Iron Man’s Jeff Bridges Makes a Promising Tease About an MCU Return

Iron Man star Jeff Bridges may have just teased his Marvel Cinematic Universe return in a new interview. Bridges played the very first MCU “big bad” Obadiah Stane, the man who helped Howard Stark turn Stark Industries into a corporate powerhouse. When Tony Stark developed the Iron Man armor, Stane (and his puppets, the Ten Rings) developed the dreaded Iron Monger armor out of Tony’s original Iron Man prototype. In the final battle between Iron Man and Iron Monger (known as the “Duel of Los Angeles”) Stane (seemingly) is fatally electrocuted by his prototype arc reactor when it explodes under him. He fell into the reactor, which then exploded. 

MCU fans have kept a spark of hope alive that Obadiah Stane could make a comic book-style return, with his death (and SHIELD’s whole cover story about it) getting debunked by a surprise return. With the Iron Man side of the MCU about to get rebooted through projects like the Ironheart TV series and Armor Wars movies, now would be the suitable time for Obidiah Stane to re-enter the chat. 

While talking to Josh Horowitz during the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Jeff Bridges not only acknowledged that there’s room for Obadiah – or any multiverse variant of him – to return in the MCU (“Who knows? It’s all science fiction and I could maybe pop up again…”), he explained that an original version of the Iron Man script set that up that very scenario: 

“Well when I read the script, Obadiah Stane falls into that vat at the end,” Bridges explained. “In the script that I read and agreed to do, they pulled it [the armor] out and they opened it and I’m not there.”

It doesn’t sound like Iron Man director Jon Favreau ever shot that sequence of Iron Man, but that doesn’t mean a future MCU project can’t reveal it as a major flashback twist. It would be interesting to see what Stane has been up to in the years since Iron Man, given the reveal that the Ten Rings wasn’t at all what it seemed. 

Then there’s the more obvious and timely scenario of having an Obadiah Stane variant from another MCU reality appear in an upcoming MCU Multiverse Saga project. A lot of fans will instantly jump to the idea of seeing Bridges and his Iron Man co-star Robert Downey Jr. reunite onscreen. Avengers: Doomsday will see RDJ’s Doctor Doom menace the MCU Multiverse – it would be interesting to see Bridges’ Stane playing a different kind of role in and a different reality – maybe where he’s a heroic industrialist (iron Man?), and RDJ as the archvillain. 

Bridges seemed excited by Downey’s MCU return (“But he’s playing a bad guy! I love that!”) so who knows? 

Iron Man is now streaming on Disney+.