After a leaked image of What If…? showed Iron Man in an unusual costume, fans are now speculating that he may end up replacing the God of Thunder in Thor: Ragnarok.
The third installment in Thor’s franchise, helmed by Taika Waititi, saw the Asgardian stranded on a place called Sakaar, a trash planet ruled by the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum) who kept slaves and ran his business by making them fight each other in the arena. As for Marvel’s What If…?, we know that the series will take us to alternate realities that show what would have happened if things turned out differently than their canon version in the MCU. What’s more interesting, though, is that the cast of the Infinity Saga will actually reprise their respective roles as voice actors for the new animated show.
Now, after Goldblum seemingly confirmed that his character and Iron Man are set to appear in a What If…? episode together, and leaked concept art (as seen below) featured Tony Stark in a strange armor with scraps that resembled Sakaarian trash, some are theorizing that Robert Downey Jr. may actually replace Thor in the upcoming series.
Granted, it may sound like a strange notion at first, but think about it; the armor looks like Tony’s Mark 7 from The Avengers, so what if in an alternate timeline, Iron Man never made it back through the portal after destroying the Chitauri mothership? What if instead, Tony gets pulled into a wormhole and ends up on Sakaar?
Of course, this would be several years prior to the events of Thor: Ragnarok, so we may not see the God of Thunder in the episode. Additionally, Hulk flew the Quinjet to Sakaar after Avengers: Age of Ultron, so he’s not going to be there, either.
We don’t have confirmation from either Marvel or RDJ about whether the character will appear in What If…? or not, but Goldblum’s interview lends a lot of credibility to this since it doesn’t seem to be a mistake in any definition of the word.