Marvel Replaces Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man In New Disney+ Series

Published Oct 15, 2026, 7:30 PM EDT

Felipe Rangel is a Movie and TV Journalist ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more.

Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being "Politics Reflected In American Comics."

Iron Man appears in this Marvel TV show on Disney+, but another character is given the role that Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark had in the MCU, and it comes as a dark twist. Downey is the face of the MCU, and his absence throughout the Multiverse Saga clearly played a role in why the franchise ended up faltering so much.

That said, this is all about to change. Downey is set to return to the MCU, now playing Doctor Doom in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars after a couple of cameos. As soon as Downey's casting was announced, fans started to come up with theories about how Victor von Doom and Tony Stark could be connected.

After all, they are both played by the same person in the MCU, and the Russo Brothers have teased that Avengers: Doomsday will clear that up. For now, Downey's future remains Iron Man free. While that is the case for the live-action MCU, Tony Stark has shown up in animated Marvel series on Disney+ in the last few years.

One of those shows is Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. The animated Marvel series is not canon to the MCU. However, it is also not fully standalone, as many of its characters and world events feel like they were pulled straight from the live-action franchise, existing like an alternate universe take on the MCU. That show will soon return, and with it, so could a changed Iron Man.

Norman Osborn Replaced Iron Man & There Is More On The Way

Downey's Iron Man served as the mentor of Tom Holland's Spider-Man in the MCU. While events like the superhero Civil War have also happened in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man's universe, Iron Man's role in the animated Peter Parker's life is completely different. Instead of recruiting Peter to fight by his side against Captain America's team in the conflict, Iron Man is not a core part of the animated Spider-Man's life at all. Replacing him as Peter's mentor in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man season 1 was Norman Osborn. The classic Spider-Man character was voiced by Colman Doming in the Marvel series.

Iron Man briefly appeared in season 1 and has yet to show up in any of the promotional material for the upcoming Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man season 2, which will debut on Disney+ on January 13, 2027. This suggests that, different from the role Downey's Iron Man had in the MCU and in Peter Parker's life, his animated counterpart in this MCU-adjacent universe will continue to amount to cameo appearances in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. By having Norman Osborn, who every Marvel fan knows eventually turns into the Green Goblin, as his mentor in the Marvel series, season 1 came with a dark twist.

Scratch & Peek

Identify the cover art while scratching off as little foil as possible.

As expected, Osborn was a master manipulator in season 1. While Peter slowly improved as a hero, Osborn was using the character in pursuit of power, with a version of Marvel Comics' Dark Avengers potentially on the way in future seasons. Norman also pushed Peter far more than Tony, as there was not the same type of fatherly bond there that Stark had developed with Spider-Man in the MCU. Finally, while he was seemingly helping Spider-Man, Osborn was experimenting on Peter's blood to see if he could create an obedient army of super-powered individuals.

It all culminated in a major event that saw symbiotes, time travel, and greed come crashing down on them. In summary, replacing the role Downey's Iron Man had in Spider-Man's life with that of Domingo's Norman Osborn was absolutely prejudicial for Peter. Now, it stands to be seen how Osborn's role will shift when Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man season 2 releases, and whether Downey still has at least one more Iron Man appearance in him in the live-action MCU.

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  Hudson Thames

  Peter Parker / Spider-Man (voice)

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  May Parker (voice)