Avengers: Endgame introduced us with the most different version of Time Travel. Hats off to the creatives for changing the cliché rule of Time Travel. Time is not a loop, it is linear and changing the past doesn’t affect the future, but it rather creates an alternate timeline. And who was the individual amongst the Avengers to solve Time Travel? Of course, it was Tony Stark. But he certainly had help.
We’ve figured that Tony Stark was obviously working on Time Travel for the last 5 years because his suit was built for just one single purpose, i.e. to sustain his life while wielding the Infinity Stones. He then couldn’t solve it earlier because he didn’t have the right means to. The emergence of Scott Lang gave him the vital piece of information that he needed to solve Time Travel. He didn’t just do it in that one night we were shown.
But other than Scott, there was yet another individual who was the reason that Tony could find the key to Time Travel. It was none other than Peter Parker. While we all saw Tony get motivated to work on solving the concept because of Peter, but looking at that photo of Peter and him could have actually helped him solve the mystery technically. Reddit user discr33t_enough has noticed something peculiar in the way that Tony Stark achieves the theoretical model of Time Travel. Take a look:
Tony only cracks the time travel model after seeing a picture of him and Peter holding an "inverted" diploma. from marvelstudios
Because Peter’s certificate was inverted in his photo, Tony may have got the idea to invert the Mobius Strip. This actually makes Peter the rightful owner of EDITH (Even dead, I’m the Hero). It’s just a great presentation of scenes, and that’s why Endgame is such a great movie. Obviously, Peter didn’t help solve Time Travel since he was dead, but he was one of the major reasons why Tony Stark could work it out.
Just for this sole reason, he was named as the smartest Avenger by the Russos. At SDCC, the audience really applauded when Joe Russo asked about solving Time Travel. He said:
“Now Banner tried to solve time travel, but he didn’t. Who solved time travel?”
Now to be fair, Smart Hulk didn’t get a long enough shot at solving Time Travel. The concept was already out of his league and he still did manage to do a good job. In fact, he may have come up with an immortality machine! But Stark was the one who deserves major credit. He would have gotten some great help if Shuri were alive. When people at Comic-Con applauded for Iron Man being the one to solve time travel, Anthony Russo nominated Wakandan princess and inventor Shuri. Even Joe Russo then went on to claim that “Shuri’s the smartest avenger.”
Nothing to take away from Tony Stark, as he might have turned out even smarter if he had access to Vibranium right from the start. Back in 2017, Black Panther producer Nate Moore told ComicBook.com that Shuri’s smartness was even beyond Stark. He said:
“As far as the technologically advanced side, in our mind and in our incarnation, Shuri is the head of the Wakandan design group. So she is, in our mind, the smartest person in the world. Smarter than Tony Stark, but she is a 16 year old girl, which we thought was really interesting. Again, black faces in positions of power, or positions of technological know how, that’s a rarity. So it’s something that a big part of the film.”
It’s actually great to know that Peter was involved in solving time travel somehow. Although, the real hero of the story was none other than the Rat that helped Scott emerge from the Quantum Realm. It was the 1 in 14 Million fluke where Avengers won! So, the Rat deserves an equal credit, and a Disney+ series if that’s possible. If not that, then were surely down for a “What if?” episode involving the Rat.
