We're gonna be diving right into spoilers for Avengers: Endgame, my friends. If for whatever reason you haven't seen or at least heard what happens at the end of Marvel's last big team-up movie, you probably want to stop reading. Although to be fair, if you clocked the headline of this article it's probably already too late.
The epic battle for the universe depicted in Avengers: Endgame had its share of casualties, including none other than Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man. With the Infinity Stones in hand, Stark made the sacrifice play. He snapped Thanos and his army of alien horrors out of existence, but at the expense of his own life. It was all very sad, but a fitting and noble end to the superhero who kicked off the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe all the way back in 2008.
While I'm not so sure Tony Stark should ever return and undercut such a heroic exit, other fans seem to disagree. Two years on from Avengers: Endgame, and fans have erected a billboard in Los Angeles asking Marvel to bring Stark back from the dead.
As most comic book fans know, death is hardly the end in the world of superheroes. Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Captain America, Wolverine, and the Hulk are just some of the heroes that have appeared to die before coming back a few months later, usually with a shiny new costume. There are certainly plenty of ways Tony Stark could come back, but whether or not Robert Downey Jr. would want to be the one to bring him back is a different issue.
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"Playing Tony/Iron Man was hard and I dug deep," Downey Jr. recently told the Hindustan Times. "I had an incredible ten-year run that was creatively satisfying.. I've done all I could with that character and can do other things now. Now, being middle-aged, you start looking at the back nine and realize this is all part of the journey, and things end. I am fortunate and eternally grateful to have wound up where I have."
It very much sounds like Downey Jr. is finished with the role for now. If Stark ever returns to the MCU, my guess is that it'll be years from now - and it could very well be with a different face entirely.
