When Pepper Potts was a no-show in ‘Captain America: Civil War’ — much to the chagrin of the normally unflappable Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) — many fans assumed that like Natalie Portman, who played Jane Foster in the first two ‘Thor’ movies, that the actor that played her, Gwyneth Paltrow had had her fill of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and had flown the coop for good. What a relief when Pepper and Gwyneth were both back in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’! Now it seems that Paltrow and her character are back for the next couple of ‘Avengers’ movies, including the now-shooting ‘Avengers 4’.
Paltrow posted what appeared to be a harmless video of her getting a foot massage between takes in her trailer. The video was quickly taken down, but why? Well, you can see a screen cap from the video below:
As you can see, Paltrow is clearly wearing a motion capture suit, meaning that while she will physically acting in a scene, she will later be digitally enhanced somehow.
The question is how? It could be anything, but it may be likely that she will be donning a suit of Tony’s armor. She previously did this in ‘Iron Man 3’, so that could certainly be the case here as well. In the comics, Pepper has gone into battle in armor and called herself Rescue. Some fans have been hoping that Paltrow’s Pepper would adopt the Rescue identity in the movies and the ‘Iron Man 3’ sequence seemed to tease that.
If… and that is a big IF… she does don the armor and possibly the Rescue identity, the question then becomes why? Does something happen to Tony and/or Rhodey/War Machine (Don Cheadle)? Rhodey’s death was teased in ‘Civil War’, but fortunately he survived. But War Machine was recently killed in the comic book ‘Civil War II’, by none other than Thanos. Could the films duplicate that occurrence? Or does something happen to Tony? We all know Robert Downey Jr.’s contract with Marvel is up and he has expressed a desire to move on. Is this the end of an era and the Tony we all know and love?
This is all speculation of course. But obviously something happens to Pepper that requires CGI, so guess away!
