People just can’t get over the loss of Iron Man after Avengers: Endgame. Not a day goes by without someone concocting a theory for how he could have survived. If you ask that film’s screenwriters, the adventures of Tony Stark should end right there. If there’s an Iron Man 4, you can count Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely out of it. This shouldn’t be a surprise as the duo would have had to agree with the rest of the creative team on Endgame about Tony’s eventual fate. All the people involved in the project are basically set on the idea of Endgame being the last rodeo in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Robert Downey Jr. There has been little in the way of news to discredit that fact. A recent talk with Vanity Fair just reinforced that thinking.

McFeely began, “Whether you like all of the 24 movies or not, the capital that Marvel built up allowed them to do things like make a movie starring a raccoon and a tree, right? You would’ve already had Iron Man 4 if it was any other studio. But they decided, 'No, we’re going to take chances on all these other things.' To put a flag in the ground and say, We’re going to end something and take characters off the table, is, I think, kind of daring, but selfishly it was really great for us.”

“It needs an end or it loses meaning. The end is what cements the thing, to actually sew it together and bring it to a crescendo, and yeah, take people off the board, finish their arcs. If Tony made it out the other side, and Iron Man 4 was waiting there, you’d be like, [shakes head] One too many…”

Jon Favreau was the man at the controls for a lot of Iron Man’s adventures. But, near Spider-Man: Far From Home’s production, he too said that he was unclear about the prospect of the movie. It seems highly unlikely after Avengers: Endgame, but people keep asking about it.

"We haven't talked about four," Favreau said of the tandem of he and Downey. "I've talked to [Marvel Studios president] Kevin [Feige] about it to see what they're up to, but we definitely love working together and we love these characters. We talk about what it would be, and we always joke about the freak storyline which is the Happy Hogan storyline when he turns into a Hulk-like character. We joke about that. No plans, as of yet."

Favreau is hard at work on a number of projects and the notion of returning to Marvel as a director is something which remains of his interest. "I mean, nowadays who knows with all the different platforms and the streaming service," Favreau continued. "I'm part of the new Disney streaming service. All of these new technologies are, new platforms are emerging and all sorts of really cool... It's not like network television or not like blockbuster films where everybody has to be, everything has to be made for all audiences. Now you could make specific material and content for specific groups."

"As long as that you're doing a good job and they're loyal to it and they like what you're doing, there's room in this new ecosystem," Favreau concluded. "It's going to be very interesting to see what, not just Lucasfilm does, but Marvel does and Disney with the opportunity to do things that don't have to compete on a blockbuster weekend in the summer or on the holidays. It takes a while for this to ripple through to the audiences."