The Marvel Cinematic Universe is in a somewhat peculiar spot at the moment. Faced with a nagging sense of superhero fatigue and the dawning horror that audiences might actually be yearning for something new, supremo Kevin Feige’s response has been to – yep – bring back Robert Downey Jr, the guy who kicked this whole thing off in the first place (but whose character Iron Man was killed off in Avengers: Endgame with all the finality of a Viking funeral.)
RDJ will ostensibly be playing Doctor Doom in 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday, but there’s every chance this particular take on the Latverian tyrant ends up being a multiversal variant of Tony Stark, a version of Kang who decided that being a dictator in green armour was a better gig than getting repeatedly recast, or perhaps a resurrected Loki variant who just wanted an excuse to wear an even more dramatic cape. Either way, the actor’s return to the multiverse is only exciting in the way that re-releasing Endgame in cinemas again would be. It’s certainly not the kind of casting that hints at a changing of the guard, or the potential for Marvel to be reaching out to a new generation of filmgoers.
