Did Tony Stark Become Doctor Doom? The Endgame Gap Behind One Avengers: Doomsday Theory

There's a narrative gap in the third act of Avengers: Endgame that has to do directly with Tony Stark: what he did with the Infinity Stones between the time heist and the snap. My theory is that he may have used them to try to cheat his own death, and that in doing so he could have been reincarnated as Victor Von Doom.

Doomsday has been billed as a direct sequel to Endgame. The first preview trailer shows a much younger Steve Rogers than the old man Cap who handed Sam the shield. That suggests the story picks up sometime shortly after Cap returned Mjolnir and the stones and decided to start a family with Peggy Carter. But that isn't the only narrative gap in the third act of Endgame. The other one involves Tony, and what happened between the Avengers obtaining the stones and Tony building a fully functional Stark Tech Infinity Gauntlet.

This is the guy who nearly ended Earth's population with one Infinity Stone during Age of Ultron. Are we supposed to believe he had all six in one place, knew what they could do combined, and never explored the possibilities while they were in his possession? There's a ton of evidence that this missing stretch of scenes sets up what's about to come in Doomsday, with Easter eggs across the Infinity Saga and the Multiverse Saga.

Doomsday looks set to fill in Endgame's gaps for Steve Rogers and Tony Stark

This theory hinges on the idea that Doomsday goes back to Endgame. Leaks and rumors throughout the year heavily implied that Steve Rogers may have caused an incursion by not returning to the proper time in the 616, staying in the past with Peggy, having a child and living out his life. There was a notable demand for the Russos to fill in those blanks, and we were hearing rumors about a Nomad series that would cover that time gap.

Since that show didn't happen, it seems clear to me that this part of the story will be folded into Steve's return and explained at the start of Doomsday. That, to me, goes some way to cementing that they'll do the same thing with Tony, because the lead antagonist, Doctor Doom, looks exactly like him. The Russos have confirmed that will be addressed. Anthony Mackie, in a very early quote about the film, also indicated it would pick up in the emotional aftermath of Tony Stark's death.

The one in 14,000,605 odds would have driven Tony to investigate the stones

Once he had the stones, Tony would have known one key fact from Doctor Strange, possibly one of the only facts he had as the team pulled off the time heist and prepared to bring everyone back from the blip. Strange told him he saw only one outcome out of 14,000,605 in which they won. So even with all the stones in hand, Tony would still be working on the assumption that they had a one in 14,000,605 chance.

With a mind like Tony's, that would surely push him to study the stones for ways to make sure they were on the one true path. You have to imagine this was always at the front of his mind, because the moment he sees Strange in the third act, that's exactly where he goes. No introductions and no hugs like the one he gave Peter Parker, only the question of whether this is the outcome where they win. That drove his whole purpose.

He clearly understood the consequences of misusing the stones. Right before Hulk snaps, Tony tells him he's only bringing everybody back, not changing anything else. But while the stones sat in his lab being analyzed so he could fabricate the gauntlet, I think he may have been tempted to use the Time Stone himself to see the possible outcomes, if he could, only to make sure they were on that one winning path.

Tony may have had the means to tap the Time Stone

Could Tony access the Time Stone the way Strange did? That's an interesting conjecture. I'd argue Strange needed magic and spells to activate the stone through the Eye of Agamotto. But it's also shown in canon that anyone who obtains an Infinity Stone seems able to use it, if they can wield it.

In this case, with the lab, the Stark Tech gauntlet and the nanotech, I think he would have been able to access information about the stones at the very least, and maybe even some of their capabilities.

Tony could have foreseen his own death and turned to the Soul Stone

If Tony did see possible outcomes, it means he saw one of two things. There's a chance that across the multiverse he saw Thanos defeated in ways that didn't require him to die, as we saw on Earth 838 in Multiverse of Madness. But I think it's far more likely that Strange was telling the truth. As skeptical as Tony always was of him, Strange was being honest.

That means Tony may have foreseen his own death while using the Time Stone to work out which path they should be on. That may have led him to the other stones to look for a way around it, and I think it would have led him to focus on the Soul Stone. This may be why the deleted scene of him seeing his daughter in the soul world was cut: to avoid that context and save it for a future film the Russos may or may not have known they would make.

It's fair to assume that if Tony foresaw his death as the only way to win, he might also have used the stones to do whatever he could to avoid it. When he snapped to erase Thanos and his army, knowing it would cost his life, he could have been using the stones in exactly the way he told Hulk not to, changing something else to preserve himself. With some combination of the stones, that may have perverted his soul or his existence and led to him being reincarnated as Victor Von Doom.

Age of Ultron ties Tony Stark and the Infinity Stones to a dark future

The theory goes deeper when you look at the canon suggesting Tony was meant to become Doom all along. In Age of Ultron, his first meaningful contact with an Infinity Stone, every scene pairing Tony with a stone seems to foretell doom. In the first act, Wanda, whose powers are tied to the Mind Stone, gives him a vision in which all of the Avengers are dead because of him. He believes it so much that in the second act he tells Nick Fury, "I'm the man who killed the Avengers. I saw it. It's my legacy."

Fury insists the vision is only Wanda's doing, and at the time we read the scene as foreshadowing Infinity War and Endgame. Perhaps there was a deeper meaning. With what has been revealed for Doomsday and Secret Wars, Tony Stark plus an Infinity Stone equals a bad future. The film reiterates it in the next act, when Banner tells Tony a suit of armor around the world sounds like a cold world, and Tony replies, "I've seen colder." That scene is Tony working with the Mind Stone, scaffolding off Jarvis to create Ultron.

That scene also establishes important canon. Back then he already had the technology to analyze and harness an Infinity Stone, and he developed plenty more tech before he held the stones in Endgame. So it establishes not only how he might have tapped the Time Stone to look into the future, but his willingness and experience in doing so. In Age of Ultron the stakes were having the Mind Stone for three days. In Endgame, they were a one in 14,000,605 shot.

Ultron's final words could be foreshadowing Doomsday

There's also what happens in the third act of Age of Ultron, right before Vision ends the last version of Ultron, who says, "They're doomed." The Ultron that Tony created took one look at humanity and decided it needed to be destroyed. Perhaps that's because he foresaw what would happen if Tony were allowed to become Doctor Doom, and destroying humanity on Earth in the 616 is a much better call than Doom destroying the entire multiverse.

Much has been made of why Ultron would phrase it that way, and words do matter. The same film used the word endgame to foretell the fourth Avengers title. Here, they could have been foreshadowing the fifth as well.

Tony's farewell message shows his mortality was already on his mind

There's proof Tony's mortality was on his mind alongside the odds: the holographic message that played at his funeral. From his dialogue leading up to that scene, we know he recorded it the night before the time heist. And it's never stated how much time passed between getting the stones and putting them in the gauntlet for the snap.

Saying goodbye to his daughter was presumably in case he died during the time heist. But he also says, "In the case of an untimely death on my part," almost as though he's aware he may die in what's coming. He didn't have the stones yet, but death was already on his mind. Then he suddenly had the same Time Stone Strange had. It's almost as if he may have looked into the future not only to stumble on his own death, but to look for it specifically.

Either Tony became Doom, or Doom stole his identity

I've spent a lot of time thinking about theories like this, and Doom looking like Tony is probably attributable to only one of two explanations. Tony may be responsible because he came back as Victor Von Doom, or he's not responsible because Doom stole his identity, so to speak.

Tony's identity in the 616 means a lot emotionally only to the characters who were invested in him. Both current Avengers teams, one headed by Bucky and Yelena and the other by Sam Wilson, are led by people with a bad history with Tony. He's responsible for their arrest, and they were on opposite sides of Civil War. Since Bucky and Sam were snapped back during the battle in Endgame, it doesn't seem there would have been any reconciliation. So a Doom who stole Tony's face and tried to win over either team would be ridiculous.

That's why I don't think Doom is after Steve Rogers as an enemy. I think he wants him as an ally. Bucky and Sam may not side with Doom, but they'll side with Steve, and if Doom can convince Steve, he has the Avengers. I think he wants them to take on Loki. It would be easy to convince everyone Loki is still a villain, because they haven't seen his rehabilitation and arc in Loki seasons 1 and 2. They may assume he's still the villain from the first Battle of New York.

To me, this is one of the more plausible theories I've put forward, though the two explanations remain mutually exclusive, and we don't know which one is true. When I laid this out, Doomsday hadn't arrived, and I didn't expect the trailers to answer or even address it. But this is the first plausible motivation I've heard for why Tony would and could have done something with the Infinity Stones that ended up resurrecting him as Victor Von Doom. And if Doom stole his identity instead, Tony Stark bears no responsibility in any of this.