Iron Man made his departure from the MCU a long time ago and unfortunately, no matter how much fans want it, he’s not coming back. Some fans are particularly bummed out by the fact that Tony Stark was never given the chance to face off against his arch-nemesis.
Iron Man is no different to other comic book superheroes, he’s faced off against a large gallery of rogues, but there’s always one villain that just keeps coming back, for Batman, that’s The Joker, For Spider-Man it’s the Green Goblin and for Iron Man it’s The Mandarin.
Whilst you could argue we saw the Mandarin in Iron Man 3, it wasn’t the real villain, it turned out to just be an actor named Trevor Slattery, played by Ben Kingsley. For a while that was all we had for an on-screen version of the character, Marvel had likely wanted to distance the character from any criticisms of stereotyping. Also it’s worth pointing out that magic wasn’t a thing in the MCU when Iron Man 3 released so the Mandarin was almost set up to fail being introduced so early on. However, Ben Kingsley’s portrayal was still close enough to the villain to keep fans happy, until that twist.
For years the studio stuck with the unsatisfying Mandarin twist and it looked like that would be the closest we’d get to seeing Iron Man actually battle his most iconic villain. Understandably, fans weren’t happy; this would be the equivalent of having Batman on the trail of the Joker only to have the Clown Prince of Crime turn out to be a washed-out extra from a nineties sitcom.
Some in the Marvel Studios subreddit expressed their disappointment as well as their hopes that we could still somehow see Iron Man and the Mandarin duke it out, even if it is just on the small screen.
While it would be cool to see, many were convinced that Tony Stark wouldn’t fare so well against the Mandarin.
Of course, with What If…? literally anything is possible, in fact, the entire series was pretty much made to give fans what they want without affecting the overall continuity of the MCU. It’s possible that we could finally get the chance to see Iron Man take on his arch-nemesis in an actual fight this time with magic and a more comic accurate depiction.
The Mandarin did actually make his way back into the MCU in the form of Xu Wenwu, the father and mentor to Shang-Chi. Although he has long since sworn off violence when we meet him in The Legend of the Ten Rings, he is a more comic accurate version of the character, he just arrived a couple years too late to face off against his no. 1 enemy.
Although neither Iron Man or Wenwu ever interacted in the MCU, Marvel has the perfect opportunity to give fans what they want with What If…? it’s not much when compared to what we missed out on, but anything is better than that awful Iron Man 3 twist.
