One month after winning his first Oscar for Oppenheimer, Robert Downey Jr. told Esquire in a new interview he would happily return to the Marvel Universe as Iron Man. “It’s too integral a part of my DNA,” he said. “That role chose me. And look, I always say, never, ever bet against Kevin Feige. It is a losing bet. He’s the house. He will always win.”

Marvel Comics have frequently killed off characters and brought them back for dramatic effect, but Marvel Studios president Feige has said in the past that he feels protective over Iron Man’s character arc. The character met his end in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, sacrificing himself to defeat Thanos in one of the most devastating scenes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

The likelihood of Downey appearing in a prequel film slims as the years pass, unless CG de-aging advances quickly. Marvel has been utilizing multiverse stories in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Spider-Man: No Way Home. Downey could perhaps return to play a version of Tony Stark/ Iron Man in a different universe. There have also been talk of an Avengers: Secret Wars movie, which would bring back all the original Avengers, but nothing has materialized from these rumors.

Gwyneth Paltrow, Downey’s Marvel on-screen wife and assistant revealed to Esquire that she stopped learning her lines for the films due to Downey’s penchant for improvising and coming up with different dialogue while shooting.

“There would be this process of [director] Jon Favreau and Robert and I going into Jon’s trailer in the morning and Robert being like, ‘I’m not fucking saying these lines’ and throwing them out,” she said. “And then live improv-ing either in the trailer or on the set. I think in order for something to feel alive for Robert, it has to feel fresh, and he makes it fresh by making it feel like it was just invented. So many of those famous lines were written 10 minutes before we said them.”

In the meantime, Downey will be featured in The Sympathizer, HBO’s Vietnam War limited series based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which is coming April 14. He is also set to return as Sherlock Holmes for Sherlock Holmes 3 with director Dexter Fletcher.