Marvel Won't Resurrect This Major Avengers Character, According To Kevin Feige

Tony Stark is gone, folks. For real. Well, at least in the MCU. And at least as far as Robert Downey Jr.'s character is concerned. (Yeah, there are always a lot of caveats with these things.)

According to the top brass over at Marvel Studios, the titanic Avenger will not be resurrected, even in the multiverse-obsessed age of cinematic superheroes in which we live. In a recent cover story, Vanity Fair did a roundup of the life of Robert Downey Jr. involving multiple members of the man's inner sanctum. One of these individuals was the MCU's visionary leader, Kevin Feige. At one point in the conversation, Feige definitively declared of Tony Stark's emotional departure from the MCU in "Avengers: Endgame," "We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again. We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way."

While we can never get enough of Downey Jr.'s iteration of the Iron Avenger, this is welcome news for many fans. Mr. Stark's entire MCU arc is completed and codified, which is good because Marvel really does have a resurrection problem. Zoe Saldaña's Gamora was back in "Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3." Persistent rumors continue to swirl about a potential return for Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow. Loki's resurrection has gone over well, and it's true that we're dealing with open and obvious variants in that case. But for all intents and purposes, the Asgardian was dead ... and then he was just alive again. The thought that the sacred story of Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark is set in stone is welcome news — especially for those who rode the ride all the way from "Iron Man."

The effort to truly give Tony Stark (and, by extension, RDJ) a proper send-off was so intense that the goal was to not even do reshoots if possible. "Endgame" directors Joe and Anthony Russo were also among those who participated in the Vanity Fair cover story on the Iron Man actor's life, and they rehashed some insights into how those final moments played out.

In the original version of the script, Tony Stark doesn't say a word in his final showdown. Thanos says, "I am inevitable," and Stark just snaps his fingers. However, in post-production, the directors felt a response was needed, and when the line "I am Iron Man" was pitched, they knew they needed to reshoot the scene. When they originally approached him, Downey Jr. didn't want to revisit the emotional weight of the character and the overall MCU experience.

"We'd already said tearful goodbyes on the last day of shooting," explained Joe Russo. "Everybody had moved on emotionally. We promised him it would be the last time we made him do it — ever." 

Anthony Russo added, "That was a difficult thing for him to do, to come back to pick up that line. 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." Robert Downey Jr.'s tenure as Tony Stark came full circle. It ended right next to where it began, and the powers that be at Marvel Studios have clearly made a commitment to keep it that way.