In Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – which kicks off next year with Captain America: Civil War – Thanos will gain all six Infinity Stones and launch his assault on the universe.

This will see him coming into conflict with the likes of the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy.

While we fully expect there to be casualties on the heroic side, it is also fairly obvious that they will defeat the Mad Titan in the end. But how?

In this article, we take a look at the five most likely candidates to land the finishing blow on Thanos (and predict how exactly they might do it).

Iron Man

There’s a very big chance that Robert Downey, Jr.’s Iron Man AKA Tony Stark will land land the finishing blow on Thanos in the Infinity War movies, for no other reason than the fact that he’s the face of the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise.

He’s the only hero to have been given three solo movies to date and he was key in both of the Avengers’ victories in The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron respectively.

It’s hard to imagine how he might beat the Mad Titan – as it wouldn’t be through an existing method shown in any comic – but the likelihood is that it would probably involve providing a distraction, using Stark’s trademark wit, before using some specially-designed weapon he had made for the occasion, as he certainly doesn’t possess the power in his Iron Man armour to single-handedly defeat the villain.

However, given Stark’s popularity and his penchant for being key to both solo and team victories, it definitely might happen in the battle that everything in the MCU has been leading to – he opened the franchise, it’s only fitting that he might close the event it all led to.