Tony Stark Mentorship

Peter Parker had always done things on his own.

When Uncle Ben passed away, Peter had carried the weight of "with great power comes great responsibility" by himself. When he made his first costume, he had designed it himself. When he built his web-shooters, he had soldered every tiny part himself, late at night in his bedroom in Queens. He had no mentor. He had only Aunt May to feed him sandwiches and tell him to wear a jacket.

And then, one ordinary afternoon, there was a knock on the door of the small apartment he shared with Aunt May. Peter opened it, expecting a delivery. What he got instead was Tony Stark — the actual, real Tony Stark, in sunglasses and a designer suit — leaning casually against the doorframe.

"Hey, kid," Tony said. "Got a minute?"

Peter said yes. Of course he said yes.

Tony Stark had come to Queens looking for Peter because he had figured out something important. The web-slinging hero he had been hearing about on the news was a TEENAGER. A teenager from Queens. A teenager with homemade web-shooters and a backyard costume. And Tony Stark, who had once been a brilliant kid himself, knew talent when he saw it.

He recruited Peter for the superhero Civil War. He gave Peter his very first real suit — the bright red-and-blue one with the advanced webbing and the spider-tracer and the AI assistant who Peter eventually named Karen. He brought Peter to Germany. He stood Peter on a real battlefield with the world's biggest heroes.

For a kid from Queens who had spent his career mostly bouncing between rooftops alone, it was a dream come true.

But Tony did not just hand Peter gadgets and walk away. Something else happened in the months and years that followed.

Tony became, in his own grumpy half-smiling Tony way, Peter's MENTOR.

He gave Peter ride-alongs in his car. He gave Peter long lectures about the importance of using technology responsibly. He gave Peter the unforgettable line — half scold, half compliment — "If you're nothing without this suit, you shouldn't have it." He took back the suit, in fact, once, to teach Peter exactly that lesson. And when Peter, hurt and embarrassed, proved he could still be a hero in his old homemade costume, Tony gave it back to him with quiet pride.

Their relationship was built on a foundation of mutual respect and a shared love for science. Tony recognized in Peter the kind of brilliance he had had as a young man — the curiosity, the inventiveness, the gift for solving problems by tinkering until something worked. They would stand in Tony's workshop together, two scientists hunched over the same circuit board, arguing about the right way to wire a sensor. Tony would say, "No, no, kid, like this," and Peter would say, "But Mr. Stark, if we do it MY way, look —"

Tony pretended to find it annoying. He did not really.

Tony also began, slowly, to think of Peter as something more than a protégé. The truth was that Tony, who had always been complicated about family, had begun to love Peter like a son. He did not say it out loud. But it was in every choice he made. Every safety feature he added to Peter's suit. Every time he checked in. Every time he worried.

When the great battle against Thanos came, Tony's biggest fear was for Peter.

When Peter dissolved into dust on a faraway planet during the Snap — "Mr. Stark, I don't feel so good. I don't want to go. Please, sir, I don't want to go." — Tony was the one holding him. He held him until there was nothing left to hold. And he carried that grief for five long years afterward.

When at last the heroes figured out a way to bring everyone back, the reunion between Tony and Peter on the smoking battlefield was one of the most beautiful moments of their lives. Peter ran across the rubble, his suit torn, his face streaked with dust. He flung himself into Tony's arms.

"Mr. Stark!" he cried. "We won! You wouldn't believe what's been happening, I — I think I passed out — Mr. Stark —"

Tony hugged him. Tightly. For a long, long moment.

"It's okay, kid," he whispered. "It's okay."

They had only a few hours together before the final, hardest part of the battle.

When Tony made his great sacrifice — when he snapped his own fingers wearing the gauntlet, and saved the universe at the cost of his own life — Peter was there. Peter knelt beside him in the rubble. Peter held his hand.

It was the worst day of Peter Parker's young life. He had now lost two fathers. Uncle Ben, once, in an alley in Queens. And Tony Stark, here, on a smoking battlefield.

But Tony had left him something.

He had left him KNOWLEDGE — all the things he had taught Peter about being a real, professional, accountable hero.

He had left him EQUIPMENT — the advanced suits, the systems, the technology Peter could continue to use and improve.

He had left him a NAME — the example of who Tony had become at the end.

And he had left him an enormous weight. Because being mentored by Tony Stark, beautiful as it was, also meant inheriting all of Tony's expectations. Peter sometimes felt, in the years after the snap, that the whole world was looking at him and asking, "Is the kid going to be the next Iron Man?"

He could not be. Nobody could be. And he had to learn — painfully, slowly, in many wrong steps — that he did not HAVE to be Tony. He could only ever be Peter.

That was, in fact, what Tony would have wanted.

Peter took the lessons forward. He learned to be more responsible. He learned to think about the bigger picture. He learned to ask for help when he needed it. He learned to invent new technology, building on the foundation Tony had given him.

He also kept being Peter Parker. He kept eating Aunt May's sandwiches. He kept making bad jokes mid-fight. He kept caring more about regular people than about being famous. He never quite became the slick polished hero Tony had been. He stayed the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. And that, in the end, was the most loving tribute he could have given.

Sometimes, late at night, Peter swings out across the city and stops on a rooftop near where Tony's old workshop used to be. He looks at the skyline. He says, quietly into the wind, "Thanks, Mr. Stark. I'm trying. I'm really trying."

The wind blows. The stars wink down at him. And somewhere, in the great web of memory, a brilliant grumpy man in a red-and-gold suit smiles back.

The kid is doing okay.

He is doing more than okay.

He is making his mentor proud.