Throughout the MCU, there was one thing fans could count on. If Tony Stark was in a movie, there would be advancements in his Iron Man suit. Always changing, adapting to different threats and circumstances, the Iron Man suit’s evolution rivals that of its pilot. Those changes and upgrades meant that the suit that defeated Thanos was not the suit that Tony Stark flew over Los Angeles in, many years before.
Tracking those changes and the reasons for them can show a lot about Tony Stark’s growth as a character as well. But without doing too deep a dive into his psyche, the suits are still too cool not to check out.
10 Operating system upgrades by necessity
Tony relied heavily on Jarvis in the building and running of the original suit and several of the ones after that, so much so that he had a bumper sticker in the Quinjet that read “Jarvis is my co-pilot.” When Jarvis was eventually downloading into the Vision’s body and became part of his consciousness, Tony implemented Friday —one of many options shown on his desk in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Friday’s fight analysis ability factored into Iron Man’s fight against Captain America and Bucky in Captain America: Civil War, allowing him to see some weak points in their attack.
9 Less vulnerability for the arc reactor
The original suits were built around Tony’s arc reactor, which kept him alive, keeping shrapnel out of his heart. The arc reactor itself evolved several times, going from palladium-based to using a new element in Iron Man 2, and eventually being removed from Tony’s chest entirely in Iron Man 3.
While it looks like the nano-tech armor still uses arc reactor energy to run —the unit being housed in the same container as the nano-bots themselves— after his reactor was smashed in Captain America: Civil War, it seems Tony made a conscious effort to rework how vulnerable that part of his suit was.
8 Ease of use becomes more & more important
The original Iron Man suit that Tony Stark developed in Iron Man (2008) was, to put it mildly, a pain to get out of. The original suit required several mechanical devices to get Tony out. There was some advancement in Iron Man 2, with the suitcase suit, that was based on the Silver Centurion suit from the comics, and in Avengers where the suit was able to “catch” him while flying out a window.
By the time Thanos and the Black Order battled Tony Stark directly, the suit was carried in a palmed-sized housing on Tony’s chest, and it was much easier to deploy and carry around.
7 Filling in the gaps
Before Tony had the nanotech armor, there were spaces in the armor that, after fighting Scott Lang in Captain America: Civil War, Tony did his best to fill. This gap was even exploited by Tony and Scott during the Avengers: Endgame time heist, when Ant-Man snuck into the 2012 suit and caused Tony to go into cardiac arrest.
While it takes a special set of powers that only a few have to exploit those small gaps in the armor, they were holes that Tony felt confident needed filling.
6 Space capability becomes vital
While Jarvis brought up the possibility of space travel in the suit in the first Iron Man movie, it wasn’t until after the Battle of New York that he started to develop this tech. By the time the Black Order landed on Earth, Tony’s suit was more than capable of traveling to sub-orbital environments, and he’d incorporated that tech into Peter Parker’s StarkTech suit as well.
This upgrade may have been triggered, in universe, by Tony’s experiences in the Battle of New York, and his need to be prepared for every eventuality. By making sure the suit could travel in space, he became more effective against different threats.
5 Tony starts a parts recall system
In Iron Man 3, fans got to see a new aspect of the suit. Tony had developed tech that would come when he called it and build the suit around him. This new tech proved very useful in his final battle with Aldrich Killian, the would-be Mandarin. The suits in the final battle in Iron Man 3 did have to be calibrated to Tony to work, much to Rhodey’s disappointment.
This idea was also incorporated into the Veronica protocol, which would not only send the Hulkbuster armor to the scene of any Hulk-related incident but would repair the suit on the fly during the fight.
4 Remote operations
While this was more of a one-off precursor to the Ultron protocol, Tony being able to remotely operate the suits in Iron Man 3 changed the expectation of what he could do and what he was capable of doing, even while injured or dealing with a mental health issue.
While we rarely see Tony use this after IM3, the connectivity seems to be an aspect of his Iron Legion in Avengers: Age of Ultron, which then led to the creation of the Ultron personality from the mind stone.
3 Power Absorption
In the first Avengers movie, Tony Stark and Thor made a discovery during their fight in the woods. Thor’s lightning will power up Tony’s suit to an impressive degree. Since that fight, Tony has adapted the suit to absorb that power and increase the output of his weapons systems in turn.
This ability to convert energy in a useful way was shown in the fight that Thor, Captain America, and Tony had against Thanos after the destruction of the Avengers compound in Avengers: Endgame.
2 Going from physical weapons to energy ones
In the first Iron Man movie, we see missiles and other physical weapons coming from the Iron Man suit in fights, but that was a short-lived thing for Tony. While the War Machine suit continues to have big guns and missiles involved, Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit has fully converted to energy-based weapons.
While the repulsors did start as a flight stabilizer, they’ve been developed and fine-tuned to blast away any bad guys Tony comes across in a fight, without relying on a physical projectile, like a bullet.
1 Molecular Integration allows the ultimate sacrifice
When Tony developed the nano-tech suit, the suit’s capability took a quantum leap forward. Not only could it be easily carried in a housing that resembled the original arc reactor, but it could integrate items that were not originally part of the suit. This is first shown with Tony’s sunglasses in Avengers: Infinity War, as they disappear into the forming suit.
This ability, above all the other upgrades, allowed Tony to get the infinity stones away from Thanos and use them to destroy Thanos and his army. The nano-tech’s ability to integrate outside items, like the stones, let it form a new gauntlet, allowing Tony’s snap and his sacrifice to save the world.