Doreen Green is…
Iron Squirrel!!
I wouldn’t want Shuri as an Iron Man replacement. I would want her as Shuri. Yes, like Stark, her power is that she’s really smart and has access to high tech, most of which she invented herself. And yes, she might end up inside of a super-tech suit to go on the front lines herself, given the proper motivation (which would of course have to include some reason why she’s not putting her brother inside the suit, instead). But there’s much more to both characters than just that.
EDIT:
Now, silenus’ idea there, that just might work.
Also Bucky Barnes, Phil Coulson, Nick Fury, Jiaying, Mike Peterson, Pepper Potts, and Steve Rogers.
I don’t know Jiaying, so I can’t comment on them, but of the ones I do recognize, Coulson (who I blanked on) was the only one of those who actually came back from the dead (maybe…I can’t remember the details of TAHITI and if he was Not Quite Dead when they worked on him). (Unless Deathlok got a lot worse after I stopped watching SHIELD.)
Faked deaths (Fury, Loki, Bucky), assumed deaths (Steve), and ‘should be dead’ (Pepper and Mike) aren’t the same thing as coming back from the dead - especially in a universe where actually coming back from the dead can happen.
I would like to see someone else take over as Iron Man, but RDJ stick around doing cameos as Tony Stark if he’s willing. I think it would be a big mistake for another actor to take over for Tony in the same continuity. RDJ is Tony Stark.
Likewise, someone like Bucky taking over the Captain America mantle makes sense, but nobody should take over for Steve Rogers. IMO, more than anyone else in the MCU, RDJ and Chris Evans are the definitive actors for those characters, and it would be jarring to see anyone else in the roles.
I do think they could bring the Fantastic Four into the MCU, but the way I’d like to see them do it is to have them get caught in a wormhole or something and literally appear in modern days from the Sixties, complete with Sixties ideas and sensibilities. Initially play them with a bit of comedic value like GotG, but eventually as they acclimate to modern times, bring them in as more serious superheroes.
I’m from having my pulse on the beating pulse of the MCU fans, but I don’t foresee a problems with that at all. McAvoy is a great Prof X and in due time there would be no problem for him to take the “main” role of X.
If the actor is right, there might be some mumbling and internet wars, but the theatres will be filled.
Same with Captain America. The MCU is free money, they won’t let it stop because of an actor being too old.
Ditto Wolverine.
I think it’s a negligible difference. Everyone, the characters and the audience, saw Bucky Barnes die in the first Captain America movie. He then reappeared in the second Captain America movie and it was declared that his death in the previous movie was faked.
So in the three years between 2011 and 2014, was Bucky Barnes dead or alive?
If the first Captain America movie had done poorly at the box office and the sequels hadn’t been made, does that mean that Bucky Barnes’ death in the first movie was now real?
Is Killmonger dead? We saw him die in Black Panther. But how do we know he won’t be brought back in a future Black Panther sequel and his death will be declared a fake?
Jiaying’s a character, played by Dichen Lachman, from the television series Agents of SHIELD. She’s the mother of Daisy, one of the main character. She was a major character in the second season, which centered around Daisy finding out about her origins. Jiaying’s an Inhuman who has regeneration as a super power. When the season’s main villain learned this, he captured Jiaying, removed all her blood and organs, and transplanted them into his own body to restore his youth. Not surprisingly, having all her blood and organs removed killed Jiaying.
But it was later revealed that her regenerative powers were so good that she was able to recover even from death and come back to life. However the experience made Jiaying pretty cranky and she ended up becoming a villain herself and tried to kill her daughter Daisy. Cal, Daisy’s father and Jiaying’s husband, had to kill Jiaying in order to save Daisy.
Or at least, he appeared to kill Jiaying. She came back from her first death after all. For all we know, she might reappear again.
The general rule is that characters who die off-screen (or are cast away into a void) are still alive, but the characters who die on-screen are really dead…save for Nick Fury, ‘cause he’s a sneaky motherfu… Agent Coulson is kind of the exception, but he got relegated to an ABC series, which is pretty much as good as dead.
Stranger
…and Loki. He just loves coming back from the dead.
Characters come back to life if there’s enough interest in re-using the character for yet another media property. You can kill Superman, but you need to print the next issue next month, so Superman’s gonna come back. The only characters who stay really dead are those that aren’t interesting enough to revive. Bucky, Captain America’s teen sidekick from World War II stayed dead for a really really really long time, because he was a stupid boring character that nobody cared about. He only came back from the dead when they came up with the Winter Soldier gimmick.
It’s fine to kill off Tony Stark and/or Steve Rogers “for real”. They’ll stay dead until someone wants to use those characters again. Then they can either bring back Downey or Evans to reprise the role, recast the role Rhodey-style, have some other character put on the costume, hard reboot everything, soft reboot some things, reprise the character as a stand-alone Deadpool style, or whatever.
If Downey and Evans are done playing the roles, then kill them off saving the world, and let them retire, and figure out what you want to do with the characters later, because that’s how it works.
This is the correct answer.
The next Captain America and Iron Man, respectively, will not be Steve Rogers or Tony Stark. We could see Buck and Rhodey take on those roles but, personally, I’d rather see Sam and Riri. There’s not enough legacy characters, IYAM.
If/when Marvel decides to recast Steve and Tony, it won’t be until or unless they reboot the whole MCU.
Great suggestions!
I liked Aji’s post too.