While there's a great deal of excitement for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, both movies will need to do an awful lot if they hope to replicate the sort of thrills and surprises we got in 2019's Avengers: Endgame.
Despite Secret Wars being a dream project for the Russo Brothers, the filmmakers aren't expected to return to the MCU for the movie. Instead, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings helmer Destin Daniel Cretton is in charge of The Kang Dynasty, with Sam Raimi rumoured to be Marvel Studios' top pick for Secret Wars.
Looking back at Endgame, though, and the death of Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark/Iron Man still stings.
Weta Digital's Aaron Black recently shared some alternate takes on the hero's final moments, and if you thought what we saw in the movie was hard to watch, these are arguably even more difficult to look at.
"Concepts for the damage to Tony Stark from the exploding Infinity Gauntlet," the artist explains. "Obviously such a beloved character's death scene was top secret and needed to be treated with sensitivity. Tony needed to have suffered damage severe enough for it to be clear that he wouldn't survive, but it couldn't be too gruesome or obscure the actor's performance."
While Downey appears to have moved on from the MCU, rumours continue to persist he'll return as a Variant in one of the upcoming Avengers movies.
Talking about Iron Man's heroic sacrifice, Joe Russo previously said, "If you think of Captain America as a character, you go 'Okay, Captain America dying is fairly obvious,' right? [Self-sacrifice] is something he would do. This is a guy who offered to be a guinea pig in a science experiment in order to be able to go fight Nazis in the war. He's intrinsically a hero."
"There's not a lot of complexity there. It might be emotionally impactful because you like him. He's a very likeable character, but it’s not necessarily the most compelling arc," the filmmaker added. "Tony Stark is a character who was supposed to die. So that seemed like the more compelling arc to us, that it would be Stark who died. So that it would be a richer, more complex arc, and that’s why we chose him."
Talking of Steve Rogers, we still don't know what became of him after Avengers: Endgame. Last seen as an old man, it's been strongly hinted that he's passed away, and we're hoping his fate will be made clear in next year's Captain America: Brave New World.
Check out this newly revealed Avengers: Endgame artwork below.