Tony Stark's final "I am Iron Man" in Avengers: Endgame marks one of the most iconic moments of the movie and the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, but actor Robert Downey Jr. had some ideas for other lines he wanted the character to say in the climactic finale.
Downey Jr. was being quizzed on the HypochondriActor podcast about Iron Man's last words in Avengers: Endgame when he said there were some rejected lines he came up with for Tony to say during his final moments. "The correct answer is 'I am Iron Man,' but I had so many alt lines that I wanted to put forward," he said. "Oh god, let me think. They were all super smart-ass lines like I was trying to, y'know, dumb stuff like, 'You are so f-cked' or whatever. You know what, I'll have to go back to my notes... I get the Infinity Stones and then have the power to snap and have whatever I wanna have happen -- Oh... I was gonna say 'Oh, snap.'"
When asked why he didn't use the other options, Downey Jr. said, "I'll tell you why, it was too smart-ass and it was the whole arc of the character and it was, I think... maybe one of our great editors' ideas, or one of the writers to say we need to go right back to the first film and have his dying words be the words of his origin... We love a bookend."
Downey Jr.'s "I am Iron Man" line first appears in the MCU at the end of 2008's Iron Man when Tony holds a press conference and spontaneously decides to tell the world he's the masked metal hero. The line makes its return during the finale of Avengers: Endgame when Tony makes a play for the Infinity Gauntlet and wipes out Thanos and his army with a single snap.
The snap kills the beloved character, leaving other MCU heroes -- be it Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, etc. -- to pick up the missing pieces left in Tony's wake. Downey Jr. said in 2020 that "anything could happen" as far as reprising the character at some point, but there's been no word from Marvel or Disney about that happening anytime soon.
Tony shows up in multiple episodes of Marvel's animated What If...? series that premiered last year, but the character is voiced by Mick Wingert. Marvel's upcoming Ironheart show, which does not yet have a release date but just recently cast This Is Us star Lyric Ross alongside Dominique Thorne and Anthony Ramos, could prove worthy of a Downey Jr. return or cameo, although further details on the show have so far been scarce.
Source: HypochondriActor