Iron Man's Mark 85 theory: did Tony build it on Nidavellir?

In the run up to Avengers: Endgame, which opened on April 26, 2019, much was being made of Iron Man's Mark 85 armor, also called the Thanos Buster or the destroyer armor. My theory then was that Tony Stark might build it in space, on Nidavellir, with Eitri's help. A time jump would explain how he got through so many upgrades.

We'd had a couple of supposed first look leaks, titles and descriptions. So I set out the leading theories, including my own, on how the armor might be crafted, what it would be called and where it would come from.

Why I didn't think the leaked Iron Man suit was the Mark 85

The interest came from a couple of leaks. The first surfaced a couple of weeks before I wrote this. Everybody believed it gave us our first clean look at the Mark 85, with golden biceps and quadriceps harking back to the Mark 3. People had said it would be a more classic look for these defenders as they went into their final battle.

It looked great. I didn't think it was the Mark 85, though, but I'd come back to that.

What Kevin Feige's 15 to 20 minute rule suggested about Endgame's opening

Kevin Feige had confirmed that we wouldn't see anything from outside the first 15 to 20 minutes of the film. I supposed that to be true. The most recent look released at that point showed the chaos and ruin the world, and by extension New York City, had fallen into. You could read the desperate situation all over Captain America's face. He obviously hadn't coped with it, not that anybody could, and was still dealing with the immediate emotional reaction.

Meanwhile Tony Stark was still stuck in space with Nebula, trying to engineer his way out. My point was that the movie opened right after the snap. So the rumored time jump wasn't taking place at the beginning of the film.

As that timeline continued, I expected the Avengers would probably do the best they could to address what they could. I believed that would probably include recruiting Hawkeye, who had by then turned into Ronin. Tony, I thought, might have an adventure waiting for him in space.

How Ant-Man and the quantum realm fit my time travel theory

We knew that at some point Ant-Man would show up at the Avengers facility. If we believed Kevin Feige, that would be within the first 15 to 20 minutes, right after the snap. Presumably Black Widow would explain to him what Thanos did and who he is. Ant-Man would in turn tell them about the quantum realm.

Either the suit he wore into the quantum realm or other suits from the lab he may or may not have brought with him would give them the technology to travel the quantum realm and undo Thanos' snap. But a plan that complicated would need far more control than guessing which decade you end up in. They would need an engineer to reverse engineer the Pym technology.

The alternatives were traveling back in time to get Pym to do it, or ending up somewhere else on the timeline by chance and using a past Tony Stark. That mattered, since Tony Stark wasn't around. This is where my theory started to take flight, no pun intended.

Could time in space explain a Tony Stark time jump?

I thought there was precedent for this in the comics. You could move a couple of small details around, keep the comic book story in tow and have it all make sense. One of the earliest leaked and widely believed rumors about Endgame was a significant time jump from the snap. I thought that could still happen, because when time travel isn't off the table, everything else is on.

There had been a lot of talk about traveling to the past, and a couple of murmurs about traveling to the future too. One thing Marvel had not done, and I didn't blame them, was address the idea that time works very differently in space, away from the gravity of Earth or other planets. Time there would move much slower. If Tony were traveling intergalactically, by the time he got back to the planet it would be much further in the future.

I thought they might need Tony Stark in the meantime. That was where the idea of three Tony Starks might hold up.

Why I pictured Tony Stark on Nidavellir with Rocket and Thor

Another early plot leak said Tony Stark might end up on Nidavellir. The Benatar was the only ship they had, and it would go to the last place it could lock onto so Rocket could fix it. I didn't think that needed to happen for Tony to end up there.

A lot of people believed Rocket would go save Tony, given that Audi had leaked a game called Rocket's Rescue Mission. Perhaps Thor would go with him. If they were already in space close to Nidavellir, or made a detour there, that was where it could fit together.

Back on Earth, the Avengers could end up in the future working with a different Tony Stark, or in the past with the Tony Stark who was around for the first Avengers battle. As that Tony progressed and built his technology, you'd get something like the outfits in the leak. So that suit could be a Mark 55, a Mark 58 or a Mark 60.

The 35 upgrades between the Mark 50 and the Mark 85

The Mark 85 would have gone through so many changes and upgrades that it had to take time. There had to be a time jump. Maybe that was the amount of time someone would spend in space on Nidavellir designing a new suit with Eitri.

My specific point was the amount of time and variation needed between the Mark 50 we saw in Avengers: Infinity War and the Mark 85. That's 35 upgrades. Where could you be for that long? A minor upgrade doesn't warrant a new mark. A new mark is when you've progressed in your technology.

Whether Tony used what he already had, his nanotech, or went all the way in with Eitri, I believed his time on Nidavellir with Thor and Rocket, and the way time works in space, could be the answer. It could explain why it took him this long and how he could go through 35 upgrades.

Uru metal, Eitri and the destroyer armor's comic book origins

That sounds crazy, but it's not as crazy as you might think. In the comics the destroyer armor came from Odin. Odin was out of the picture, so that probably wouldn't happen. The armor was made of Uru metal, which Odin could bless upon him, and I thought Eitri could do the same. Uru metal is indestructible, something like vibranium.

A friend of mine had made the case that Tony could craft the Mark 85 out of vibranium, and that made sense too. We'd seen leaks that Tony had been in Wakanda, and with Shuri's help they could surely make those upgrades.

I thought the easy change of having Eitri provide the Uru instead of Odin also made good on an Easter egg: the shot of the Infinity Gauntlet mold still sitting on Nidavellir. I thought we weren't done there yet, and that Rocket and Thor might want to return. Even with the warning that "you simply lack the strength to wield it," if Tony himself designed the suit with Eitri's help, I thought there was a way he could.

Would the Mark 85 hold the Infinity Stones or accommodate the gauntlet?

I'd feel more comfortable calling it the destroyer armor, especially if they kept any of the comics mythology with small detail changes, as they love to do in the MCU. The ultimate question was whether it could house the Infinity Stones.

It made sense, for too many reasons to list, that Tony Stark would probably wield the stones to undo what Thanos had done, through a gauntlet or a suit. It would also make sense for him to make spots in his suit for the stones, since making armor is what he does. Still, I thought it more likely his armor would be an accommodator for the gauntlet.

Hulk was the only one big enough for his hand to fit that mold, and maybe the only one strong enough to withstand the physical demands of unsnapping the snap. Thanos and Hulk were about the same size when they squared off. The gauntlet was huge compared to when Iron Man and Spider-Man tried to rip it off his arm. There was no way they could hold it up, let alone get their fingers into each notch.

Perhaps the upgraded destroyer armor Tony returned to face Thanos in would accommodate the gauntlet and the stones, preserving Tony. Whether Eitri played the role of Odin and gave him Uru metal, or Tony built it on Earth with Shuri or alone so we could see the Mark 85's progression, I couldn't wait to see it either way.