The Marvel Cinematic Universe lost its biggest hero when Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man fell in Avengers: Endgame, but not after saving the day/Earth 616. Ever since then, the MCU has struggled to create the kind of projects that made it such a global success in the first place.
While most fans have asked for Kevin Feige and company to focus on originality and come up with new narratives that delve into the wealth of characters the Comics have on offer, some have also pressed for a Robert Downey Jr. return. Whether that is a potential option especially considering the actor’s own wishes, Feige had previously claimed they would ‘never want to mafically undo’ Stark’s heroic death.
Still, one fan simply could not help himself, and end up creating a concept trailer for a potential Iron Man 4. In this movie, the MCU’s version of Tony’s daughter, Morgan Stark, does what her father once did to save the planet. She time-travels to save her father.
Fan wants Morgan Stark to time-travel and save Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, any way possible!
While Morgan was merely four years old when her father snapped his way to death, she was played by Katherin Langford in a deleted scene from Avengers: Endgame. Considering the scene itself was taken out of the movie, there is little doubt that Morgan has every reason to be desperate to bring her father back from death.
She is seen taking help from Mark Ruffalo’s Professor Hulk in the trailer, and attempts to go back in time to reunite with her dad. While the trailer does not reveal whether the story itself will see her succeed, we see it end with a thrilling Iron Man 4 font.
While fans will undoubtedly watch a potential return of Downey Jr., there are simply plenty of reasons why such a project does not seem like a good idea. The concept of time-travel has been overused, its potential repercussions have often been talked about in the MCU itself.
Even if Morgan Stark tries to take Bruce Banner’s help, and even if he agrees, such a return makes chaos a given. Apart from Stark, a range of other superheroes died in the battle against Thanos, and in the other battles that have played out in the MCU thus far.
Is one superhero’s life more precious than another’s? If some of them can be brought back by going back in time, why does anything in the MCU even matter? What about the Time Variance Authority, and everything we saw Loki and his friends undergo in the recent TV series with respect to the Sacred Timeline?
In itself, going over the possibility of a Tony Stark return, in anything other than a flashback, simply does not make sense for the general MCU and its fans.
An adult Morgan Stark did meet Tony Stark in the MCU, kind of!
Katherine Langford played Morgan Stark’s adult version in a scene which was deleted from the final movie. In it, a confused Tony Stark meets an older Morgan, and finds out that his snap ends up saving the world. Morgan claims that she is proud of him, and that she is happy that Tony was able to spend the limited amount of time that he was able to spend with her, after all.
While Morgan is bound to not remember her father well consdiering she was 4 when he died, she did grow around plenty of father figures, including Happy Hogan. While Jon Favreau’s Hogan was all too willing to serve as the a mentor to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, who saw Tony Stark as a father figure, one can only assume he would be willing to give his life to protect Tony’s actual offspring.
Furthermore, the concept in itself cannot really be pulled off without given Morgan Stark shades of the kind of villainry we saw Wanda Maximoff commit in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Not only will multiple superheroes go out of their way to stop her, the TVA will not be pleased with the surviving Robert Downey Jr. variant.
That, and the chaos that is basically a given, especially amidst everything the MCU needs to pull off in the near future (read: X-Men!), there is no reason for Marvel to look into the past. That is not true for the fans, however, as they can simply watch Tony Stark’s heroic demise in Avengers: Endgame, on Disney+.
