#spideyykid

I've been wanting to talk about this for a while now, and with my finals slowly coming to a close, I can procrastinate juuusst long enough to make this post.

For a very long time there has been this trend of talking about how Tony Stark creates his own villains (and even villains for others). Even people who love his character include this in their arguments, how his character arc is defined by him attempting to rectify his past actions. His own trilogy is connected by this need of bettering himself, and that starts with fixing his mistakes and protecting the ones he loves. This change from playboy rich kid to savior of the universe is what makes him so interesting to some compared to a character like Steve Rogers, his foil.

Steve Rogers is supposed to personify good, even from the start he is defined by what is to be seen as an all encompassing selfless nature. He does good, good things come from it, he is rewarded, rinsed and repeated. He is rarely told no, because to his credit, he usually is right when it comes to what is morally correct. Since Steve Rogers starts as the good, he has nowhere to grow outside of this narrative, and is constantly surrounded by yes men. He is charismatic in a golden boy type way, America's golden boy. He isn't used to being told no, and on the off chance that he is incorrect, whether fully or partially, he is unwilling to listen to another perspective.

Of course, as previously mentioned, he is usually correct. Key word: usually. So, on the few occasions he is wrong, he is unable to grasp the concept of compromise. He has a very black and white view of the world, and he fully believes that he is always in the white.

Tony Stark, on the other hand, has a different perspective.

Oftentimes, Tony has a very negative self image of himself and his impact on the world. It's easy to forget that it wasn't him who built his empire, but his father. The comics go further in depth with his relationship with the late Howard Stark, but unfortunately the movies attempted to mellow the man out, and even redeem him slightly in later movies (see: Endgame).

In short, at his best, Howard was incredibly dismissive and harsh with his son, and at his worst downright abusive. Tony was essentially groomed to take over a company which was already responsible for providing weapons that slaughtered thousands, profiting from war and destruction. His morality started at a deficit, in the eyes of the characters, the audience, and even to himself.

Unlike Steve, who is supposed to represent two sides of the same coin when it comes to dual roles, both as Steve Rogers the soldier and Captain America the hero, Tony Stark asks the question- "Can a hero do good despite the evil his alter ego has committed?"

Tony essentially has to work against a legacy that he didn't start, a life he was groomed into, and the consequences of his unhealthy coping mechanisms. With that, the main point of this post- why I think the statement "Tony Stark is responsible for his (and others) villains" is (mostly) utter bullshit.

In order to do this, we first need to define what being responsible means. This is important, because if you just define responsible as “connected with,” it muddles down the severity of the action. 

What makes someone responsible?

Responsible means being the primary cause of something and so able to be blamed or credited for it.

The word primary is the most important here, as well as understanding that a character being angry at Tony does not equate him being responsible for their actions. This is a common tactic used to victim-blame, that person A did something to either upset or provoke person B, making person A responsible for person B’s actions. 

In order for Tony Stark to be responsible for a villain, he had to directly cause an action to take place, which then created the villain in question. He also has to be the primary cause of said action, and not just a vessel for the anger of someone who feels like they’ve been wronged and are using him as a metaphorical punching bag.

Now, let us move down the list of the villains he is known for creating, and count the ones he's actually responsible for.

Ready?

Obadiah Stane & The 10 Rings: Iron Man was the catalyst for the MCU, and the first hero (disregarding the current multiverse storyline) to hit the big screen. With it, the introduction to the first villain. The 10 Rings existed with or without Tony's presence, seeing as Howard created the company and Obadiah both oversaw its business before Tony took over in the mid to late nineties, and was the one who was working with Raza. I've seen the argument that since Stark Industries provided the weapons he is to blame for their actions, and although that's the feeling Tony has, it is factually incorrect. Stane was the one dealing under the table, not Tony- who finds out only after his kidnapping and through Christine Everheart. Let me make this point clear now.

Tony was only aware of his supplying of weapons to the American Government and Armed forces.

This will come into play again later down the line. Was it his responsibility to know what was going on in his own company that had his name on it? Absolutely- but I would also argue he had no reason to be aware of Obadiah and what he was doing behind his back. This man was supposed to be a father figure to him, a mentor- a friend of his parents and the man who guided him when they died. We never hear mention of other family, so it wouldn't be a jump to assume that Obadiah was all he had left. Jarvis (the real person) could have potentially been still alive, but even so- he definitely is not at the start of the movie.

Tony is not responsible for Obadiah's actions. He was betrayed, stabbed in the back, and almost killed by the man who he was supposed to trust. He (literally) had his heart ripped out by him. Stane's motivation is power and greed, a desire to take control of Stark Industries and all that would give him. He was angry at Tony, sure, but the only thing we saw Tony do that directly caused him to be angry was shutting down the weapons division of the company.

Tony, 1/3rd of the way into his first movie, has already started his journey towards redemption, is already trying to fix the pain he thinks he helped create- and Stane wanted to reverse it.

Also this movie ends with him sacrificing himself to make sure Stane doesn’t win and continue to hurt others- making the later jabs at him weak and not as meaningful. 

0/2 so far on created villains.

Whiplash and Hammer: 

This one is going to be quick. 

Venko was angry at Tony because of something his father did, plain and simple. 

Hammer was a competitor of Tony’s, we see multiple times throughout the movie that his work is not to the same standard. His attempt to recreate the Iron Man suit almost kills a man, his greatest weapons used by Rhodey fail, and he is overall portrayed to be a slimy individual. His bitterness towards his inadequacy is not Tony’s responsibility, Tony is not at fault for the anger of others when all he did was provide better work. It’s easy to victim-blame him in this situation because of his erratic behavior throughout this movie, but that was fueled by the fact that he was actively dying and had no bearing on Hammer’s or Venko’s actions. 

0/4 responsible so far. 

Aldrich Killian: Out of the entire trilogy, this is the only villain I would attribute to Tony. 

Sort of. 

Tony was a drunk asshole. Tony left him out on the roof. Tony upset him, and was overall a dick. I’m not going to spend that much time arguing whether someone pulling a dick move is enough to justify mass death and inhumane experimentation- because that isn’t the question here. 

(If you want my opinion, no- because if I threw my sprite at a random dude who was having a bad day, and he later killed a bunch of people and cited me as the cause, I wouldn’t be convicted as even an accesory to murder.)

Still, Tony’s direct action = Killian working with Maya and creating extremis. This is different to Hammer, where Tony didn’t directly do anything other than be better at his job. It might have led to a similar outcome, but didn’t come from the same place. I’ll give it a .5, but I don’t fully agree. 

0.5/5

Ultron: This one is probably the most talked about in the MCU. Let me be clear, this is a point, I’m not arguing against that-my problem is people like to pretend he is solely responsible for Ultron.

I’m going to outline the timeline of Ultron (the bot, not the film). 

-Aliens invade and destroy New York, and the Avengers are tasked with defeating them.

-The government attempts to drop a nuke, which Iron Man intercepts and directs into the wormhole, essentially sacrificing himself. While he is in the wormhole, he sees what they are up against. 

-After nearly dying in space, he returns with severe PTSD. Iron Man 3 shows how much the whole experience affected him, how he didn’t sleep, obsessed over the suits, over protecting the world. He develops an anxiety disorder because of it.

-He comes up with the concept of Ultron but scraps the idea. 

-While fighting a Hydra base, Wanda Maximoff, who knew (as stated in the movie by Wanda herself) that she could manipulate Tony into creating something (she did not know what at the time) that would lead to his destruction.

-She manipulates his mind and triggers his severe PTSD, which outlines his biggest fears. 

-He then takes the scepter and, after consulting Bruce Banner, uses it to create Ultron. They work on it together, but do not complete it, the super bot had not been completed and was still in progress at the time of the party. 

People like to say Bruce was forced into working on Ultron, he was not. He was apprehensive, yes- but he is a grown adult that has seven Phd’s, he can damn well think for himself. 

Neither Bruce nor Tony had the intention for it to turn evil, it was supposed to help humanity- not destroy it. The sick truth of it all is that Tony was right. As seen in Infinity War, something big was coming, and they weren’t prepared. Ultron was a failure, but the intention behind it was just and good. 

Wanda Maximoff, on the other hand, also an adult woman at the time, intended for destruction, regardless of who it hurt. She, on the flip side, did not know of Ultron, but wanted something that would destroy, for the sole reason of being angry at Tony Stark. We know that at this point she had no care for anyone other than herself and her brother, she even used the Hulk to attack a town as a distraction, something that was devastating for Bruce. If you watch the movie, her face after she whammied Stark at the beginning is sinister. She has the biggest smile on her face when she realizes that her actions were going to lead to something big. 

Tony Stark was partially responsible, yes- responsible enough that Ultron brings the score to 1.5/6 . Still, absolving Bruce’s, and much more importantly, Wanda’s contributions is absolutely not ok. 

Which nicely leads to our next villains- 

Wanda and Pietro Maximoff: Yes, they started off as bad guys. Yes, people will take every opportunity to blame Tony Stark for something. Let me first state something that should be obvious: 

Tony Stark was not responsible for the death of their parents. 

That’s it. 

(Ok that’s not it, I have more to say) 

The twin’s parents were killed when they were 10 years old, meaning they died in 1999. The Novi Grad bombings were conducted by the American Air force, which Stark Industry provided with weapons. Still, and I can not stress this enough, the manufacturer is not responsible for the acts of the user. 

If you’re angry that Tony was working for the military, then I’m sorry to tell you, but there are a lot of MCU characters that work for the military. He did not orchestrate the bombings, he did not make descisions on what the government would do in Sokovia, he did not provide his weapons illegally. 

HE DID NOT CREATE STARK INDUSTRIES. HE BARELY OVERSAW THE DAMN COMPANY BETWEEN HIS FATHER AND OBADIAH. THERE WERE MULTIPLE SHAREHOLDERS, GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS, MEMBERS OF THE COMPANY THAT ALL HAD A SAY.  WHEN HE SAW THE PAIN AND DESTRUCTION THAT WAS HIS FATHER’S LEGACY, HE IMMEDIATELY SHUT IT DOWN. 

We even see in the first Iron Man how much power Obidiah had, how he was able to shut him out of the company when he did anything outside of what Stane wanted. Tony mostly kept to himself even when he was CEO, and Stane was the one shown to make the big choices. The company's connection to the United States military wasn’t even started by Tony, but by his father.  When he was exposed to the destruction and went to shut it all down and stop the manufacturing of his weapons, pretty much everyone was angry at him. Stane and Rhodey are never blamed for the deaths of Wanda’s parents, even so their connection and desire to continue working with the military after Tony’s ordeal is even more significant.

Even if it was Tony who directly made the sale, something which again, was established by his father and continued by Stane, it still would not make him responsible. 

See previous point: The manufacturer is not responsible for the acts of the user. 

This is probably the point, besides Ultron, that the most amount of people will argue with me over. 

1.5/8

Vulture: There's a very popular idea that Tony Stark is responsible for all of Spider-Man’s villains. The DOC was established as a way to rectify the damage caused by the attack on New York in 2012. Since it was all funded by Tony Stark, he is the one connected to the project. I’ve seen a lot of Tony stan’s use this as an argument for Tony, saying he is the only Avenger who cared about New York after the attack. 

I am not making that argument. 

As much as I love him, I think it’s unfair to accuse the other Avengers of not caring. We have no proof that they didn’t help in any way after the attacks. Unlike Tony, none of them have the money, nor the resources to fund an endeavor such as a complete reconstruction and clean up of a city such as New York.

Now, that isn’t to undermine Tony’s charitable actions: in the real world, not every billionaire contributes to events such as this one. Even when they do, there is a close to zero probability that they would fund the entire thing. We see how Tony uses his money to help in multiple situations, not only funding the Avengers themselves, but doing things such as buying a building the Hulk was about to destroy in Age of Ultron. 

If there wasn’t a billionaire on the team, or Tony, who you could argue did his part by almost getting himself killed getting a missile away from the city, did not contribute his own money, that burden would fall on to the government. 

In short, we see his contributions through the eyes of the villain, who is attributing his loss to the man responsible for not only saving the lives of countless others, but funding the effort to clean up a mess the Avengers didn’t create. 

This is another example of Person A being wronged by someone, attributing it to Tony, and then using that hate to justify their actions. 

You can not tell me that Tony was in the wrong for providing resources to aid in the reconstruction of a city he almost gave his life for. 

The DOC even told Toomes he could reach out and complain, and with everything else we have no reason to believe Tony wouldn’t have compensated Toomes and his crew. If there was a scene where he made the attempt and Tony denied him, then you could potentially make the argument that he was the cause. 

1.5/9

Mysterio: This one hurts me to even entertain. 

Quentin Beck, a person who worked for Tony Stark, was angry that an invention that he worked on while under contract for Stark Industries, was taken, repurposed for use in therapy, and named B.A.R.F.

Let’s break this down. 

We don’t know how much of B.A.R.F was actually Beck’s doing, since we know that his recollection of events was incorrect. A prime example of this is shown through the flashback in FFH, where on stage at Tony's joke about the name, there was a lot of laughter coming from the audience. 

In the actual scene which we see in Civil War, no one is laughing. It is either a blatant lie or a fabricated memory. 

Even if Beck was a major part in the project, he still created it for Stark Industries, which, approximately seven years prior to Civil War, shut down their weapons division. 

Beck was angry that the company didn’t want to use it as a weapon. 

This is a decision which would also probably be pushed through to the CEO, which by this time, is not Tony Stark, but Pepper Potts. We see in Iron Man three that she is the one making the big choices, probably in collaboration with members of the board alongside Tony Stark himself. There is a possibility that Tony himself didn’t even fire him, and that this is yet another example of name attribution, but that of course, is merely speculation. 

Beck says he was fired for being “erratic”- I do not doubt this, considering how he acts in FFH. He is constantly yelling and threatening his coworkers when he doesn’t get his way. 

The crew alongside him are also portrayed to be wronged by Tony, including a man named William Ginter Riva. He is the guy everyone knows from this classic interaction with Stane:

"Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!"

"Well, I'm sorry. I'm not Tony Stark."

This is the reason Riva is shown to be angry at Tony, because Obidiah yelled at him. Not Tony himself, but Stane. Just another example of people being angry at Stane, but attributing that anger to Tony. 

The group is upset that Tony left Peter Edith instead of them- why would Tony leave Edith to a random bunch of employees, some of which were even fired or had left the company? 

Their motivation makes no sense, is unhinged, and is no way the responsibility of Tony Stark. 

1.5/10

To conclude, Tony is responsible for 1.5/10 of the villains people accuse him of being responsible for. 

That’s 15%, and that’s not even taking into account the rest of the villains in the MCU that he has nothing to do with

A rough count (that i'm low balling) is approximately 40 villains in the MCU. 1.5/40 is 3.75%. 

“But he still antagonized/motivated/upset them!”

Because I’m tired of fighting with people in TikTok comment sections.

Peter Benjamin Parker was born August 10th, 2001. This date is a callback to Spider-Man's first appearance in The Amazing Fantasy #15 comics, which premiered in August of 1962. Some iterations have his birthday as August 27th, but Peter’s passport shown in the trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home officially confirms his birthdate. The year of his birth being 2001 coincides with his age throughout different films in the MCU, as well as being listed in the official Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki.

The age in which he would have moved in with his Aunt and Uncle has yet to be determined, as we have not gotten any concrete evidence. What we do know for sure is that Aunt May raised him. Although Uncle Ben has yet to be mentioned by name, Peter alluded to his existence in Spider-Man: Homecoming:

Peter: Ned, May cannot know. I cannot do that to her right now, you know? I mean, everything that’s happened with her, I... Please.

There was also a deleted scene mentioned by John Goldstein, who co-wrote Homecoming with John Francis Daley. This would have the character’s mention Ben Parker by name.

Another confirmation is in the series “What if.” The whole point of that series is that it is canon up until one specific point, in which the story diverges into a new variation.

Watcher: But in another universe, a single choice created a whole new hero. All this to make one Super Soldier….There. That's the moment that created a new universe. When asked to leave the room, Margaret "Peggy" Carter chose to stay. But soon it would be her venturing into the unknown and creating a new world.

In Episode 5 of What if, Peter mentions Ben as someone he has previously lost, confirming his existence in the MCU.

Peter: Practice, I guess. My mom, dad, Uncle Ben, Mr. Stark. Now Happy. I've... I've lost a lot. But my Aunt May says... used to say, that if we don't keep smiling when they can't, then we might as well just be gone, too. And... Well, they'd want us to keep going.

We also see Peter’s briefcase contain the initials “B.F.P”, further solidifying his existence in the MCU.

In the comic’s, Peter’s parents died in a plane crash. In the TASM series, Peter is four years old when his parents say goodbye to him for the last time. From what I could find in my research, Peter’s age varies and has never been confirmed, although it is pretty certain that he was between the ages of infancy up until six years old. This would mean Mary and Richard Parker would have passed away between the years 2001-2007.

We first meet Peter Parker in Civil War. This is where the concrete dates become a little bit harder to track. Most people place Captain America: Civil War in June 2016.

Peter mentions in his conversation with Tony that he's had his powers for 6 months, meaning that he would have been bitten by the spider sometime around January 2016.

This would line up with Peter’s age in Civil War (14 years old.) We also know that there is a two month time skip between Peter being dropped off at his Apartment by Tony Stark and Happy Hogan and the start of Homecoming.

Bronx School of Science, the real life Science School Midtown High is based on, had its first day of classes on September 8th for the 2016-2017 school year. This would place that scene in the car in early July, which still lines up with the approximate timeline of civil war (depending on when this scene takes place in the continuity.)

This also lines up with Peter’s age, as he is supposed to be 14 in Civil War and 15 in Homecoming. Peter would have celebrated a birthday in the two month time jump. This also lends credence to Tony calling Peter a “fourteen year old kid,” after the Ferry incident; as Peter would have been 14 when he initially did his research on him.

The Academic Decathlon is said to take place between October 13th-15th, According to a poster visible in the movie. There is another poster contradicting this information, placing the Academic Decathlon a month earlier in September. This could be a continuity error, but a better in world explanation would be that the poster claiming the competition is in September is from the year previous. The poster itself is shown to be in Peter’s room, and he could have held on to it since it wouldn’t be a jump to assume he was on the team the year before, especially as the teams are established the year prior.

Of course, this is all assumption, it could still very well be taking place in September.

American Homecoming is typically set late September and can happen as late as October. This would place Homecoming sometime late October. If you are working on the assumption that the poster in Peter’s room is the correct date, Homecoming can take place as early as late September, as the Homecoming dance is the last major event in the movie.

Spider-Man Homecoming ends with Peter being offered a spot on the Avengers. This scene can take place anytime in the school year, but presumably not too long after the events of homecoming. I would guess the end of October early November, but that’s fully a guess. It doesn’t seem to be Christmas just yet, with no snow and warmish weather, but it could also take place as far as April/May 2017. Peter would still be fifteen at the end, regardless of this fact.

There is a significant jump between Homecoming and Avengers: Infinity War.

Infinity War takes place in April 2018, making Peter Parker 16 years old. From Tony and Peter’s interactions, they have definitely had some level of a maintained relationship in that year/ year and a half between the two movies. This is a topic the producers, Jon Favreau, Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland have all commented on. We don’t know exactly how long there is between the start and the end of Infinity war, but it can’t have been longer than a few days.

Peter was snapped in April 2018, and returned on the same day of the final battle in Endgame, sometime in October 2023. He would still be 16 years old, as you do not age when blipped from existence.

By his literal birthday, Peter would not turn 17 until his next birthday, which is on August 10th, 2024. Biologically, as they weren’t snapped away for exactly 5 years, he would hit 17 sometime in April 2024. For simplicity's sake, we are still going to use his birthday as a marker for his age, which is what they do in the MCU.

Far From Home takes place 8 months after the blip, placing it in June 2024. This lines up with Peter’s age (“I’m 16!” to Beck in the bar) and the fact that School trips to Europe typically take place in June. We don’t know how much time takes place between the end of Far From Home and the end credit scene/the beginning of No Way Home, but we do know it takes place after August 10th, as J.J. Jameson notes that Peter is a “17 year old boy from Queens.” We also know that it takes place before the start of the school year, as we see Peter’s first day of class after the fact. This places the start of the film anytime after August 11th, 2024 and before the beginning of September, 2024.

The final scene of the movie shows that it takes place around Christmas time. Peter has not completed his High School Diploma, and Ned and MJ are still in New York, meaning that their senior year is not yet complete. This places the end of the movie is set in December 2024, right at the same time as Hawkeye. Hawkeye takes place Christmas 2024, as shown by an invitation to Kate’s Mother’s Party, which shows the date as December 2024.

There is another sign that shows that it’s “New Year 2025.”

This date would make Peter Parker 17 at the end of the film, NOT 18 as some people have placed him. The only argument typically used here is the fact that seniors are usually 18, but that’s not taking into account his birthday. He’s an August baby, making him the youngest of his year.

(Take it from me, an August baby myself. I only turned 18 several months after I completed high school.)

Peter in Canon: Has a building fall on him, crash lands a plane that he’s on the outside of, gets beaten up by a metal wingsuit, falls into a lake from several hundred feet in the air, literally gets hit by a train-

Spider-Man has always been a character riddled with the guilt of a death he could have prevented, and spends his entire life trying to rectify that choice- feeling responsible for the well-being of others. This is reflected in almost every version of Spider-Man, and is shown in his first ever appearance in the MCU:

“When you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen? They happen because of you.”

Tony’s entire motivation with the accords is responsibility, and Peter’s guilt is directly mirrored with Tony’s- something we see at the start of civil war with that women blaming him for her child’s death. Tony needs to fix- needs to protect, and to him- as flawed as it may be, the accords are a way to do that.

So here we have Peter Parker- a tech genius who creates web shooters out of scraps and was given insane powers at 14 and used them for good instead of becoming popular. He’s a snarky kid whose impulsive and wants to do good so god damn bad but keeps messing up, keeps hurting the ones he loves and becomes too obsessed with a suit that makes him feel invincible.

You’re telling me the best mentor for this kid is Captain America- just because they both are New Yorkers who were given powers? Their motivations are entirely different- and the way they go about doing things don’t match up.

Tony and Peter come from completely different backgrounds, and on the surface level- are different people. When you look at the core of who they are, how they act- why they do the things they do- Tony is the person who can understand Peter in a way the Steve would never be able to.

People like to criticize MCU Peter for being “Iron Man Jr.”- but he isn’t, not at all. He’s not a sidekick, not dependent- the whole point of Homecoming is that Peter doesn’t need Tony’s tech to succeed, nor his permission to be a super hero. Far From Home worked to show us that Peter would never be the next Iron Man- because Iron Man is his own thing, and Peter is Spider-Man- a hero in his own right. Peter is the Legacy- not a copy, and not Iron Man’s legacy, but Tony Stark himself. The most telling and raw way to show that as a concept, and it was sitting right in front of us.