It can be easy to dismiss Gwyneth Paltrow as an out-of-touch quasi-cultish nepotism baby who sells candles that blow up and crotch exercisers that cause bacterial infections and coffee for your little butt.
But she’s also probably a human being – a human being who held down a job in the MCU for longer than most people work anywhere. She has the inside skinny on the ins and outs of Marvel stardom. She’s worn two separate Iron Man suits. She knows how the sausage is made, even if she doesn’t always know which movies she was in.
More than that, she’s put in her time. Seven appearances as Virginia “Pepper” Potts across 11 years should be enough to sate even the most dedicated Potts Head, or Pepper Grinder, or whatever members of that fan base call themselves. Paltrow even said as much in a recent viral social media post, where she entreated fans who keep asking why she hasn’t done another Marvel movie: “Go call up Marvel and yell at them, don’t yell at me.” She further explained her recent absence from the franchise, positing “Why do you need Pepper Potts without Iron Man?”
And yet the fandom persists.
Even with Paltrow herself calling out how bizarre it would be to focus any of the MCU’s energy on an acclaimed businesswoman whose powers are limited to owning a mech suit that her ex gave her and the ability to raise a child alone, Marvel fans seem convinced that Pepper will return. The evidence: There isn’t any. The argument in favor: Hard to nail down. The really great Pepper Potts stories from the comics where Tony Stark isn’t involved: Super thin on the ground. Still, if the MCU can take a great character like Jane Foster’s Thor and turn them into something terrible, maybe they can take an unremarkable character like Pepper Potts’s Rescue persona and make it something great.