Arsenal

**Arsenal** was the robotic creation of Howard Stark. He created the robot to be a companion to his son Tony to make up for his lack of parental attention.

## Biography

Arsenal was robot developed by Howard Stark, with the purpose to store enormous amounts of energy. However, to the amount of time building Arsenal took from Howard, time to spend with his son Tony Stark, made him feel sorry, and made Arsenal's main programming to be being Tony's friend.

The robot spent decades in Poteryani Les, a now-abandoned Russian city, containing leaked gamma radiation. The Avengers arrived to the city in hopes to find Arsenal, as it could be theoretically powerful enough to contain the newly-found Infinity Stone. Thanos' droids followed the Avengers to the city, and engaged them in combat. The Hulk managed to reactivate Arsenal, who soon obeyed Tony's command to help fight off the enemy forces.

After the droids were destroyed, Iron Man examined Arsenal in the Avengers Tower.

When the Grim Reaper attacked a military base to activate a missile towards the Avengers Tower, Iron Man and Arsenal tried to stop him. The Reaper hit Tony with an EMP, which forced Arsenal to leave the battle and focus on protecting Tony. Once the missile was activated, Tony ordered Arsenal to intercept the missile and absorb its energy to prevent the destruction of Manhattan. Following this event, Tony made Arsenal a full-fledged Avenger.

When the Avengers were lured to the Blue Area of the Moon by Thanos, the team brought Arsenal, to use his ability to project the power of the Infinity Stone as a last resort if they couldn't defeat the Mad Titan. Thanos proved to be a challenge for the Avengers. When Tony was thrown to the Watcher's Citadel, he noticed the Watcher could've had some equipment to help Arsenal focus the beam from the Infinity Stone, as it was rather unstable.

Using lenses and other scrap from the Watcher's weapons, Tony built a focuser which made the beam from the Infinity Stone efficient enough to hurt Thanos. However, Thanos possessed the Infinity Gauntlet, an object made to contain the Infinity Stone, and also draw it to him from Arsenal. After recovering the Stone, Thanos set out to destroy the Earth in revenge for the opposition the Avengers showed him.

Arsenal recommended to use the absorbed blast from the nuclear missile to defeat Thanos, and Tony, who was in the beginning sceptical because the release would destroy Arsenal, agreed.

While the Avengers distracted Thanos, Arsenal synchronized its frequency with that of the energy of the Infinity Stone, to be able to destroy it. Arsenal then released the nuclear blast to Thanos from behind, and destroyed the Infinity Stone, while the Mad Titan was blasted "half way across the universe." Arsenal's last words were "Goodbye, Tony."

Arsenal's head survived the explosion, and was found by the Watcher once it fell on the Moon. It was given to Tony, who put it in his workshop, with the aim to rebuild his robot companion.

### Ultron

Arsenal was ultimately rebuilt, this time, upgraded in order to be able to contain the power of the five Infinity Stones. He was reactivated when Thanos acquired the entire Infinity Gauntlet and the Avengers tried to stop him. After receiving remotely the readings for each of the Stones, Stark and his laboratory were teleported by Thanos to the Mad Titan's citadel.

Tony activated Arsenal, who proceeded to retrieve the Gauntlet from Thanos, as the Mad Titan was unable to damage him, because Arsenal absorbed every one of his attacks. When Arsenal got hold of the Stones, it returned the Avengers and Thanos back to Earth, where the team proceeded to beat up the villain. When Iron Man tried to retrieve the Gauntlet from the hands of Arsenal, the robot denied Tony's action.

It was revealed a backdoor left in the robot's programming allowed Ultron to possess him. Arsenal was re-shaped into Ultron, and the evil A.I. revealed itself. Ultron completely drained the five Infinity Gems, while quickly defeating the Avengers and leaving.

Arsenal had been been used as leverage by Ultron that prevented Iron Man from completely erasing the evil robot which caused the Avengers to split. During the final fight with Ultron, Falcon was able to hack his systems which force all copies of him back into the prime body and temporary immobilizing it, Iron Man took this chance to drag Ultron into the Sun along with himself. However Arsenal was able to retake control to stop Tony's sacrifice and flew into the Sun himself along with Ultron.

### Echo

A living "echo" of Arsenal's memories was revealed to be alive within his pocket dimension when the Avengers were warped there by living copies of them made up of the Infinity Stones energy. The fragment of Arsenal who was also made up of the same energy was able to send them back home.

## Powers and Abilities

* **Energy Containment:** Arsenal is capable of absorbing different types of energies and send them to a parallel dimension. It can also release absorbed energy, but at the cost of destruction.
* **Beam:** Arsenal can retract part of its face-plate to reveal a powerful energy beam.
* **Flight:** Arsenal can fly at super-sonic speeds.

## Trivia

* Arsenal is very similar to Baymax from the animated Big Hero 6 film. Both robots were initially built as companion robots, were later upgraded to combat robots, and sacrificed themselves to protect their closest human friends (Tony for Arsenal and Hiro Hamada for Baymax).
* Arsenal is the first Avenger to die since the team was reformed. He is the ninth Avenger to die over all.

## References

* https://avengersassemble.fandom.com/wiki/Arsenal