Marvel Fans Have Kind-Of Had It With ‘What If…?’ Repeatedly Killing The Same Beloved Character

(Spoilers for What If…? and the MCU will be found below.)

Disney+’s What If…? keeps killing the same character, over and over again, and it feels not unlike how South Park killed Kenny (“Those bastards!”) for all those years. It’s actually kind-of funny (c’mon, it is, if only because people can be way too invested in make-believe things) because the character is a seriously beloved one, who died near the end of Avengers: Endgame after saving the universe from Thanos’ genocidal madness with a reverse Snap. Certainly, the situation would have been arguably worse if this hero was Peter Parker, but thankfully, it’s only Tony Stark.

I kid, I kid. Tony Stark is right up there with Spider-Man in terms of characters that no one wanted to see die. And we saw Peter come back from the Snap, so all was well there after a one-year wait. Yet What If…? is having a ball with its non-canon status, meaning that there are no long-lasting consequences within its alternate realities, so yup, they’ve totally been killing Tony Stark. This happened for the first time a few weeks ago in a procedural-themed episode, in which a serial killer was running amuck and taking out Avengers, and now, the show has done it again.

During the course of this week’s wild episode, Black Panther‘s Killmonger (who’s arguably the greatest villain of the MCU) takes a different path, and one that goes far back in time to initially save Tony Stark from that injury that started it all, and one that helped to motivate him to use Stark Industries for good. This ends up having tragic results because Killmonger is able to harness Stark Industries’ abilities for his own, anti-Wakanda purposes, and along the way, he actually ends up killing Stark.

Of course, this is not really happening, but it’s still a gut-punch to fans to see Tony die, quite mercilessly, so they’re airing their feelings.

Will they kill Tony Stark again next week? You gotta tune in to find out.