Having made appearances in a litany of films over the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man had a life that was anything but boring. As the hero that launched one of the biggest film franchises of all time, Tony Stark's story has been one of the MCU's most prominent arcs so far. However, due to the sheer number of films and flashbacks he showed up in, it can be rather difficult to keep the narrative chronologically coherent.
Much of Tony's childhood was laid out at the beginning of 2008's Iron Man and in various pieces of dialogue, including his rocky relationship with his father, Howard, and his mastery of certain technological fields at prodigy-level ages. As a result, it's worthwhile to break down the timeline that solely focuses on Robert Downey Jr.'s time as Iron Man and Tony throughout the MCU. There's a lot of ground to cover, from his digitally-rendered younger self in Captain America: Civil War to his heroic sacrifice in Avengers: Endgame.
1991 - Tony's Parents' Deaths (Captain America: Civil War)
The youngest that audiences physically saw Downey Jr. as Tony Stark was in a flashback of him and his parents in Captain America: Civil War. This scene depicted 21-year-old Tony's last interaction with his parents before they were taken away from him. What Tony didn't know was that his parents were murdered by Bucky Barnes, a.k.a. the Winter Soldier, who was then under the control of Hydra as a sleeper agent. As a result, Tony inherited his father's weapon-manufacturing company Stark Industries, and, with the help of Howard's old business partner and future Iron Man villain Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), led the company to many years of prosperity.
1999 - Meeting Aldrich Killian And The Birth Of Extremis (Iron Man 3)
Nearly ten years after taking over Stark Industries, Iron Man 3 showed that Tony came into contact with two important people at a Y2K New Year's Eve party in Switzerland, Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) and Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall). Killian was a disabled scientist that sought out Stark to pitch him his idea for a think tank, Advanced Idea Mechanics. However, his pitch didn't work out, as Tony ghosted him after promising that they would meet later. Killian grew to resent Stark and did everything in his power to get his idea off the ground.
Hansen showed Stark her research for a formula called Extremis, a chemical whose effects could allow humans to regenerate from physical injuries and cure disabilities/deformities, including the ability to grow back lost limbs, and was an integral part of Iron Man's legacy. However, Extremis' main side effect was its tendency to combust and explode. Hansen was the person Tony was actually seeing while he was ghosting Killian. Although he didn't fully fund her research, Tony left her a formula of his own to better counteract Extremis' volatility.
2009 - Becoming Iron Man And Obadiah's Betrayal (Iron Man)
Fast-forward to the film that started it all, the story of Tony becoming the Armored Avenger. While in Afghanistan giving a demonstration on his company's newest military-grade creation, the Jericho missile, the convoy carrying Tony was ambushed by a terrorist group using Tony's own Stark Industries weaponry, and he was wounded by shrapnel. The terrorist group that captured Tony was the MCU's introduction of the Ten Rings, and they forced him to forge weapons for them. He used a car battery connected to his chest to prevent the aforementioned shrapnel from piercing his heart. This would lead Tony to create his own miniature Arc Reactor out of spare parts for better convenience and freedom of movement.
Tony worked for the Ten Rings for about three months. However, he wasn't building weapons as he promised. Instead, he built for himself a suit made of iron (later known as the Mk. I) that aided him in his escape and eventual rescue. Upon returning to civilization, Tony vowed never to make or sell weapons again, much to the outrage of Obadiah (who was secretly working with the Ten Rings and was responsible for Tony's capture). Tony would be inspired to make a second and third Iron Suit that was more technologically advanced, using these suits to further reduce the Ten Rings' influence in the Middle East and destroy the Stark Industries weapons they had access to.
Obadiah, who believed that he was better suited to run Stark Industries, decided to follow Tony's example and construct his own Iron Suit to kill Tony, calling himself the Iron Monger. The two clashed in an epic battle, and Obadiah was killed in an explosion caused by the giant Arc Reactor that powered the Stark Industries building. This was thanks to the help of Iron Man's assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Later, at a press conference, Tony ultimately confessed his identity to the entire world with the famous phrase, "I am Iron Man." Afterward, he was paid a visit by Nick Fury, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and was introduced to the Avenger Initiative.
2010 - Fighting Whiplash And The Creation Of War Machine (Iron Man 2)
Six months after the events of Iron Man, Iron Man 2 saw Tony come into conflict with the United States government, which wished for him to share his Arc Reactor and Iron Suit technology with the military. He also locked horns with Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), the owner of Hammer Industries and a corporate competitor of Stark's. There was also the revelation that, due to his constant use of his Iron Suits, Tony Stark's chest Arc Reactor was slowly giving him palladium poisoning despite being the thing keeping him alive. Unsure of how much longer he had to live, he relinquished his position as CEO of Stark Industries to Pepper while still retaining his right of company ownership.
He then found a new assistant in Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), who was revealed later to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent under the codename Black Widow. While visiting the Monaco Grand Prix, he took the place of the driver in the Stark Industries car. However, upon crossing the finish line, he was attacked by Ivan Vanko/Whiplash (Mickey Rourke) as the introduction of Iron Man 2's villain. Using his newly-built Mk. 5 suit, Tony fought and incapacitated Vanko leading to his arrest. Tony later discovered that Vanko was the son of Anton Vanko, the man who worked with his father to create the very first Arc Reactor. This fact led Justin Hammer to hire Vanko later despite his crimes.
Depressed by his shortened life span, Tony got drunk at his own birthday party, using his Iron Suit's weapon systems to entertain his guests. His antics were ceased by his best friend, James "Rhodey" Rhodes (Don Cheadle), who commandeered the Mk. II armor and fought him to a stalemate. Rhodes then took the suit to the military and Hammer Industries, where it was outfitted with more firepower and dubbed the War Machine. Concurrently, villains Justin Hammer and Vanko developed an army of robotic drones based on Vanko's Arc Reactor design.
After hearing about Tony's sickness, Nick Fury decided to pay Tony another visit and granted him some of his father's belongings to help him find a cure. He eventually found one. This discovery was not among Fury's gifts to him, but in an old diorama of the 1974 Stark Expo that his father created, whose layout was discovered to be the structure of a new element, one that Tony deduced would not harm him with continual use. Vanko meanwhile seized control of the Hammer drones and Rhodey's suit to attack the Stark Expo. Using the knowledge his father left him, Tony Stark constructed a new Iron Man suit and Arc Reactor. Stark broke Rhodes free of Vanko's control, and the two defeated Vanko.
2010/2011 - Consulting For S.H.I.E.L.D. And Recruiting Hulk (The Incredible Hulk)
Sometime after Tony's defeat of Hammer and Vanko, Nick Fury recruited him not only for the Avengers Initiative (which Stark initially refused) but also as a consultant for S.H.I.E.L.D. While it was not specified how many tasks he had done for the agency, one task saw him appearing in the post-credits scene of The Incredible Hulk. Stark met with one of the film's antagonists, General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, by order of Agent Phil Coulson. Coulson believed that the Hulk was a better candidate for the Avengers Initiative, so asked Tony to persuade Ross not to release The Incredible Hulk's villain Abomination onto the Avengers Initiative instead.
2012 - The Battle Of New York And The Founding Of The Avengers (The Avengers)
Eventually, the Avengers Initiative was finally activated by Fury upon Loki's arrival on Earth in The Avengers. It was during a mission to capture the trickster god that Tony met the other members: Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), and eventually Thor Odinson (Chris Hemsworth). Tony's eccentric personality caused him to butt heads with most members of the Avengers, Rogers especially. However, Loki opened a portal and launched a Chitauri invasion, forcing the Avengers to put aside their differences and defend the city as a team.
As the battle transpired, the World Security Council, the superiors of S.H.I.E.L.D., decided the best course of action was to nuke the city to stop the invasion. Upon being warned, Tony intercepted the inbound nuclear missile and changed its course, directing it into the portal to end Loki's Chitauri invasion for good. He narrowly escaped the explosion and barely beat the portal's closing. Thankfully, he still survived and invited his new friends out for some celebratory shwarma.
2013 - Killian's Revenge And The Iron Legion (Iron Man 3)
Following the Battle of New York, Tony's experiences gave him PTSD. The knowledge that Earth was not alone in the universe deeply unsettled him. To cope with his stress, Tony retreated to his workshop, where he constantly built new Iron Suits of varying designs and functions, calling them his Iron Legion. The Ten Rings then began to rear their ugly heads again under the new management of a figure known as the Mandarin. However, the Mandarin was simply a cover for the true machinations of Aldrich Killian, who desired revenge against Stark for his treatment of him back in Switzerland.
Killian recruited Maya Hansen and used her Extremis formula to give him and his followers heat-based superpowers. With the help of Iron Man's Iron Legion, Pepper Potts, and James Rhodes, Tony was able to overcome his PTSD and defeat Killian and his Extremis soldiers. He later decided to destroy all the suits in the Iron Legion to show his devotion to his girlfriend Pepper, as well as finally undergoing surgery to remove the shrapnel from his chest, allowing him to freely live without an Arc Reactor supporting his life.
2015 - Creating Ultron And The Battle Of Sokovia (Avengers: Age Of Ultron)
With the Iron Legion destroyed, Tony focused his efforts on coping with his trauma by using his technical expertise to help the world rather than himself. He worked with the Avengers once again to raid a HYDRA base in Avengers: Age of Ultron, where he was given a haunting vision by Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). The dream motivated him to find a way to prevent another invasion similar to the Chitauri's several years prior. With the help of Bruce Banner, Iron Man created Ultron, a new artificial intelligence whose sole purpose was to ensure world peace at any cost. This backfired as Ultron read all human history via the internet and concluded that world peace could only be achieved if humans were exterminated.
With the help of Wanda and Pietro Maximoff/Quiksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Ultron built himself a new body from vibranium and manufactured a massive army of robots to aid him in humanity's extinction. To combat this, Tony used Loki's scepter, which housed the Mind Stone, to create Ultron's opposite using his own beloved J.A.R.V.I.S. unit, thus bringing the android Vision to life. When Ultron enacted his plan to kill humans by lifting and dropping the city of Sokovia in Age of Ultron's climax, Tony and the Avengers fought his forces alongside the Maximoff twins. Although Ultron was defeated, this resulted in the complete destruction of Sokovia and the loss of millions of civilian homes.
2016 - The Sokovia Accords And The Civil War (Captain America: Civil War)
Due to the destruction the Avengers either caused or were involved in over the past several years, Tony and his colleagues' autonomy was curbed by a new worldwide law established by the United Nations called the Sokovia Accords. The Accords stated that every super-powered, enhanced, or technologically-abled individual had to be placed on a registry and report to the UN regarding any and all heroic activities. Tony agreed and was in favor of superhero regulation. Steve Rogers, however, was not, and the situation was not helped by the MCU's Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), also known as Steve's childhood friend Bucky Barnes as well as being a former HYDRA agent.
After Barnes was framed for killing T'Chakka (John Kani), the king of Wakanda and father of T'Challa/Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Stark and several heroes who were in favor of the Sokovia Accords worked to turn Barnes in to the authorities while Captain America and his supporters tried to protect his friend and clear his name. The two groups gathered reinforcements from fellow superheroes, with Tony tracking down and recruiting Peter Parker (Tom Holland), a.k.a. Spider-Man. All the heroes clashed on the tarmac of a German airport, with Rogers and Barnes escaping to confront the villain behind the scenes, Helmut Zemo (Daniel Brühl). It was Zemo who activated the Winter Soldier.
Stark followed the two to a secret HYDRA base in Siberia, where Zemo was holed up. While Stark and Rogers formed a truce to deal with a common enemy, that truce was immediately broken by Zemo, who revealed to Stark that Barnes killed his parents during his days as a brainwashed assassin, a fact that Rogers knew but didn't tell Stark. Tony fought both Rogers and Barnes, destroying Barnes' metal arm and shattering Cap's shield. While Zemo was eventually captured by Black Panther, the schism that tore the Avengers apart seemed irreparable. Cap and Bucky went into hiding as fugitives, but not before breaking their like-minded friends out of prison.
2017 - Mentoring Peter Parker And His Proposal To Pepper Potts (Spider-Man: Homecoming)
After giving him a taste of the Avengers lifestyle and giving him a new suit, in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Tony decided to take young Peter Parker under his wing and teach Spider-Man some Iron Man-inspired lessons on being a hero. He kept close tabs on Peter to make sure he didn't get into too much trouble. However, when Peter came into conflict with a black market dealer profiteering off Chitauri weaponry, Stark realized his apprentice was in over his head and tried to prevent Peter from interfering with a "grown-up" hero's job. He confiscated the suit he gave to Peter as punishment for Peter inadvertently causing the destruction of a ferry.
Without the use of Stark's Spider Suit, Peter still managed to prove himself, however. He defeated the leader of the black market Chitauri weapon ring, Homecoming's villainous Vulture (Michael Keaton). To reward his efforts, Tony gave Peter his suit back and offered him a spot on the Avengers. However, Peter rejected his offer, claiming that he was content with being a friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man. Afterward, while still beaming with pride over how far his apprentice had come, he decided to propose to Pepper Potts on a whim, despite the fact that his head of security, Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), had been holding the engagement ring Stark bought for her for several years.
2018 - Battle On Titan And Thanos' Victory (Avengers: Infinity War)
In Avengers: Infinity War, Stark's worst nightmare came true in the form of Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his underlings invading Earth in 2018 to enact the Mad Titan's plan of eradicating half of the universe's lifeforms. He was not without help, however, as he was reunited with a long-absent Bruce Banner and was introduced to both Dr. Stephen Strange and future Sorcerer Supreme Wong, masters of the mystic arts. After forcing Thanos' advisor, the telekinetic Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughn-Lawlor), to retreat to his ship after capturing Dr. Strange and the Time Stone, Tony followed them to save the Sorcerer Supreme, with Peter Parker close behind in his new Iron Spider suit.
Tony killed Maw and rescued Strange, but they were ambushed by several members of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), and Mantis (Pom Klientieff). The ship crash-landed on Titan, Thanos' homeworld, and the two trios banded together to try and stop Thanos' plans. After Dr. Strange used the Time Stone to deduce that there was only one scenario out of several million in which they could win their fight, Thanos teleported to Titan to battle the heroes. Their efforts were in vain. Though he was not present to witness the actual snap of the Infinity Gauntlet, Tony watched as everyone around him, except for Thanos' daughter, Nebula, turn to dust.
2018/2023 - Returning To Earth And Settling Down (Avengers: Endgame)
Tony and Nebula commandeered Peter Quill's old ship, the Benatar, to make their way back to Earth. However, their food, fuel, and other resources were depleted after the first 23 days of their journey, causing the two to almost die of starvation. Thankfully, they were saved before the events of Endgame by Captain Marvel, who safely guided the ship with her strength. Tony was reunited with his friends, family, and frenemies at the Avengers' complex, where they hatched a plan to locate and kill Thanos for good.
They eventually did so, ambushing him at his farm on another planet. However, before he was killed by Thor, Thanos admitted to destroying the Infinity Stones, making his snap irreversible. Dejected, Tony and the Avengers returned home, where they would go their separate ways and find their own ways of coping with the losses of their loved ones. Tony and Pepper finally tied the knot and settled down in a lakeside cabin. They eventually had a daughter named Morgan, who became Tony's biggest pride and joy.
2023 - The Time Heist And Tony's Death (Avengers: Endgame)
Five years passed after the MCU's Snap (aka the Blip), bringing the events to 2023. Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), who had been stuck in the Quantum Realm and thus survived the mass genocide, resurfaced and located Steve Rogers and the rest of the Avengers. After figuring out the timeless nature of the Quantum Realm, Tony theorized and proved that it could be used for time travel. He and the rest of the team hatched a plan to travel to multiple points in time and gather the Infinity Stones to reverse the effects of the Blip. While he was opposed to the idea at first because he didn't want his daughter to be erased from existence, Stark ultimately joined the Time Heist.
Tony traveled with Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, and Scott Lang to Iron Man's important Battle of New York moment in 2012 to collect the Mind Stone from Loki's scepter, the Space Stone from the Tesseract (the cube that Loki used to open the Chitauri portal), and the Time Stone from the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton). While they managed to collect two of the Stones, their plan to retrieve the Tesseract failed, as it was stolen by 2012's Loki, changing the timeline. As a backup plan, Tony and Steve jump to 1970, where the Tesseract was known to be in the custody of the U.S. military. Tony retrieves the cosmic cube while also getting the chance to talk to his father one last time.
After all the MCU's Infinity Stones were secured and brought back to the present, Tony fashioned a new Infinity Gauntlet out of an Iron Suit glove, allowing them to be wielded by Banner. Everyone braced themselves as Hulk's snap was performed without erasing the events of the past five years, ensuring the safety of Tony's daughter. However, immediately after Banner's snap, a past version of Thanos emerged from Tony's Quantum portal, destroying the Avengers complex. Tony, Steve, and Thor battled the Titan only to be incapacitated, but thanks to Banner's reversal of the Blip, they were joined by the heroes and armies that were previously dusted by Thanos.
Tony used Scott Lang's Quantum Realm portal to return the Infinity Stones to their rightful timelines. Unfortunately, Thanos stole the makeshift Gauntlet before they could succeed. Tony dueled Thanos to prevent him from snapping again, but Thanos bested him. Little did Thanos know that Tony actually stole the Stones from the Gauntlet and placed this one on his own hand, granting him the power of Infinity. While speaking his famous phrase, "I am Iron Man," Tony snapped his fingers and erased Thanos and his forces from existence.
However, his act came at a cost, as his use of the Stones proved too much for his body to handle. As a result, he succumbed to his injuries and passed away, leaving behind an incredible legend and legacy. This ultimate sacrifice definitively brought Tony Stark's Iron Man and Marvel Cinematic Universe story to an end, allowing Downey Jr. to retire from the role.
Key Release Dates
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Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania
Release Date:2023-02-17 -
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Release Date:2023-05-05 -
The Marvels
Release Date:2023-11-10 -
Captain America: Brave New World
Release Date:2024-07-26 -
Marvel's Thunderbolts
Release Date:2024-12-20 -
Blade (2025)
Release Date:2025-02-14 -
Deadpool 3
Release Date:2024-05-03 -
Marvel's Fantastic Four
Release Date:2025-05-02 -
Avengers: The Kang Dynasty
Release Date:2026-05-01 -
Avengers: Secret Wars
Release Date:2027-05-01
