In one of the most eagerly anticipated Marvel projects for Disney+, Robert Downey Jr. will reprise his role as Tony Stark/Iron Man. The character was last seen in Avengers: Endgame, and now the film’s writer has explained why the MCU’s most adored figure had to die in the first place.

Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely were interviewed by Vanity Fair. Beginning with Captain America: The First Avenger, the duo authored scripts for many Marvel films. With Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, they wrote the most current plotline. They talked about killing Tony Stark and giving Steve Rogers the happy ending he deserved.

“We realized over the course of the movies, that Cap and Tony were on crossing arcs,” McFeely said.

“Cap, who had started as completely selfless and was jumping on grenades willy-nilly, was becoming more self-interested.

“Not to say selfish, but if you watch Civil War, particularly, he’s making decisions based on what he wants, even if it breaks up the Avengers.”

He added: “And Tony started as the brash billionaire playboy, and the stakes are growing for him, the responsibility’s growing for him.

“We realized at one point, late in 2015, that for Steve to be his best self, he was going to have to get a life and for Tony to be his best self, he might have to lose his.”

“Sometimes the grenade goes off,” McFeely continued, referring to Rogers’ selfless deed in The First Avenger.

Christopher Markus said: “If you just keep going until it peters out or you lose interest, it kind of decays backward, making [people] think less of everything that came before. To have the opportunity to very deliberately tie all those threads together and have it add up to something and have it end, that’s what stories are about. That’s how you judge whether something was great or not. If at the end of The Great Gatsby, they got into a car and drove off and then we wondered what was going to happen next? We wouldn’t have remembered that…. It needs an end or it loses meaning. The end is what cements the thing, to actually sew it together and bring it to a crescendo, and yeah, take people off the board, finish their arcs. If Tony made it out the other side, and Iron Man 4 was waiting there, you’d be like, [shakes head] One too many…” ”

Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, Chris Evans’ Captain America, and Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man all died in Avengers: Endgame. Tony puts the six Infinity Stones into his armored hand and snaps his finger in the concluding minutes of the film. He ended Thanos’ reign by completing the ultimate good deed, but the energy generated from it also annihilated him.

The authors explained why Tony Stark had to die rather than merely retire since it would always mean the potential of Iron Man 4.

In 2008, Tony Stark launched the MCU with Iron Man. It was a lovely thing to see him learn to be unselfish, culminating in his sacrifice to save the universe. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s also beautiful and well-deserved.

There were speculations in recent weeks that Chris Evans might make a cameo appearance in Disney+’s Falcon and Winter Soldier, but it turns out that he is no longer Captain America. Marvel fans will be able to hear Robert Downey Jr.’s voice in the Disney+ What…If TV series.

Following the release of Avengers: Endgame, there were a slew of strong emotional reactions. The film’s other significant OG Avenger fatality was Black Widow, and the Endgame writers recently expressed remorse over how that scene was handled.