Iron Man 2
Is Iron Man power by the Tesseract ? InIron Man 2 , Tony Stark develops a still - unknown Modern component to exchange the toxic palladium in his arc nuclear reactor that ’s tardily kill him , giving him immense raw free energy and starting him on a caterpillar tread to creating the House Party , the Iron Legion , Ultron and many more gamy - tech suits . This element occur from a hypothesis developed by Howard Stark and , in the pic ’s novelisation , was described as " Vibranium " , but the alloy ’s presence inCaptain America : The First Avenger , Avengers : Age of UltronandBlack Pantherrenders that non - canon .
Indeed , the sequence inIron Man 2where Tony synthesise the Modern factor has connections to a unlike domain of the MCU . The equipment he utilize occur from boxes markedProject Pegasus , the radical analyzing the Space Stone inThe Avengersand later revealed to have been active since at least the 1980s inCaptain Marvel , with affaire from Dr. Wendy Lawson and , presumptively , Howard Stark . With a drawing of the cosmic cube breifly shown , Iron Man 2was the first introduction of the Tesseract in the MCU , and it could yet demonstrate to be one of the most authoritative .
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found on what ’s been revealed about Project Pegasus , it would seem that his new component infer from research done around the Tesseract ; the hypothesis from Howard Stark and the characterization by his son using tech from Lawson ’s squad . At the least , this intend that Iron Man ’s arc reactor fromIron Man 2onwards ( assuming the technical school in the machine is the same after it stops being used to keep the shrapnel from his heart inIron Man 3 ) is link pretty to Space Stone engineering .
For the longest time , the effrontery would be that it simply unlocked knowledge of a novel molecular authorship . But , nowCaptain Marvelhas shown thatMar - Vellwas able to make replica of Tesseract energy , it ’s potential to go a step further . Was what Tony made actually a reproduction of Tesseract techology ?
This would mean Iron Man is substantially more powerful than many assume , and has been since before the Avengers first gather . While that does n’t reframe any of his military mission , it would leave a neat account for how his tech after just a few years of development can hold its own with beings who are basically deity . It would also line up similarInfinity Stonederivation inAvengers : Age of Ultron , where the genocidal robot come from the Mind Stone ’s " brain " .
With that subsequence facet in mind , it may be that even Tony is n’t aware of the entailment of what he ’s made . Project Pegasus and its purpose was a massive arcanum ( and Howard Stark loved keep those from his boy ) and while he did uncover S.H.I.E.L.D. ’s plan to use the Tesseract for their own means inThe Avengers , but that was only ever to wield power and never associate back to the cube .
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As already mentioned , Tony Stark would n’t be the first hero in the MCU timeline to be powered by the Space Stone;Captain Marvelrevealed that Carol Danvers ' gather her superpowers when exposed to Mar - Vell ’s hyperspeed engine power by the Tesseract . This works nicely from a more abstract point of persuasion . Carol has long been equate as aCaptain America or Thor replacementdue to her military setting and time period origin story or cosmic power severally , but this scene connect her more nearly to Iron Man : she is passably much a distillation of look of all three core Avengers .
But beyond potential symbolisation , this could have some narrative importance . Considering howCaptain Marvel ’s Brobdingnagian king - setis have a bun in the oven to be all important in stopping Thanos inAvengers : Endgame , could a develop link between Iron Man and the Space Stone also take on a part ? Or will this examine to be the missing slice in how Tony Stark and Nebula return to Earth at the jump of the movie ?
Admittedly , this is just a hypothesis and there ’s not much evidence beyondIron Man 2to back up this thinking . Conversely , though , there ’s niggling to work directly against it . After all , while the movie in motion is nine yr old , it was full of central setup for the hereafter of the MCU , with aS.H.I.E.L.D. map that introduced Wakanda and Atlantis , as well as a retconned cameo from Peter Parker . This Tesseract arc nuclear reactor , however , would take thing to the next tier .
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