Despite the endless number of timelines in the Marvel Multiverse, many realities tend to follow the same outlines -- featuring many of the same prominent figures, heroes, and villains. But sometimes, even a slight subversion can turn the most loyal of allies into the craftiest of foes.
Pepper Potts is usually one of the most reliable figures in Iron Man's orbit, regardless of which reality. But in one of the domains featured in Secret Wars, one version of the character went full femme fatale and killed her way to a major win over that timeline's Tony Stark.
Pepper Potts has long been a part of the Marvel Universe, debuting all the way back in 1963 in Tales of Suspense #45 (by Stan Lee, Robert Bernstein, and Don Heck). Pepper was established as Tony Stark's loyal personal assistant, in a role similar to Gwyneth Paltrow's portrayal of the character in the Iron Man films. In the MCU, Pepper quickly became Tony Stark's primary love interest -- even marrying him and having a daughter, Morgan Stark. In the comics, Pepper remained loyal to Tony but had no romantic relationship with him. Instead, she married Happy Hogan and, after his death, took up the mantle of Rescue.
But the variant of her who appeared in the story "Who Killed Tony Stark?" (by Frank Tieri and Richard Isanove) from Secret Wars Journal #3 was a good example of how deadly a ruthless version of the character could be. The events of the story saw the multiverse reworked into a patchwork planet known as Battleworld. Each region of the globe was effectively its own reality, with variants of major characters to reflect that area's tone. This included the domain known as Old Town, which seemed to be similar to the world featured in the Marvel Noir series. In this world, a variant of Wolverine operated as a private investigator, hired to look into the death of local industrialist Tony Stark. Informed of everything by Pepper Potts and led to believe it was this domain's Mandarin (a local crime boss) who killed Stark, Logan set out to confront the criminal.
Finding and confronting him, Logan discovered this wasn't the Mandarin of his world -- but rather a dangerous variant, who'd escaped from his own world and stolen his other self's life. Alongside this realm's Punisher, the heroes discovered that a group of villains from the nearby domain of Apocalypse (a realm based on the Age of Apocalypse crossover) had killed their Old Town counterparts and impersonated them. Among their number was the AoA variant of Pepper Potts -- who'd already killed her counterpart long before Wolverine got involved. After robbing Stark and killing him with one of the Mandarin's blades, this version of Pepper led Logan right to her former ally, tying up that loose end before making her escape. The story ends with this villainous Pepper triumphant and a trail of bodies in her wake.
In all of her various iterations, Pepper has frequently been established as far more clever than anyone gives her credit for. She's constantly underestimated. All the attributes that make her brilliant also make her dangerous, and it's incredibly lucky that the Iron Man of Earth-616 has a noble version of her character. Secret Wars was a great place to highlight how certain characters could become completely different kinds of heroes or villains under slightly altered circumstances, and the reveal that Pepper could have been Marvel's most dangerous femme fatale is an underrated highlight of that concept.