Robert Downey Jr. has completed his run as Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Kevin Feige says the character will not be coming back.
“We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again,” Feige told Vanity Fair in the Downey Jr. profile. “We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way.”
Downey Jr. last played the role in 2019’s The Avengers: Endgame when the superhero died. Fans of the MCU hoping Tony Stark would be resurrected in some form can forget about it.
Director Joe Russo added, “We’d already said tearful goodbyes on the last day of shooting. Everybody had moved on emotionally. We promised him it would be the last time we made him do it—ever.”
Co-director Anthony Russo noted that for Downey Jr. it was a “difficult thing” for him to say his last line as the superhero.
“When he did come back, we were shooting on a stage directly opposite where he auditioned for Tony Stark. So his last line as Tony Stark was shot literally a couple hundred feet from his original audition that got him the role,” Anthony said.
Downey Jr. has been the center of the MCU but Feige had to fight to cast the actor in the Iron Man role.
“It purely came down to the Marvel board being nervous at putting all of their chips in their future films on somebody who famously had those legal troubles in the past,” Feige said. “I wasn’t very good — and I’m still not great — at taking no for an answer. But I also don’t pound my chest to try to get my way. I try to figure out ways to make it as clear to other people why we should head in a direction. And that’s when the idea of a screen test came up.”
Downey Jr. ended up landing the role of Tony Stark and would play the Marvel hero across 10 films of the MCU.
