Earlier, it was rumored that Robert Downey Jr was not going to return as Iron Man, which left people puzzled on who would replace him. Joss Whedon, however, refused to have the perfect role model be departed from the franchise and he wants him to stay as Iron Man, so eventually RDJ has officially signed on for Avengers 2 and 3 but unclear for Iron Man 4. Hope not because of that plague twist from Iron Man 3 that producer Kevin Feige and director Shane Black purposely ruined the Mandarin with over their selfish opinion about him it's pointless to even resume any further but lets not keep debating the issue. Let's focus on RDJ and what happened with his character in the latest film:
At the end of the third film, Tony gives up being Iron Man by having JARVIS blow up all Iron Man armors except for Iron Patriot just to have a normal life with Pepper because of one reason; Aldrich Killian, who instead of the Mandarin physically served as Tony's arch enemy in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the villain Firebrand. ANYWAY because of Aldrich kidnapping Pepper and attempting to turn her against Tony, it made Tony worry about her more so he had JARVIS blow up his suits except Iron Patriot so that he can be a more caring person to her and because she killed Aldrich, and that he and Rhodey found and captured the Mandarin and handed him along with corrupted Vice President Rodriguez over to the authorities, Tony say in voice over that his journey as Iron Man was over, but now his journey will resume again that Downey has signed on for Avengers 2 and 3. All that remains for the character in Avengers 2 is, what or who will make his character come back to the Avengers in person as Iron Man and not by remote controlling the armors like he did with Mark 42 on Shane Black's favored plane attack scene in Iron Man 3?
Well surely anything catastrophic would certainly work like Kang, MODOK, Ultron, Count Nafaria, or Galactus, but those villains wont work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not when Whedon plans to make the sequel smaller than the first one which leaves the only logical choice to be the Masters of Evil which will consist of villains who survived their encounters with the heroes in the stand alone films in both phase one and two. Among them their leader will serve as the main antagonist but is will not be Baron Zemo. Instead it will have to be the one villain who survived in Iron Man 3 and yeah I know it is who you know but is the one hope and logically fair choice we got
The Mandarin/Trevor Slattery
Yeah I know some of you critics, dingbats, moderators and twist collaborators won't think it will happen all because of Shane Black calling Aldrich Killian Mandarin of the MCU and because of Killian proclaiming himself Mandarin well guess what, you're gonna have to give Kingsley another chance at being Mandarin. By getting the cosmic rings from Thanos or somewhere at some sort, Trevor will become the more proper Mandarin from the comics and the more powerful interpretation of the MCU and as powerful as the 10 rings will make him become, he should definatly be the one reason of a villain that will make Tony come back to the Avengers in person in armor since the Mandarin had something to do with him and will hopefully make things in the Marvel Cinematic Universe a lot better as it was before in all of Phase 1. All we need for that to happen is for Joss Whedon to cast Ben Kingsley with RDJ in Avengers 2 and renew his character as the real Mandarin fans know best and repectively and things to a better like in Phase 2's finale and because Whedon brought Clark Gregg's character back to life in Agents of SHIELD for being a comic relief character, we hope he can do the same for Ben Kingsley's character as well.
In the mean time we shall wait for more updates.