New Robert Downey Jr. Set Footage Suggests Marvel Isn't Ready to Recast Tony Stark

Robert Downey Jr. is back on set as Tony Stark, and I think this all but confirms Marvel has more plans for his Iron Man after Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars, possibly even an Iron Man 4. It also connects back to a specific moment in Avengers: Endgame that I want to walk through.

Robert Downey Jr. filmed new Iron Man footage for an Avengers Campus ride at Disneyland

A new promo video is out for a ride coming to Avengers Campus at Disneyland, and the set footage shows Downey reprising Tony Stark, working alongside a Sam Wilson Captain America. In the clip, Tony calls out to Jarvis to open a portal to Cap, and when Cap comes through he says "What took you so long?" before telling Shuri to get him out, adding "No teammate left behind."

This isn't out of nowhere. Downey has had an interest in doing this ride for quite some time, and he even had a meeting about it with Bob Iger years ago where they entered the planning stages.

The business logic here suggests Marvel has no immediate plans to recast Tony Stark

I fully understand that a theme park ride isn't MCU canon, but from a purely business perspective I think we have to come to the obvious conclusion that Marvel has no immediate plans to recast Tony Stark. You don't invest hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of dollars into this attraction, and you don't film this footage of Downey back as Tony, only to then hand the role to a new actor in your cinematic universe a few years later.

I don't know the exact timeline for this ride, but I'd assume it won't be up and running for at least another two years, which would put it after Avengers: Secret Wars. If Marvel had any immediate plans to recast Tony Stark after Secret Wars, I don't think they would build this ride, because it would be counterproductive to invest in an attraction prominently featuring Downey playing a character who died on screen seven years ago and supposedly would never be seen again.

I don't want Tony Stark in Secret Wars, but I admit the leaks point that way

I think it's a pretty safe bet at this point that we see Tony Stark in Secret Wars, even though I don't really want that and have said before I don't think it's a great idea or something Marvel would do. They already found a great way to bring Downey back into the MCU without undoing his sacrifice in Endgame, by having him play a Tony Stark variant from a different universe as Doctor Doom. I think the idea of a complicated villain like Doom, and Tony Stark perhaps having always been biologically a Von Doom, is great.

But what I've heard many people call for and speculate will happen is an RDJ Iron Man versus an RDJ Doctor Doom. I still don't want that to happen and didn't think it was something Marvel would do, but I'll admit it's looking like that's probably the direction they're going.

A leak claims Secret Wars will feature a drunken Tony Stark hiding out in Battleworld

I previously covered a leak claiming to describe part of the Secret Wars plot, which claims Robert Downey Jr. will indeed be back as Tony Stark in the film. Without going through the whole leak again, it described Battleworld as the world Doom creates after the multiverse collapses, which I believe would exist within the void at the end of time, forming a kind of kingdom ruled by Doom with different boroughs and locations. According to that leak, our heroes would meet a drunken Tony Stark in a bar somewhere in Battleworld.

My theory: this drunken Tony could be our Tony, split from the same timeline seconds before Endgame

Here's where I want to get into some theorizing. What if the Tony Stark our heroes find in that bar, drunk, sad and defeated, lived an identical life to our 616 Tony Stark, to the point that for all intents and purposes he is the 616 Tony? I'm reminded of the two Lokis, the God Loki and the Loki who died at Thanos's hand in Infinity War. Those two lived on the exact same timeline until 2012, when Loki grabbed the Tesseract and escaped in Endgame, which is where their timelines split.

So what if the Tony we meet in Secret Wars is our Tony, who lived the exact same timeline and only splintered moments before dying in Endgame? What if there's a version of Tony who failed to pry the stones off Thanos, and Thanos was able to make good on his line, "I will shred this universe down to its last atom"? If Thanos shredded that timeline to atoms, essentially pruning it, a lot of that matter would simply be destroyed, but as we know from pruning, people and objects can also wind up landing in the void.

What if the miserable, defeated Tony we meet, who has regressed back to who he was before his growth across the Infinity Saga, lost everything because in the final moments of Endgame he failed to make the sacrifice, resulting in everyone he loved being turned to atoms and the universe destroyed? I think that's a compelling way to bring Tony back because it fits the themes of the Multiverse Saga, and because it makes this variant essentially the same Tony we've followed for years, not some other-world stranger, just split from our timeline a few seconds before his death.

I picture the split happening at the exact moment Doctor Strange holds up one finger

Maybe this Tony thought, as he says elsewhere, "I would just cut the wire," or maybe he tried the sacrifice play but simply failed to pull the stones from Thanos. But I think I like best the idea that the split happens right at the moment Strange holds up his finger and Tony looks at him. That would be a Tony who thought he could outsmart his fate, still beat Thanos, and still get to watch his daughter grow up, so he chooses not to make the sacrifice he knew deep down he needed to make.

I'd find that far more interesting from a character standpoint, because it plays into real guilt, knowing he needed to do one thing but thought he could cheat fate and still go home, echoing his own line, "Isn't that the why we fight? So we can end the fights, so we get to go home?" If we find that Tony drinking his pain away in a bar on the outskirts of a kingdom ruled by his own variant self as Doctor Doom, and he has to be saved before helping reform the Avengers and eventually facing off with himself, I think that all sounds great.

I also like the idea that Tony Stark in every universe he exists in is a Victor Von Doom who was adopted, even if that means there would be no universe where both Tony Stark and Doctor Doom exist together as the same person. In a multiverse story on Battleworld, you can still get an Iron Man and a Doctor Doom clashing, just as versions from different universes.

Downey could keep playing both Iron Man and Doctor Doom for another decade

Say Downey's Tony Stark Iron Man does come back in Secret Wars. He isn't getting any younger, but I've always liked the idea of keeping him on as Doctor Doom, since there's really no reason he couldn't do it for at least another ten years, assuming he stays in decent health, which I think he would. The character is under a mask most of the time, and any physically demanding work could be handled by another performer.

The same is true for Iron Man, since all the physically demanding stuff the character does is CG anyway. I think Downey could keep playing Tony Stark for roughly another decade, which does mean a Tony in his seventies, but I think a Tony Stark in his seventies would actually be a cool thing to explore.

Why I still don't want Tony Stark recast, even with Kieran Culkin as an option

There's also the option of simply recasting Tony in the reset universe after Secret Wars, and I think Kieran Culkin would be a great choice for the role. But I've never really been on board with recasting Tony, because I think Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth should stick around after Secret Wars, and it's looking like they most certainly are.

If Steve Rogers, played by Chris Evans, and Thor, played by Chris Hemsworth, still exist in this new cohesive universe, having a new actor suddenly playing Tony Stark would feel kind of weird. There's also a Spider-Man in this universe who's going to stick around for a long time, and his entire origin is tied to Downey's Tony Stark, so having him interact with some other recast Iron Man just gets too strange and convoluted for me.

If recasting Tony Stark ends up being too much of a headache because Marvel wants to keep those other original actors around, I think they might as well just let Downey keep playing him if he's interested. And while they're at it, I don't see why they wouldn't do an Iron Man 4, a movie I think would clear a billion dollars at the box office without a doubt, and I think it could probably clear two billion pretty easily too. It would also be a great tie-in for the new Downey era Iron Man ride at Disneyland, and likely eventually at Disney World.

Do you think Robert Downey Jr. should keep playing both Iron Man and Doctor Doom after Secret Wars, or would that be one twist too many?