Robert Downey Jr will obviously take off his Doctor Doom mask

Even though Doctor Doom is one of the few Marvel villains who doesn’t remove his mask, it’s obvious that Robert Downey Jr. will break that tradition.

Marvel confirmed Downey’s return to the MCU at the 2024 San Diego Comic-Con. The actor will appear in Avengers 5 as Doctor Doom.

Downey isn’t a stranger to playing comic book characters with masks, as he wore Iron Man’s helmet for more than a decade, but it’s a pretty well-known fact that Doctor Doom rarely removes his metal face plate.

However, while some Marvel fans believe Downey will honor this aspect of the character, it looks pretty likely that both the actor and Marvel Studios are keen on sidestepping this trait to give Downey more face time.

During university, Victor Von Doom was entangled in a bitter rivalry with the Fantastic Four‘s Reed Richards. While building a machine to one-up him, Victor suffered severe facial wounds.

The experiment gone wrong cost Victor his place in school and kicked off his lifelong hatred for Reed, which fueled his villainous transformation into Doctor Doom.

Marvel Comics has always gone back and forth with how horrific Victor’s injuries are, from a small facial scar that his dysmorphia believes is worse than it really is (Fantastic Four #278) to an actual disfigured face that’s missing vital pieces (Secret Wars #3).

No matter what he truly looks like, Doctor Doom always wears his metal mask, which allows him to commit his evil acts with confidence. It’s incredibly rare for the man ever to remove it.

And some fans believe Marvel Studios will keep up this longstanding tradition now that Downey is in the role.

A fan responded to the idea that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man will be floored when he sees a Tony Stark variant in a villain role with the post, “Peter won’t be seeing squat, bro. Doom don’t take his mask off AT ALL.”

However, Downey is Marvel’s most famous face; since he kicked off the MCU in 2008, the actor has become the person most associated with the franchise.

So it seems outrageous to believe the studio wouldn’t capitalize on that fact and have Downey show off his face as much as possible, regardless of how it would break Doctor Doom’s lore.

“MCU’S gonna give him a biotech mask which he keeps off for 95% of the movie,” one fan wrote under the previous comment.

Another summed up why the idea of Downey keeping the Doom mask at all times is a bit of a fantasy: “They hired RDJ as Doom for a reason. He’s gonna take his mask off. A lot.”

For more, keep up to date with Spider-Man 4 and Venom 3, along with the rest of Marvel’s upcoming movies and TV shows. You can also find new movies streaming in July.