Whether it’s true or not, 2023 will largely go down as a bad year for Marvel Studios. A couple of the films greatly underperformed (“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “The Marvels”) and one of the TV shows was just a big turd (“Secret Wars”). This has ignited rumors and speculation that Marvel Studios might be panicking and attempting to woo back its big “Avengers” cast to return to help revitalize a franchise that is surprisingly on the ropes. Well, we don’t know if people such as Chris Evans or Scarlett Johansson will return, but it appears one name will not be suiting up, no matter what—Robert Downey, Jr.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, while discussing (for the millionth time) just how wonderful Robert Downey, Jr. is as Tony Stark in his various MCU performances, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said decisively that the actor would not be returning in a future ‘Avengers’ film. This, of course, makes sense considering the RDJ’s Tony Stark died saving the universe in “Avengers: Endgame,” in a way that was the emotional climax of the entire 10-year run that led up to it. That’s just a moment that Feige doesn’t think needs to be undone.
“We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again,” Feige said. “We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way.”
One of the co-directors of ‘Endgame’ agreed with that sentiment and added how they promised Downey, Jr. that he would never have to say another goodbye on the set of a Marvel film.
“We’d already said tearful goodbyes on the last day of shooting. Everybody had moved on emotionally,” Joe Russo said. “We promised him it would be the last time we made him do it—ever.”
So, that would definitively shut the door on a return of Robert Downey, Jr. as Iron Man in the MCU. But does it, really? With the multiversal shenanigans running rampant through the MCU right now, there’s a very real situation where RDJ could return without it being the same version of the character from ‘Endgame.’ Granted, that would feel like a cheap loophole and probably go against the spirit of what Feige and Russo said. Let’s just assume that’s not going to be the case.
What can be the case, however, is the return of Iron Man with another actor playing Tony Stark. Again, the multiverse is weird and we’ve already seen instances where different actors play the same character (with huge success as in “Spider-Man: No Way Home”). So, let’s not rule out an Iron Man return just yet.
Regardless, it does appear Robert Downey, Jr. and Marvel Studios are on the same page—his version of Tony Stark doesn’t need to (and shouldn’t) return.