While anything can obviously happen with flashbacks or the multiverse, Marvel head Kevin Feige has assured MCU fans that the team never wants to "magically undo" Iron Man's death in Avengers: Endgame and lessen that moment.
Speaking to Vanity Fair about Robert Downey Jr., Feige shared the importance of what Tony Stark's sacrifice meant for the MCU and how they don't want to retcon it to get Downey Jr. back.
“We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again,” Feige says. “We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way.”
Now, that technically could be read in a way that doesn't fully close the door on a return for Downey Jr. via flashback or the multiverse, but it does sure sound like the MCU's Tony Stark from the main timeline is gone for good.
Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo also had a few words to say about Downey Jr.'s last moments in the MCU, and how even a single reshoot was immensely difficult to do.
“We’d already said tearful goodbyes on the last day of shooting. Everybody had moved on emotionally,” Joe Russo says. “We promised him it would be the last time we made him do it—ever.”
“That was a difficult thing for him to do, to come back to pick up that line,” Anthony Russo adds. “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.”
For more, check out a report from November that said Marvel was considering bringing back the original Avengers cast for a new movie, Feige's comments on how they "wouldn't have a studio" without Robert Downey Jr. how Jon Favreau tried to save Iron Man in Avengers: Endgame, and why Iron Man 3 is still the best Tony Stark movie 10 years later.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
