Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo respond to Robert Downey, Jr.’s recent comments about reprising Iron Man in the MCU.
“I don’t know how they would do it. I don’t know what the road to that would be [laughs],” Anthony Russo said to Total Film during the Sands International Film Festival in response to Downey Jr.’s willingness to play Tony Stark again. His brother Joe added, “I mean, we closed that book, so it would be up to them to figure out how to reopen it.”
The Russo Brothers see Downey Jr.’s recent Oscar win for Oppenheimer as a reason for the actor having long since moved on from the MCU. For an actor with a troubled youth who became a global superstar, the Russos could not be more happier for the Iron Man star.
“His Oscar win was huge,” Joe Russo said. “It’s amazing to live vicariously through Robert, you know, that experience for him is so profound, because of the journey he’s had. I mean, it’s one of the great stories of redemption. And he’s such a lovely person, such a hard-working person. He’s a generational actor, so that level of recognition for him, I think, was validation of his redemption arc.”
Could a Tony Stark variant show up in the MCU?
Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark/Iron Man made the ultimate sacrifice in Endgame when he used the Infinity Stones to defeat Thanos and his army. As Marvel’s Multiverse Saga opens the possibility of having variants of dead characters popping up, a Tony Stark variant in Downey Jr.’s likeness could pop up at any time. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, however, does not want to cheapen Stark’s Endgame moment.
“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.”
All 10 MCU films featuring Iron Man are available to stream on Disney+.
