We all now know (or can make an educated guess) that Tony Stark is indeed the one to create Ultron. What, though, should be Tony’s character arc through this film? And what will bring him back to the Iron Man suit after giving it up last time?
I think the first thing that should be brought up is Tony’s want for a better world. Tony is finally ready to settle down and stop being Iron Man but that doesn’t mean the world doesn’t need a figure to defend it. Using his technology, Tony builds his most powerful piece of technology yet, devoting two whole years to developing the technology for this figure.
After all, in Iron Man, Tony only spent a few weeks fully developing and testing his new and improved Iron Man suit. After two years, the guy should’ve made an incredibly good piece of hardware as J.A.R.V.I.S. developed a sister A.I. This would give J.A.R.V.I.S. a connection with the new machine that would play out well at a later date. This sister A.I. is U.L.T.R.O.N., of course played by James Spader.
Tony sits the movie out for a bit as the rest of the Avengers get reintroduced and the new characters are brought in. This would allow for Tony to create the robot but give the rest of the Avengers the plot they deserved. Hawkeye will likely be the one who serves the primary purpose to introduce the new characters while Black Widow will likely be doing some soul-searching. Captain America will have, I think at least (haven’t seen TWS), concluded his “man-out-of-time” issue and it will likely just be him continuing the last plot thread left dangling after TWS (I’ve just guessed what it would be and don’t know if I’m right or wrong but won’t say it just in case of spoiling it).
However, Tony’s creation of U.L.T.R.O.N. goes haywire when it is alerted of an issue across the world, showing U.L.T.R.O.N. that humans are inherently violent. Tony tries to stop U.L.T.R.O.N. with the Hulkbuster armor but the Hulkbuster armor is destroyed. U.L.T.R.O.N. won’t hurt Tony, as it was a built-in A.I. imperative, as well as ensuring peace and order, that J.A.R.V.I.S. came up with but U.L.T.R.O.N. kills Pepper.
Now, I think this gets Tony back to the basics. Tony has always been the guy who has taken responsibility for his own mistakes. He became Iron Man because of the errors that he’d made with his company. There is no bigger failure than the thing that was supposed to protect the world has just killed your girlfriend. Tony would be absolutely devastated.
U.L.T.R.O.N. gets away to deal with the Avengers, who are responsible for a lot of the errors that humanity has. Tony uses his only other suit, an essential re-paint of the Mark 42 armor, to go after U.L.T.R.O.N. and assemble the Avengers with him. U.L.T.R.O.N., in his basic form, is basically defeated. However, he is also an A.I. and finishes the development of an even stronger version of himself that has taken some S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol to destroy the world instead of just the threats S.H.I.E.L.D. has.
The Avengers team up again to bring him down as J.A.R.V.I.S. assembled himself as a new suit as well: Vision. With Vision finally complete, the Avengers take down U.L.T.R.O.N. and save the world. Tony, however, would still be distraught about losing Pepper and would likely decide to stop being Iron Man altogether as the world is a worse place than it was before.
The team has been bitterly divided by the events in the film and they all return to their personal lives only to reunite for an even larger threat in the final Avengers film in the trilogy.
So, what do you guys think? Should Ultron kill Pepper? Or would you rather a different character arc for Tony that didn’t essentially re-iterate the main idea of his origin? Tell me below! And, remember, keep it civil!