the Iron Man suit itself. They will say without the suit he is nothing. Even Captain America fell into this trap, bringing the classic exchange in The Avengers:
Steve: Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?
Tony: Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.
Tony is all that and more, but the fact that he is not the product of the super soldier serum (like Steve) or a god (like Thor) makes him not less of a hero, but more. He is, wealth and intelligence aside, just like any of us; this makes him more relatable than either of the other two. And besides, if we’re going to say Tony was nothing without the suit, then honesty demands that we say without the serum Steve was a 97-pound weakling with a big heart and without godlike powers Thor was a fairly muscular surfer dude.
That out of the way, let’s look at a few things in the MCU that go very differently without Tony Stark around to save the day.
In The Avengers, if Iron Man doesn’t intercept the nuclear missile headed for New York and redirect it into the Chitauri mothership not only is all of New York destroyed, but all of the Avengers on the ground with the possible exception of Hulk and Thor are killed as well. Plus, since the nuke hitting New York would not have defeated the Chitauri, earth would have ultimately fallen.
In Avengers: Infinity War, had Tony not pursued Ebony Maw into space to save Doctor Strange, Strange would have certainly died pre-snap. Strange would then not have been on Titan to tell Tony that out of 14,000,605 possible outcomes the Avengers only prevail in one of them. And in case you forgot, that one winning outcome has Iron Man making the final snap, which is why Doctor Strange gave up the Time Stone to Thanos to keep him from killing Tony.
And let’s not forget the little things Tony did totally apart from the Iron Man suit. He created much of the tech and gadgets the Avengers use, including the Hulkbuster and Iron Spider suits. He also figured out a little thing called time travel; great as they are, neither Thor nor Captain America were ever going to pull that off. It is the one and only thing that even makes Avengers: Endgame possible in the first place.
Tony played a key role in defeating any number of villains over the course of the films, starting with Iron Monger and ending with Thanos, but in the end none of this is what makes him the greatest Avenger. What makes him great is the change he underwent as a person. We meet him as a narcissistic playboy concerned only with his own pleasure. Over the course of the films he slowly becomes the most selfless character of all, nearly dying multiple times before his ultimate sacrifice.
Perhaps the most poignant example of how much Tony has grown as a person doesn’t come during his heartfelt messages to Pepper, but during an exchange with Nick Fury in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Describing to Fury that what he saw when Wanda Maximoff got inside his head was the deaths of the Avengers:
Tony: I watched my friends die. You’d think that’d be as bad as it gets, right? Nope. Wasn’t the worst part.
Fury: The worst part is that you didn’t.
The others saw things from their past when Wanda got in their heads; Tony saw his friends and the thing he feared most. He cared more about the Avengers than the Avengers cared about themselves.
Don’t think for a minute that I don’t love Cap and Thor; I do. But from their first appearance to their last, they stay essentially the same. Steve sheds his blind faith in the government and Thor becomes focused on his people rather than himself, but Tony’s transformation is more remarkable by far. It’s one thing to overcome villains from another world; it is something else entirely to overcome your own flaws. Few of us ever really manage to, and fewer still to the degree Tony did. The jump from “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist” to “I love you 3000” is easily his greatest accomplishment.
I could ramble on about the many reasons that Iron Man is the greatest of the Avengers, but instead I’ll wrap up by letting someone who knew him far better than me make the case with one sentence. In Avengers: Infinity War, after Tony has gone into space on Ebony Maw’s ship trying to save Doctor Strange, Captain America tells Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross:
“Earth just lost her best defender, so we’re here to fight.”
Earth’s best defender. That’s what Steve Rogers believed about Tony Stark. It’s what I believe too.
What say you?
Based only on the arguments presented (you have read all of them, haven’t you?) and not on personal preference: who wins this bout? Voting closes on July 7 at 11:59 PM.The other entries:
