Avengers: Endgame brought the epic MCU saga to its first major closure. Although the MCU continues on, Endgame brings a close to the four primary Avengers character arcs that come full circle. Each one completes his own journey. I’ve already covered the character journeys of Hulk, Thor, and Captain America. This final installment looks beneath the surface of Tony Stark’s narcissistic exterior to a complex character dealing with a lot of trauma and past mistakes. His daily denial of self makes Stark a much more self-sacrificing character than most would initially believe.

Tony Stark has a heart

Tony Stark is introduced to us as a narcissistic, genius, billionaire weapons manufacturer. He’s the head of Stark Industries, which makes its money off of designer newer and better weapons to sell to the United States military. Essentially, he’s a war monger, profiting off of war and destruction and feeling no moral guilt about it.

This all takes a turn when Stark is captured by terrorists and he sees that they have several Stark Industries at their disposal as well. It’s not just the “good guys” who are getting top-of-the-line weapons anymore. Somebody’s been dealing under the table, but before he can find out who, he has to escape his captors. Enter the first prototype Iron Man suit.

After his escape, Stark finds out that his second-in-command, Obadiah Stane, is the guilty party. Throughout this whole ordeal, Tony Stark has a change of heart. When Pepper Potts has Stark’s original Arc reactor framed, the phrase “Proof that Tony Stark has a heart” is symbolic of the change he is undergoing. This is key in Stark’s character arc because Stark’s need to solve every problem he encounters will become an obsession that drives him through many of the rest of the MCU movies.

Obsession and Hubris

As Stark develops more into the Iron Man role, he develops an obsession with protecting everything in his power. It begins in Iron Man with finding and destroying all of Stark Industries rogue weapons. He says, “There is nothing except this. There's no art openings, there's no benefit, there's nothing to sign. There's the next mission and nothing else.”

Then, Stark’s eyes are opened to a much larger world in The Avengers. The Chitauri invade New York, and all of a sudden humans aren’t the only sentient species in the universe. So now Stark is not only trying to protect the world from thugs and war lords, he’s trying to protect it from alien invaders as well.

The problem with Tony is his hubris. He thinks he’s the only one who can fix everything. He’s a genius, true, but he won’t allow anyone else to help him, with the exception of Bruce Banner. Together, the two of them discuss an artificial intelligence network, Ultron, that would control and army of sentries designed to protect against any further invasion and allow the Avengers to retire. While Banner expresses his doubts, the two of them secretly work to connect the Mind Stone to the Ultron program. This would eventually lead to the unleashing of Ultron, and the destruction of Sokovia, which Stark feels personally responsible for.

Ghosts of the past

In addition to dealing with the fallout of his own hubris, Stark has to constantly deal with ghosts from the past. The Stark family has not exactly had great dealing with others in the past. Stark is continually haunted by the fact that he never got to say goodbye to his parents before they died. His war profiteering leads to the problems in Iron Man. His father’s betrayal of Anton Vanko, and Stark’s own treatment of Justin Hammer create his showdown with Whiplash in Iron Man 2. In Iron Man 3, Stark’s callous treatment of Aldrich Killian years ago forces him to deal with the Extremis issue.

In short, all of the poor treatment by the Stark family is being revisited back onto Tony. Couple that with the PTSD he’s dealing with after the battle of New York and the nightmarish vision she receives from Wanda Maximoff in Age of Ultron and the personal responsibility connected to the destruction of Sokovia and being stranded on Titan after watching all of his teammates vanish into dust, and now you’ve got a character dealing with a lot of severe issues and no way to seemingly deal with it. Sleepless nights and an unhealthy obsession with ending all the problems leads Tony to become a frazzled, unhinged character.

You can finally rest

Tony finally achieves his goal in Endgame and is finally able to rest. Stark’s arrogance and narcissism is played up throughout the entire arc of his character story. You could easily sum the idea up with the conversation he has with Captain America in Avengers.

"The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you," says Rogers.

Stark replies, "I think I would just cut the wire."

"Always a way out. You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero."

Always a way out. That sums up Tony Stark. Yet, his final sacrifice in Endgame is hinted at in his storyline. When the government launches a nuclear missile in Avengers, Stark uses his suit to guide it through the portal, risking his own life to save innocent lives in the city. He’s not completely heartless, and even though he talks big, there is a self-sacrificing spot deep down inside.

After the events of Age of Ultron, Tony wants out, and he seems to find it with the Sokovia Accords, but he just can’t stop. Every time, something pulls him back in, and when Thanos shows up, Tony can’t help but chase after the ship taking Dr. Strange back to Titan. When he gets the Infinite Stone in Endgame, he doesn’t hesitate because he knows that this is the only way they can win. He puts himself aside for the good of the rest of the universe.

Perhaps the self-sacrifice that’s evident in Tony Stark is not the one-time, lay-down-your-life-for-others kind of sacrifice that we often associate with heroes. While he does have that one moment in Endgame, there is a constant self-sacrifice that Tony shows from the first Iron Man. Throughout his entire arc, Tony is constantly putting aside his personal wishes, desires, happiness to save others. Although he gets his moments of respite, he constantly carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he ultimately pays the final price for it.

Tony Stark’s storyline reminds us that it’s not the one single moment that matters. It’s the constant grind of everyday that shows who we really are.