Kevin Feige on if Ironheart Will Join the MCU

With Avengers: Endgame closing one chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Spider-Man: Far From Home giving fans their first introduction to a post-Endgame world, there is one thing that we know is coming at some point in the MCU’s future: new characters and heroes. After all, we saw Captain America retire in Endgame as well as Iron Man sacrifice himself to save the universe and while Cap has Sam Wilson/Falcon to carry on his legacy, Iron Man could use a successor and while many would like to see that be Riri Williams/Ironheart, they might want to practice a little patience. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige sees that as something for potentially for the future.

In an interview with BET, Feige was asked about Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr’s recently told attendees at a gala for the Gene Siskel Film Center that Ironheart should be in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And while Feige agreed that Ironheart is a great character, he also suggested that it would be something that would happen in the future should it happen at all.

“I think it’s a great character, and it’s been fun to see how she evolves in the comics,” Feige said. “I just saw that quote, too. But again, the future…”

While Feige isn’t getting too detailed about the idea of the character potentially having a place in the MCU’s future, Downey isn’t alone in his support for the character. Spider-Man actor Tom Holland has also said that he thinks Ironheart would be a solid character to bring in to fill Iron Man’s shoes in future films.

“Her name’s Ironheart; Riri,” Holland recently told Fandom. “She’d be a cool person to bring to the big screen … the multiverse opens up so many doors where we can introduce so many cool new characters like Ironheart.”

Ironheart has also come up before as a character fans would be interested in seeing fit into the MCU. Last summer, an Ironheart solo script surfaced on The Black List, a website that publishes the best unmade screenplays in Hollywood. News of that script, which imagines Riri being mentored by Tony Stark, got a lot of attention online and fans hoped it would have a place in the MCU’s Phase 4. With Tony Stark being dead in the MCU after Endgame, that could present a few challenges, but even with the script being nothing official, it got fans excited about the idea of Riri coming to the MCU as well as other characters we haven’t yet seen. And introducing new characters like Ironheart doesn’t feel too impossible considering that the MCU has many more stories to tell.

“All of the things you’ve seen throughout Phases 1 and 2 and now through much of 3, the new characters always are important going forward in driving, shaping the future of the MCU,” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said earlier this year. “I think it would be amazing, another 10 years, another 20 films or so. We only focus on one step at a time but that’s all about continuing to surprise with the stories, go unexpected places, continue to play with new, fresh, unexpected genres and then introduce characters that people might have heard of or a beloved big fan base like Captain Marvel or characters like Guardians where before we made that, which people had never even heard of.”

Avengers: Endgame is in theaters now. It’ll be followed by Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 2nd.