Robert Downey Jr. may have recently won his first Oscar for Oppenheimer, but he’s not looking to run from his Marvel past.

The actor shares that he’d be genuinely thrilled to step back into the shoes of Tony Stark/Iron Man.

Speaking to Esquire, Downey speaks from the heart about the role’s significance to him: “It’s too integral a part of my DNA. That role chose me. And look, I always say, never, ever bet against Kevin Feige. It is a losing bet. He’s the house. He will always win.”

Despite the emotional farewell of Iron Man in Avengers: Endgame, Downey’s possible return poses some dilemmas. Feige’s protective stance on Iron Man’s farewell makes it tricky to bring him back. A prequel story would require using CGI to de-age Downey (which still looks a bit awkward and uncanny valley), while a sequel return risks cheapening Endgame. Alternatively, there’s the possibility of exploring different dimensions, as seen in recent Marvel projects, like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Spider-Man: No Way Home, which introduced alternate versions of beloved characters. Rumors about an Avengers: Secret Wars film reuniting the original team persist, but nothing concrete has been confirmed yet.

The Esquire feature also showcased an interesting insight from Downey’s Marvel co-star, Gwyneth Paltrow, who portrayed Tony Stark’s trusted assistant and wife, Pepper Potts. Paltrow disclosed that she ceased memorizing her lines for MCU films due to Downey’s knack for improvisation and his ability to conjure up different, often superior dialogue on the spot.

“There would be this process of [director] Jon Favreau and Robert and I going into Jon’s trailer in the morning and Robert being like, ‘I’m not fucking saying these lines’ and throwing them out,” she said. “And then live improv-ing either in the trailer or on the set. I think in order for something to feel alive for Robert, it has to feel fresh, and he makes it fresh by making it feel like it was just invented. So many of those famous lines were written ten minutes before we said them.”

Downey has a few upcoming projects in the meantime. He’s attached to return as Sherlock Holmes for Sherlock Holmes 3 with director Dexter Fletcher, though the film has yet to materialize. More immediately he is in The Sympathizer, HBO’s Vietnam War limited series based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that’s coming April 14.¹

1. Content sourced from Robert Downey Jr. Says He’d “Happily” Return as Iron Man, Regularly Threw Out His Dialogue and edited by Chat GPT ↩︎