Avengers: Age of Ultron continued to be referenced throughout the franchise – including in the now-called Multiverse Saga.
Compared to Loki and Thanos, both of which had a lot of screen time in the MCU’s Infinity Saga, Ultron did not spend too much time in the spotlight. The Avengers villain was created and defeated in Age of Ultron, and while the Battle of Sokovia eventually led to Captain America: Civil War’s split Avengers team, Ultron himself became a small threat compared to what Thanos would do a few years later. Fortunately, thanks to the multiverse push, Marvel’s Phase 4 was able to revisit Ultron in two major ways. The first was in the What If…? show, in which an alternate Ultron who managed to defeat the Avengers became the multiverse’s biggest threat after killing Thanos and gathering the Infinity Stones. The other occasion was in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, in which audiences were introduced to a world where, despite no Iron Man in sight, there were Ultron drones serving the Illuminati council.
Earth-838 Illuminati team had incorporated them as part of their defense. Ironically, even with the Ultron bots at the side of the heroes, the machines were not enough to protect that world from Scarlet Witch, meaning even a more successful version of Iron Man's Ultron plan still ultimately failed.
Tony Stark's Suit Of Armor Around The World Was Never Smart
Even Earth-616 Tony Stark itted that, before they started experimenting with Loki’s scepter, there was still something missing from the Iron Legion and Ultron projects. Powering the Ultron AI with the Mind Stone was supposed to fix that problem and make Stark’s suit of armor plan perfect, but it only made things worse. Therefore, there seem to have been only two possible outcomes for Tony Stark’s suit of armor plan. Either the Ultron-powered Iron Legion would never be strong enough to protect the world from villains like Thanos and Scarlet Witch, or it would be so powerful that Ultron itself would become a threat. Age of Ultron, What If…? and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness all fall in one of those two outcomes, proving that Tony Stark’s plan was flawed from the beginning.
One interesting thing about the MCU's multiverse is that it allows for some of the franchise’s biggest “what could have been” questions to be answered. The Ultron situation sparked Iron Man and Captain America’s long debate about global security, but the MCU had never revealed who was actually right. After Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it is more than clear that Iron Man’s Ultron plan would have never worked.
