7. ...Or Worse, Someone Else Will
Perhaps one of the most emotional moments in The Avengers is, (SPOILERS) the death of everyone's favorite agent Phil Coulson. (END SPOILERS) This death weighs on Tony so much that when he battles Loki in a one on one confrontation later on in the film, he specifically launches an attack in honor of his fallen friend. Now he and this friend weren't exactly the closest, so imagine if someone even closer to him were to be harmed in some sort of way, be it permanently or temporarily. Two such instances look to be plausible for Iron Man 3, and these two instances look to be the most damaging. Rumor has it that Happy Hogan is going to be massively injured, if not die in this film; and this shot from one of the trailers doesn't help that rumor. Also, it looks like he's wearing an arc reactor or something that glows like one underneath his shirt. But perhaps the bigger question is, what's going to happen to Pepper? This question is all the more relevant when in the latest trailer, she's seen screaming, assumably in pain, in a harness of some sort. A harness that looks identical to the ones Aldrich Killian is using for some reason on a whole bunch of other "test subjects". Could Pepper be on the block for some sort of mad scientific proceedings? After seeing Pepper threatened, and Happy possibly dead, one would think that Tony would simply ride out for revenge and then call it quits after. The last thing he, or we, want to see is him standing over the crumpled body of a fallen compatriot.