During what could easily be considered the main event of San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel Studios announced that Robert Downey Jr., the actor who helped kick off the MCU as Tony Stark, will be returning to Marvel Cinematic Universe. The big twist, though, is that he will be returning not as Tony Stark, but as Victor von Doom, perhaps Marvel Comics’ single greatest villain. For a company who would rather reboot or memorialize a character than recast them, casting the same actor in two very prominent roles seems like a very strange move. And that’s why we think it’s possible that this is one big misdirect.. Robert Downey Jr. may be playing Victor von Doom, but what if he’s not playing the Victor von Doom.
Of course, keep in mind that we don’t have any secret spies at Marvel Studios, a special friendship with Kevin Feige, nor have we mastered the mystic arts to become the Sorcerer Supreme to see 14,000,605 different futures for the MCU. In other words, this is all theory crafting based on what we know about Marvel Comics, the MCU, and some assumptions about human behavior. And maybe Downey is actually playing the real Doctor Doom. If he is, there might be only one way to make that work just right.
It’s hard to take this announcement at face value, though. This doesn’t feel like a creative move made because it’ll lay the groundwork for an interesting story. Instead, it feels like the kind of thing studio executives come up with to put butts into movie seats. It’s hard not to let the way the MCU has been struggling at the box office since Avengers: Endgame color our perceptions of this casting choice. There are other actors out there who could play a compelling Doom, and for whom the casting wouldn’t raise an eyebrow for so many fans about the MCU going back to what worked before instead of trying something new and interesting.