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15th Sep 2019

Robert Downey Jr. might be putting on the Iron Man suit for one last time

Rory Cashin

tony stark black widow

Spoilers for Avengers: Endgame, literally the biggest movie in history.

Tony Stark is dead.

Long live Tony Stark.

At least that is what we’re gathering from this report on Deadline, where they were writing up on the winners from The Saturn Awards over the weekend, in which Avengers: Endgame won six of the fourteen nominations it had received.

But hidden within a parenthetical line is the following: “Downey will be seen in the role of Stark one more time, however, in the Marvel prequel Black Widow in May 2020.”

Wait, what?

Now… we’ve known that the Black Widow movie was a prequel for some time, both because it was made common knowledge it was setting up how Scar-Jo’s version of Natasha Romanoff went from red-in-the-ledger bad-guy to full-on Earth-saving Avenger, but also because Black Widow was another of the major casualties of Avengers: Endgame, so it kind of needed to be a prequel by necessity.

But Downey has been VERY vocal about he was done-and-dusted with Tony Stark, telling D23 Magazine the reasons why he and Chris Evans bowed out of the MCU:

“We had to get off. We opted to, and knew it was part of the job to get off the bus while it rolled on to other destinations. There’s something very sobering about it. I’m glad he and I will be there to welcome others as they retire their jerseys.”

Also, considering Stark and Romanoff don’t meet until the events of Iron Man 2, it wouldn’t make a huge amount of sense for them to be crossing paths here… unless there is more time-jumping afoot?

Deadline aren’t really known for getting this kind of stuff wrong, but there does seem to be more questions than answers spinning out from this one off-the-cuff remark, so for now, we’re filing this under a big fat MAYBE, WE HOPE SO, BUT PROBABLY NOT.

Black Widow, directed by Cate Shortland (Somersault, Berlin Syndrome), and starring Scarlett Johansson, David Harbour, Florence Pugh, O-T Fagbenle, Rachel Weisz and possibly Robert Downey Jr., is due to arrive in Irish cinemas on 1 May 2020.