In Avengers: Infinity War, when Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and a variety of other heroes are awaiting Thanos’ arrival on Titan, Strange uses the Time Stone to look into alternate futures to see the possible results of the impending conflict. Star Lord (Chris Pratt) asks Strange how many futures he looked into, and Strange replies, “14,000,605.” Then Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) asks how many of those resulted in their victory. Strange, looking deep into Stark’s eyes, says, “One.”
That one scenario involved Strange giving up the Time Stone to Thanos, letting him snap away half of existence, and, ultimately, Iron Man sacrificing himself at the end of Avengers: Endgame to defeat Thanos’ army. And while Tony Stark’s AI inside the Iron Man suit, F.R.I.D.A.Y., was present for all of this, that didn’t stop her from double-checking Dr. Strange’s math.
VisionQuest revisits a key Avengers: Endgame moment
In the second episode of VisionQuest, Vision (Paul Bettany) was badly injured by the adamantium bullets Paladin (Todd Stashwick) shot him with. J.A.R.V.I.S. (James D’Arcy) sacrificed himself to save Vision by deleting his code, reverting the power to run him back to Vision’s system, but in episode 3, it’s clear Vision still needs further repairs. The remaining AIs housed in Vision’s mind scramble to help, with F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady) taking the lead and E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire) doing what she can to assist.
F.R.I.D.A.Y. determines that she has to rewrite some of Vision’s code, and she laments that J.A.R.V.I.S. was always better at writing code than she was. “I already replaced him once,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. says, referring to J.A.R.V.I.S. Then she goes on to tell E.D.I.T.H. the important role she played for Iron Man after replacing J.A.R.V.I.S.
“I ran everything for Stark, for the Avengers. I mean, I was a younger program then,” says F.R.I.D.A.Y. “I was good. I protected heroes, saved lives, advised. I had purpose, but friends became enemies, and tyrants invaded our Earth. I was there at the end of all things. There were heroes everywhere, fighting and falling.”
Finally, she says, “I was there when Tony died. I ran over a quintillion strategic calculations that day, and I still couldn’t save him. Half the world came back that day, and I lost half of mine.”
F.R.I.D.A.Y. tried a quintillion ways to save Tony Stark
This reveals some new information about Tony’s death in Avengers: Endgame. In the film, after Tony snaps his fingers, it’s clear the energy from the Infinity Stones has placed him at death’s door. Rhodey (Don Cheadle) gets there first and says his goodbye, followed by Peter Parker (Tom Holland). Then Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) arrives and says, “F.R.I.D.A.Y.?” and the AI responds, “Life functions critical,” confirming what Pepper and Tony both already knew: he was about to die.
What we didn’t know was that, throughout that day, F.R.I.D.A.Y. ran a quintillion different scenarios to try to save him, all of which came up hopeless.
When Iron Man turned to Dr. Strange in that final Endgame battle to ask, without words, “Is this the one future you spoke of?” Strange confirmed his thinking by holding up that one finger. Strange knew Tony had to sacrifice himself, and so did Tony. And if Tony knew, so did F.R.I.D.A.Y. So why did F.R.I.D.A.Y. bother running those calculations?
Of course, she was doing what she was programmed to do by monitoring Tony’s well-being while in the Iron Man suit and, if something were wrong, it was up to her to find a solution. But it also gets into a lot of the themes that VisionQuest is exploring, about the nature of these synthetic life forms and their ability to feel as well as think. F.R.I.D.A.Y. may be just a program, but she’s also a hero who aided Tony and the other Avengers many times. And, when Tony was dying, she felt the impact as much as Rhodey, Peter, and Pepper, because, like them, she was one of the closest people to Tony, even without being an actual person.