The death of Tony Stark in the MCU was a decade in the making, but Marvel killed off Iron Man so quietly in the comics, readers barely noticed! Tony Stark was left with near fatal wounds during the events of Civil War II in 2016, but through convoluted comic book magic he returned to the living. Or did he?
Years later it was revealed that Tony did succumb to those fatal wounds, and that one of Marvel's greatest heroes was long dead. In Marvel comics, death is a revolving door, so when Captain Marvel killed Tony Stark in Civil War II, it was hard to believe that it would stick. After sustaining multiple injuries from battle, Tony's body was put into stasis and Hank McCoy was left to try and figure out a way to save him. But after extensive tests he realized... he didn't have a reasonable solution. Tony Stark had died. But that was only the start of his next story.
Tony's presence wasn't missed for very long. Through his experiments he had successfully downloaded an AI approximation of his brain. This AI Tony went on to mentor RiRi Williams and even don the Iron Man armor. Thanks to being forward-thinking Tony was able to "reboot" his body and return from the brink. Still, for sometime things seemed amiss with Tony, and he was uncertain of his identity. After a fight with Ultron that left Tony fused to his armor, it became clear that Tony was not actually the real deal.
Through a move straight from the X-men resurrection playbook, his downloaded AI consciousness was now inhabiting a synthetic body, making him more like The Vision than Iron Man. Now, AI Tony is on the path to becoming a super villain. Retconning Tony to be long dead is a bold move by Marvel and while his absence mirrors the void left by Tony's sacrifice in Avengers: Endgame it is still hard to swallow the death of such an iconic hero happened with such little fanfare. Another bold choice made by Marvel was to have Tony's void filled by his secret brother Arno Stark. With all of Tony's genius, good looks, and an Iron Man suit, he has all of the qualities to carry Tony's torch, but can he distinguish himself from his more famous brother? And what will become of Tony?
Will the evil A.I. approximation return to the side of angels, and become bffs with The Vision? Or will the original flavor Tony return to the land of the living? With Marvel teasing the wedding of Tony Stark and Emma Frost this year it's possible that Tony's suspected bride-to-be might call in a favor from her mutant brethren to resurrect the playboy, billionaire genius in exchange for the keys to his vast industrial Iron Man empire. If that isn't true love, what is?