Marvel Executive Lays Down Final Word On Iron Man's Return

The events of Avengers: Endgame left the Marvel Cinematic Universe in what sure seems like a pickle. A sudden charisma vacuum was present. Iron Man was gone, taking his valley girl cadence and a hefty percentage of the MCU's marketability with him.

For many fans, a world without Tony Stark was like a world without sunshine: cold, dark, and bad. He had, after all, been the jumping off point for the entire franchise — if there hadn't been an Iron Man, who would Nick Fury have told that there were other superheroes who weren't Iron Man? And so, the logic goes, Disney must be gunning to bring the character back, right? There would certainly be precedent for work-arounds to be found in the comics. Iron Man has died and come back to life, died and replaced himself with an Iron Man hologram, had a younger, time-displaced version of himself take over for him — the options seem endless.

Now, Marvel Studios' executive vice president has weighed in on a possible return for the Most Sensational Superhero of All. Victoria Alonso, who has been called "the most powerful woman in Hollywood" as the result of her producer credits on literally every MCU movie, spoke with the Spanish-language publication Clarin this week, and addressed the potential for a Robert Downey, Jr. homecoming. The prognosis isn't great.

"Tony Stark is dead. And that's our story."

With these (Google translated) words, Alonso put the kibosh on any more Iron Man. She went on to discuss why the idea didn't appeal to her, saying "Resurrection, I do not know, I do not know how we would do it. It seems to me that the story of Tony Stark is told by us. Hence, he has left his inheritance... Peter Parker has been a false son, so you see a lot of what Tony Stark would have been in Peter Parker. And it seems to me that you see that constantly in how one person influences the other. But no, at the moment we don't have any plans."

Alonso's comments are just one more nail in the fictional hero's coffin. Downey himself described his time in the MCU as "all done" in a 2020 episode of the SmartLess Podcast, so it looks like the Stark legacy will have to carry on without the 55-year-old actor on board. For the time being, it seems fans will just have to make do with the 2,590 other proprietary Marvel characters listed on the comic book company's website.