Chances are pretty good that you've already seen Avengers: Endgame and don't need this
spoiler warning — but, as you no doubt know, Tony Stark doesn't make it out of Endgame
alive.
Since so much of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been built around Stark and his armor-clad
alter ego, his absence leaves a pretty big vacuum.
But will it stay that way forever?
Maybe...maybe not.
Here's how Iron Man just might return to the MCU, in one form or another.
One of the best things about having a hero whose powers come from a suit of armor is
that almost anyone can wear it, assuming they're the kind of person who doesn't mind flying
around with rocket-boots and shooting bad guys with repulsor rays.
If that's the case, then there's no better candidate for the new Iron Man than Colonel
Jim Rhodes, who already has plenty of experience in the suit.
"I'm gonna have to hang onto your suit for a minute, OK?"
"Not OK.
Not OK with that."
"Wasn't a question."
That's not what makes Rhodey the obvious choice, though.
In comics, he's been better known as War Machine for decades, but Rhodey's first major story
came when he took over the identity of Iron Man while Tony was struggling with alcoholism.
His tenure as the Armored Avenger lasted for four years, and even saw him as the version
of Iron Man who went off to fight in the Secret Wars event.
Rhodey has the added bonus of being a known quantity among MCU fans.
Don Cheadle might've replaced Terrence Howard with the second movie in the Iron Man franchise,
but the character has been around since the first Iron Man film.
Then again, that might be a detriment.
Cheadle's the same age as Downey, and while that obviously didn't keep him from some epic
superhero action in Endgame, filmmakers might be looking for someone younger going forward.
Endgame paid off plenty of plot points and lived up to its promise of being the end of
an era, but the MCU shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
So it makes sense that Endgame would also lay down a little foreshadowing of its own.
If that's the case, then there might be a good reason why Morgan Stark, Tony's five
year-old daughter, is introduced to us wearing one of Tony's helmets and a toy Repulsor,
and why a huge chunk of the movie is devoted to Tony reconciling with his own father.
From helping found S.H.I.E.L.D. to helping found the Avengers and Pepper showing up as
Rescue, superheroism is a family business for the Starks.
There's no reason why Morgan couldn't eventually carry on that legacy.
The obvious problem there is that Morgan Stark is five years old.
It's also completely uncharted territory.
Unlike Rhodey, who's a well-known quantity as Iron Man, Tony Stark has never had a kid
in the comics.
There is an existing Morgan Stark on the page, but he's Tony's nefarious cousin who constantly
attempts to take over his business.
If the MCU wants to get really weird, there's one very unlikely character who could take
up the armor as the all-new Iron Man: Peter Parker.
Spider-Man is, after all, one of Marvel's most popular characters.
And with Into the Spider-Verse's critical acclaim, he's one of the only superheroes
who can carry two simultaneous film franchises that, for now at least, have nothing to do
with each other.
In fact, the latest trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home heavily implies that Peter is
actually thinking along these lines:
"The world needs the next Iron Man!"
So yeah, it could definitely happen — but it's almost certain that it won't.
Blending his role with Iron Man's wouldn't really do either one of those brands any favors,
and would probably dilute the elements that make each of them work on their own.
Still, there's a level where it would actually make sense.
From the moment he stepped onto the screen in Captain America: Civil War, Tony has mentored
Peter, looking to avoid making the same mistakes his father made when it came to dealing with
a teenage super-genius.
"All right.
I've run out of patience.
Underoos!"
There's an almost familial connection there, which we see in Endgame when the only people
who really get to mourn for Tony on the battlefield are Peter Parker and Pepper Potts.
Tony has even provided Spider-Man with his equipment, giving him the high-tech version
of his familiar suit that he wears in Homecoming, and the "Iron Spider" armor that we see him
wearing in Infinity War and Endgame.
It's a relationship that they've never really had in the comics, and if he was any other
character, Peter would be the obvious choice to take over.
As it stands, we're definitely getting a further examination of that mentoring relationship,
but it's far more likely to end with Spider-Man deciding to strike out on his own.
If the MCU really wants to move forward and put a younger character into the armor, they
don't need to go for something as wild as Peter Parker: Iron Man.
The comics have served up a ready-made replacement in the form of Riri Williams, better known
as Ironheart.
Introduced in 2016, Riri is a teenage genius from Chicago who reverse-engineered Stark
technology and built her own suit of Iron Man armor.
Since Tony Stark was dead at the time and, as is often the case in comics, he got better
she wound up fighting crime, assisted by an AI version of Tony.
Eventually, after a meeting with Pepper, she wound up creating her own suit from scratch
and taking the identity of Ironheart.
As far as replacements go, she'd definitely be an interesting one.
But the fact that she has an established separate superheroic identity that's already appeared
in cartoons would seem to make that unlikely.
Still, there's one really cool connection to the roots of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Back in 2008, Tony Stark built his first suit of Iron Man armor in a cave.
Riri built hers in the garage.
Echoing those roots in a different form would be a nice way to go forward.
Maybe Marvel doesn't actually want to replace Tony Stark as Iron Man.
Maybe they want to bring him back, but also make sure that they don't undermine the sacrifice
he made to defeat Thanos.
If so, there's one way that they can have their armor-plated cake and eat it, too: they
could give us the film version of Teen Tony.
The comics killed off Tony Stark in 1996 after revealing he was secretly a villain and attempted
to attract new readers by replacing him with a teenaged version of Tony from another dimension.
Like the original Tony, he had to wear the armor to keep his heart beating, but did so
as a cool '90s youth who didn't have a mustache.
He also didn't have much success in the whole "get people to read this comic" thing, and
was killed off via heroic sacrifice ten months later, quickly becoming one of those weird
comics things that we just don't talk about much.
Still, it's been 22 years, and that's enough time to give this idea another shot by casting
a young CW star as the all-new Tony Stark.
We even have more than a few hints that the MCU might be introducing a full-on multiverse
as of Spider-Man: Far from Home, giving him or any other alternate Tony the perfect opportunity
to jump into the MCU.
"You're saying there's a multiverse?"
Is teen Tony going to happen?
Probably not, but, that's exactly what we would've said if you told us ten years ago
that Rocket Raccoon, Crossbones, and M'Baku were going to be in the same
movie, and that it was going to be one of the biggest blockbusters of all time.
Time makes fools of us all.
There's another alternate version of Iron Man who seems like he's begging for a comeback:
Arno Stark, the Iron Man of 2020.
He was introduced in 1984, when 2020 still seemed like the far-off future.
The basic idea is that he was a younger cousin of Tony Stark's who used a scary-looking version
of the Iron Man suit to act as a mercenary.
Thanks to the magic of time travel, Iron Man 2020 wound up fighting Spider-Man in 1986
and Iron Man in 1990 in what was a surprisingly uneventful career as a supervillain.
With 2020 on the horizon, it might not surprise you to learn that Marvel has been laying the
seeds for Arno to make a return in the comic books.
Most recently, it's turned out that Tony was actually adopted, and that Howard and Maria
Stark's first child, Arno, had been the subject of genetic experimentation by an alien robot,
which caused them to adopt Tony.
It's… complicated.
Arno eventually made his return as a relatively heroic character who teamed up with Tony,
and is currently floating around the Marvel Universe, presumably waiting to live up to
his name.
Obviously, that's some complicated stuff even by Marvel standards.
But hey: the opportunity to use Iron Man 2020 in 2020 only comes around once.
If Tony Stark himself is going to make a comeback, then there's an easy way to pull it off without
cheapening his death in Endgame: Just have Tony return as an artificial intelligence.
This has been done before in the comics, most recently with the aforementioned A.I.
Tony that helped Riri Williams build her armor and served as her on-board computer.
Of course, in the comics, living artificial intelligence characters are a dime a dozen,
but the MCU isn't far off itself.
Friday and Karen, the onboard A.I. for Spider-Man's Stark-designed suit, both have distinct personalities,
and J.A.R.V.I.S., the Iron Man suit's original A.I., was even able to evolve into a full-on
superhero in Age of Ultron, when it became the Vision.
This all depends on how truly done with the role Robert Downey Jr. is.
But all things considered, it seems like a pretty likely way to get Tony back into the
mix.
A holographic Tony serving as the onboard A.I.for a character like Riri or Morgan or
Rhodey would be a nice way to bridge the gap to a new Iron Man.
Or he could even control an empty suit of armor himself.
If Iron Man is going to come back, then there's nothing that says he has to be a good guy.
A new Iron Man could use Tony's name and technology for sinister ends.
That's actually the premise of one of the most well-known and beloved Iron Man stories,
"Armor Wars."
The premise is that Tony finds out that his tech has been used by armored villains like
the Titanium Man, the Crimson Dynamo, and even Stilt-Man, and he goes all-out to destroy
their armor so that his creations can't be used for evil.
The MCU obviously lacks the sheer number of armored enemies that the comics have built
up over the past 60 years, but between Obadiah Stane's recreation of the armor in Iron Man,
Justin Hammer's mass-produced knockoffs in Iron Man 2, and all of those pieces of the
armor that were destroyed in Iron Man 3, there's enough of it out there that it's not implausible
that someone could build their own, especially if they had an uninterrupted five-year span
to work on it.
The idea of Pepper and Rhodey teaming up to save Tony's legacy is compelling, and a villain
co-opting Tony's signature line...
"I am Iron Man."
...is almost so easy that it's tough to imagine not doing it.
Plus, dealing with the idea of the legacy these heroes leave, blurring the definitive
lines between heroes and villains that we've seen in Endgame, and examining the Iron Man
suit as a weapon whose morality is determined entirely by its user...all that would be an
interesting way to move forward in a world without Tony Stark.
One of Marvel's most popular characters in recent years has been Squirrel Girl.
No, really.
She's the star of a long-running and award-winning comic, and she's set to appear as the lead
in an upcoming New Warriors TV series.
While Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Netflix Marvel shows are technically set in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe, TV and movie projects have always been pretty separate.
If, however, the MCU wants to tie things together, there's one way they could generate some intense
brand synergy and recreate an iconic moment from the comics.
Just have the new Iron Man be based on the scene where an evil duplicate of Squirrel
Girl kidnaps Tony Stark and convinces her rodent pals to crawl into his armor and scurry
around trying to operate it, with predictably disastrous results.
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