Robert Downey Jr Tom Holland Spider-Man: Homecoming

SPOILER ALERT: Well… I mean, “SPOILER” is literally in the title, so….

We’re just weeks away from another dose of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, y’know the character that launched the ENTIRE Marvel Cinematic Universe and led to RDJ being the highest paid actor in Hollywood, after a turbulent couple of decades in and out of the spotlight.  As you may or may not know, Downey Jr.’s contract with Marvel Studios ended several movies ago, but he renegotiated for a few more movies, but it’s unclear how many.  Could his tenure as the cornerstone of the MCU be coming to a wrap soon?

Though he will be back in a supporting role in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’, he will surely be playing a much larger role 2018’s ‘Avengers: Infinity War’.  But after that?  The jury’s still out and you know how the makers of these large franchise films tend to keep things under tight wraps.

But did Downey Jr. accidentally release a SPOILER when he tweeted a seemingly innocent picture of himself and a few co-stars?

 

It may literally be NOTHING, but Downey’s shirt, which is apparently a costume from ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ has a hole in the chest.  This would make sense since that’s where his arc reactor would go.  Except, as Comic Book Movie pointed out, the arc reactor was removed at the end of ‘Iron Man 3’.  Does he, for some reason have to replace it?  For the first three ‘Iron Man’ movies and the first ‘Avengers’ film, the arc reactor was the magnetic forcing keeping the metal shrapnel away from his heart… a condition that partially went into the reason he became Iron Man to begin with.

Or is the hole there for a different reason?  Perhaps a chest wound?  In the recent ‘Civil War II’ comic, it was War Machine/James “Rhodey” Rhodes who was killed… something that was teased in the trailers for ‘Captain America: Civil War’ but that ultimately didn’t come to pass in the actual film.  In the comics, it was Thanos that killed Rhodes and of course, Thanos is the Big Bad of ‘Infinity War’.  Could the creators of the movie be pulling a switcheroo and inserting Stark into War Machine’s place?

It’s all just speculation at this point, so we’ll have to wait until next year to know for sure.

In the meantime, RDJ returns as Tony Stark in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ on July 7.

‘Avengers: Infinity War’ directed by Joe and Anthony Russo arrives on May 4, 2018.