Jon Favreau Reveals His Biggest Marvel Regret
If they listened to Happy, we may not have Doomsday.
Jon Favreau is a man of many talents. Currently, he’s one of Grogu’s two dads (sharing custody with Dave Filoni) and is directing the upcoming movie The Mandalorian and Grogu. But before that, he was on the other side of the Disney franchise coin, directing Iron Man and Iron Man 2. On top of directing, he’s also an actor, so he was a natural fit for Happy Hogan, Tony Stark’s right-hand man.
Even after he stepped away from behind the camera, he would still appear as Happy in the MCU, even up to 2024’s Deadpool and Wolverine. In one of those appearances, he suggested a major change to one of the MCU’s most iconic moments — something he now looks back on with regret.
Jon Favreau tried to prevent the sacrifice of Tony Stark in Avengers: Endgame, but the Russos went ahead with it anyway.
When you think of Avengers: Endgame, probably one of the first images you think of is Tony Stark sacrificing himself to save the world. It was a shocking permadeath, unlike all the heroes who were Blipped, and led to both the rise of “I Love You 3000” as a saying and the official end of the Infinity Saga. But if Favreau had his way, that wouldn’t have happened at all.
“I called the Russos. I was like, ‘I don’t know about — I don’t think people — I don’t know if people are going to like — I don’t know! I think it’s going to really impact people because there were kids who grew up with that character,” he said during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. It’s easy to see why he would react like that: it may be difficult to remember, but before the MCU, Iron Man was a little-known hero. It’s not like Batman or James Bond, where he’s had many faces: Robert Downey Jr. was Tony Stark, and Favreau was the man who ushered him into the spotlight.
Seven years later, however, he takes a different view. “It was handled so well by them,” he said. “And Gwyneth [Paltrow] and Robert [Downey Jr.] did such a wonderful job acting, and I think it added a poignancy to it. I think they did a wonderful job. I was wrong. I was wrong. I was choked up! Even though it’s a movie, those characters have been part of my life for so long.”
Without the sacrifice of Tony Stark, we probably wouldn’t have Robert Downey Jr. as Doom.
Now, of course, Favreau would have an emotional investment in Tony Stark, but many fans had a similar reaction. Little would any of us know that this sacrifice did more than just provide a bittersweet ending to Avengers: Endgame, but it would actually set up the next Avengers movie. With Robert Downey Jr. now unable to return to the role of Tony Stark, he’s now playing Dr. Doom.
So if the Russos had listened to Favreau’s original complaint, then we wouldn’t have Avengers: Doomsday in its current form. Sacrificing Tony Stark may have been sad at the time, but it was the price to pay for the return of half the population then and the introduction of Doom now.
