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Why does Maya Hensen assume she is important enough to threaten Killian with suicide?
Is it just because she is presumably the chief scientist who engineered Extremis? I assumed there is a whole team working on Extremis because AIM is a huge organization which even had dealings with the US Army.
Bear in mind that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is one where a single man can design a revolutionary new type of weapon system in a cave! With a box of scraps! - while a team of normal researchers with top-of-the-line equipment can't replicate his work. It's possible that Maya is a similar genius, and that without her the Extremis project would stall.
It's also possible that she simply has an inflated sense of her own importance - her field is magical biology, not project management.
It's important to note that she threatens to commit suicide by Extremis overdose, while in the same room as Tony and Killian. Killian himself might have survived the explosion, but Tony - who Killian thought was vital to perfecting Extremis - wouldn't have. Maya was not threatening to kill just herself, but Tony and possibly Killian too.
That doesn’t mean other people on the team have the same understanding of Extremis as the person who came up with the idea and has been working on it for a good portion of her life. It’s plausible that losing her could at least delay the project significantly.
