How Avengers: Endgame Completely Changes The MCU

3. Iron Man's Sacrifice

While everyone was pretty certain that Captain America was going to bite the dust at some point during Infinity War or Endgame, it was actually Iron Man who ended up being one of the final casualties. He went out in the most epic way possible at least, using the power of the Infinity Gauntlet to eliminate Thanos and his army, sacrificing himself in the process.

It was pretty much the perfect end for Tony Stark, a man who Steve Rogers once accused of never being the one brave enough to make the sacrificial play, and it's undoubtedly going to leave a massive hole in the MCU going forward. Stark - and, by extension, Robert Downey Jr. - has been the soul of this entire franchise since its inception, and it only made sense that the end to his story also capped off the end to the MCU's first major saga.

An MCU without Tony Stark at the centre of it almost seems unthinkable, but it does offer some fascinating possibilities for the future, and acts as a major passing of the torch from the founding father to the new crop of heroes.

The universe is finally bigger than one character, and while the effects of his death will no doubt permeate over plenty of movies to come, there was no better way to signify a changing of the guard than killing the man who made the guard possible in the first place.