David Harbour's Deadpan "You Are Tony Stark" Line Was Not a Real Avengers Doomsday Spoiler

David Harbour sat down with Variety days ago and got asked to drop a line of dialogue from Avengers Doomsday with no context. In his Red Guardian accent, he said, "You are Tony Stark." Taken at face value, that would be a massive spoiler. He delivered it completely deadpan, no smile, no chuckle, nothing to signal a joke, and that is exactly why it got reported across multiple headlines and editorials over the last day as a genuine reveal.

I forgive anyone who fell for it. Usually you get some inclination from body language or facial expression that an actor is joking. Harbour gave none of that. He played it as serious as possible, which left the door wide open for outlets to run with it as a real spoiler. But when I think through this logically, the pieces do not add up to a scene that actually exists in this film.

Why the Tony Stark reveal barely works for most of Avengers Doomsday's cast

The idea that Victor von Doom looks like Tony Stark only really lands emotionally with a handful of characters left in the MCU. A lot of the new characters introduced in the Multiverse Saga have no real connection to Tony Stark, so the reveal would not translate to the audience through them. Shang-Chi knows who Tony Stark is because he grew up in the 616 MCU, but that does not give him any deeper connection than, say, She-Hulk.

Characters like Yelena Belova and the two co-leaders of the Avengers teams, Bucky and Sam Wilson, would more likely have negative feelings toward Tony Stark than an emotional reunion moment. They respected him and mourned him after Endgame, sure, but remember the timeline: they came off Civil War fighting for their lives against Tony Stark, got snapped in Infinity War, came back, and then he sacrificed himself. Unless there was major reconciling that happened off screen, that tension never really got resolved.

That narrows the list of characters for whom Robert Downey Jr.'s Doom looking like Tony Stark would actually matter, outside of Steve Rogers, down to Tom Holland's Peter Parker, who is almost 100 percent confirmed not in this film, and Rhodey, who I am almost a thousand percent sure is not in this film either. Pepper Potts is rumored to have a cameo in either Doomsday or Secret Wars, but not as a major character or as Rescue fighting alongside the team. That leaves Hulk, who probably is not in this film, and Thor, who has a huge role, but I find it hard to believe Doom revealing his identity is meant to be a moment shared with Thor specifically.

Marvel is reportedly saving Doom's identity reveal for Secret Wars

This lines up with rumors going back to last year that Marvel Studios plans to hold off on the reveal of Doom's identity as Tony Stark until Avengers Secret Wars, keeping his mask on all the way through Doomsday. If he does take it off in Doomsday, the theory is that it would only be revealed to the audience, not to the other heroes, saving the real moment for Secret Wars. I primarily think that moment happens between Doom and Spider-Man, and I plan to get into why that makes more sense than ever in future theory pieces.

With reports that Marvel is holding this reveal for Secret Wars and no reported moment in Doomsday where Doom actually takes off his mask, it is hard to believe this scene made it into the film as a secret, only for the big reveal to be handed to Red Guardian with the line "you are Tony Stark." On top of that, the majority of the Doomsday ensemble is not 616 heroes at all, it is the Fantastic Four and X-Men from other universes who would not know who Tony Stark is, let alone care that he might look like Doom.

The Deadpool and Wolverine precedent does not change my read on this

Marvel already established that variants across the multiverse can look exactly alike while being totally different people with different power sets, which is what happened when Chris Evans showed up in Deadpool and Wolverine as Johnny Storm instead of Steve Rogers. So it is technically possible under that established logic that Victor von Doom and Tony Stark could look identical with zero overlap between the characters.

But I do not buy that here. You do not cast Robert Downey Jr., pay him that kind of money, bring him back as the villain, and just have it mean nothing. The Russo brothers, the cast, and Kevin Feige have made too much of this already. Whenever they get asked point blank about it, they all clam up and say it will be explained, which tells me the twist is central to why they brought Robert Downey Jr. back at all, and that it has to be a good one if they were willing to reveal he was playing Doom years before the film even came out.

This was Harbour's dry humor, not a leak

My conclusion is that this was not a huge reveal. This was David Harbour nailing a deadpan joke and fooling everybody who fell for it. As I put it, "we've all had those friends" who are so good at dry sarcasm that you have to stop and actually ask if they're joking, and that is exactly what happened here.

It also makes sense that Harbour would pick a fake line like this. Going back to Infinity War and Endgame, dialogue for characters like Red Guardian is at a premium, and he barely gets a majority share of lines in these ensemble films. He also literally cannot answer that question with a real line, so if he was going to give a fake one anyway, this was an effective one to drop, even if the deadpan delivery meant almost nobody realized it was a joke.

A correction on a Magneto story from the day before

Separately, I want to address a story about Magneto that got fast tracked the day before this one. We attributed that story to Deadline, but Deadline did not actually report it. The original source was Complex, which is not a reputable source given how big this story would be. That is one of the risks of running a news channel when stories are breaking, which is why I always try to take things back to their original source, and I have skipped stories in the past when I could not actually find that source. This time we got baited, and I take responsibility for it.

Do you think Harbour's deadpan delivery was just a well timed joke, or is there any chance a version of that line still ends up in the film?