Iron Man

In Iron Man, Tony travels to Afghanistan to demo the Jericho missile. His convoy is attacked and he's wounded by shrapnel from his own weapons. He wakes up in a cave, a prisoner of the Ten Rings, with an electromagnet in his chest that keeps the fragments from reaching his heart. The device was made by Yinsen, another prisoner.

Forced to build a Jericho for his captors, Tony secretly builds a miniature arc reactor and a crude suit of armor, the Mark I. Yinsen dies in the escape. Tony comes home and announces the company will stop making weapons.

In Malibu, he perfects the armor and discovers that Obadiah Stane, his father's partner and his right-hand man, was selling weapons to both sides and ordered the kidnapping. Stane rips the reactor out of Tony's chest and puts on a giant suit of armor. With Pepper Potts's help, Tony wins. At the press conference the next day, he ditches the script and says: I am Iron Man.

Iron Man 2 finds Tony famous, defying the government, and slowly dying. The reactor's palladium core is poisoning his blood. In Monaco, Ivan Vanko, the son of Howard Stark's former partner, attacks with electric whips. Then he teams up with Justin Hammer, Tony's rival.

Tony starts acting self-destructively, and Rhodey takes one of the suits, which becomes War Machine. Nick Fury steps in and hands over Howard's materials. In a model of the 1974 Stark Expo, Tony finds the design for a new element and synthesizes it at home. Cured, he defeats Hammer's drones and Vanko. Pepper becomes CEO of the company, and Natasha Romanoff, undercover as an assistant, evaluates Tony for the Avengers Initiative.

In The Avengers, Tony butts heads with Steve Rogers from their first meeting. When the council that controls S.H.I.E.L.D. launches a nuke at Manhattan, Tony grabs the warhead and carries it through the Chitauri portal, into space. He falls back unconscious. It was the first time he was willing to die for others, and the sight of what's on the other side never leaves his head.

Iron Man 3 shows the fallout: panic attacks, insomnia, and dozens of suits built nonstop. A terrorist called the Mandarin claims attacks across the country. Tony challenges him on TV, and his Malibu house is destroyed. Without a working suit, he ends up in Tennessee and gets help from a kid, Harley.

The Mandarin is an actor, Trevor Slattery. The real villain is Aldrich Killian, who uses the Extremis virus. Killian kidnaps Pepper and infects her. In the final battle, Tony calls in all his suits and then blows them up. At the end, he has surgery to remove the shrapnel and throws the reactor from his chest into the sea.

In Avengers: Age of Ultron, a vision triggered by the Scarlet Witch shows Tony his friends dead. Afraid, he uses the gem from Loki's scepter to create, with Bruce Banner, a global defense program. The result is Ultron, who decides to wipe out humanity. It's Tony's fault, and the Avengers know it. He also helps bring Vision to life and takes on the out-of-control Hulk with the Hulkbuster armor in Johannesburg.

Under pressure from the destruction of Sokovia, Tony backs the Sokovia Accords, which put the Avengers under the UN. Steve refuses to sign. Tony recruits a kid from Queens, Peter Parker, for the fight at the airport in Germany.

In Siberia, Tony learns from a video that the Winter Soldier killed Howard and Maria Stark in 1991. He goes after Bucky, and Steve defends his friend. Tony ends up defeated, the team split, and he receives a letter and a phone for emergencies from Steve.

In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Tony is Peter's distant mentor. He takes the kid's suit away when he puts lives at risk on the ferry, but later recognizes his worth and offers him a spot in the Avengers, which Peter turns down. At the end, Tony and Pepper get engaged.

In Avengers: Infinity War, Tony follows the ship that abducted Doctor Strange and reaches Titan with Peter. Alongside Strange and the Guardians, he nearly gets the gauntlet off Thanos. He ends up run through by a blade from his own armor, which Thanos turns against him, and Strange hands over the Time Stone to save him. After the snap, Peter dies in his arms. Tony is left stranded in space with Nebula.

Avengers: Endgame opens with Tony adrift, rescued by Carol Danvers. Five years later, he lives in a lake house with Pepper and their daughter, Morgan. Even so, he cracks the problem of time travel and rejoins the team.

On the mission, he goes to 1970 and talks with his father, Howard, without revealing who he is. In the final battle, he takes the stones from Thanos, repeats the line that opened his story, and snaps his fingers. Thanos's army disappears, and Tony dies soon after, with Pepper at his side. The funeral brings nearly every hero together at the lake.

In Spider-Man: Far From Home, the world is still in mourning. Tony leaves Peter the EDITH glasses, with access to an arsenal of drones, and the question of who will take his place hangs over the whole film.

Robert Downey Jr. is confirmed for Avengers: Doomsday, which opens December 18, 2026, but as Victor von Doom, Doctor Doom, a different character.

Tony Stark debuted in Tales of Suspense #39 in 1963, created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Don Heck, and Jack Kirby. In the original origin, he's captured during the Vietnam War, not in Afghanistan. In the comics, Tony's alcoholism is a central theme, and he never dies for good the way he does in the movies.