Spoilers from 2019 for Game of Thrones and Avengers: Endgame
The weekend of April 26, 2019 was an eventful one for us nerds. It was the weekend that The Avengers: Endgame opened in theaters and that the Season 8 episode of Game of Thrones, “The Long Night” aired. The Internet was abuzz trying to figure out which of our beloved characters from each franchise would survive the weekend. It was a whole thing. “The Long Night” ended up having one really cool moment for Ayra Stark, but otherwise, all of the main cast survived. The same could not be said for Avengers: Endgame. We *spoiler* lost the Black Widow and Iron Man, two superheroes that had basically been there since the beginning of Marvel’s incredible multi-phase journey. Both deaths, particularly Tony’s, were emotional.
Four years later, the MCU is struggling. My personal belief for that is threefold: 1. Fans gave their emotional-all over the course of 11 years for phases 1-3; 2. Phases 4 and 5 involved too much homework, requiring viewers to watch movies and subscription-only TV shows to understand everything going on; and 3. Superhero fatigue. Because of this, none of the newer MCU movies have really caught on with audiences. So, of course, rumors recently arose that the studio was trying to bring back the original Avengers, including Tony Stark/Iron Man, forcing Marvel’s captain Kevin Feige to release a statement denying this.
Marvel fans shouldn’t be checking for Robert Downey Jr. to reprise his role as Tony Stark/Iron Man in the Marvel universe. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed in an interview with Vanity Fair that despite reports otherwise, there are no plans to resurrect the character after Downey Jr.’s last appearance in 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame.”
“We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again,” Feige said. “We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way.”
Downey Jr. was hesitant to even do reshoots for “Endgame,” according to the film’s co-director Joe Russo. “We’d already said tearful goodbyes on the last day of shooting. Everybody had moved on emotionally,” Russo told publication. “We promised him it would be the last time we made him do it — ever.”
His brother Anthony Russo, who co-directed “Endgame,” added, “That was a difficult thing for him to do, to come back to pick up that line.”
“When he (Downey Jr.) did come back, we were shooting on a stage directly opposite where he auditioned for Tony Stark,” Anthony Russo said. “So his last line as Tony Stark was shot literally a couple hundred feet from his original audition that got him the role.”
[From CNN]
One of the things that made Tony’s death so sad was that his very last line was a repeat of the line that closed out the very first Iron Man movie. It came full circle. To me, that made it all the more final. I know Marvel is trying to go the comic book route in keeping its main players around by taking advantage of the multiverse. That may (emphasis on may) have worked if they hadn’t expanded to Disney+ shows, but it appears they may have f–ked around and found out by putting those shows (with complicated plots) behind paywall.
All that said, I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that I really liked RDJ as Tony Stark, Chris Evans as Capt. America, and Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow. Part of me would love to see them all come back again. But, all good things must end and we got pretty satisfying conclusions for two-out-of-three of those characters. I felt the same for Loki at the end of the second season of Loki and even that show was a multiverse of mindf–kery. Honestly, I think that Marvel Studios needs to regroup and make things simpler for viewers again. Salud to RDJ, ScarJo, Evans, and (I think?) Tom Hiddleston for all they gave to fans.
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