Star Wars rumors: Is Robert Downey Jr. going to be in Star Wars?

The latest Star Wars rumors have been speculating if Robert Downey Jr. will be joining the Star Wars universe.

Over the last decade, Robert Downey Jr. gave a fantastic performance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe playing the role of Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man. That came to a close with the film Avengers: Endgame in 2019. And since, Downey has kept it quiet — save for the lackluster film Dolittle, which came out last year.

Now, there have been rumors buzzing about that Robert Downey Jr. might move to another mega movie universe, the one that we talk about on this website every day: Star Wars. But of course, these are just rumors. And so as we break down what all the hubbub’s about, keep in mind that you should take this with an extreme grain of salt, as everything is far from being confirmed right now.

According to The Direct, there have been two people to push the rumor so far. The first comes from a now-deleted tweet from Kessel Run Transmissions co-host Noah Outlaw. This was all in response to the name-drop of Grand Admiral Thrawn in The Mandalorian season 2 and curiosity about who would eventually play him in a live-action capacity. In response to that, the tweet reportedly said:

"RDJ is not Thrawn. Now I will say… LFL has talked to RDJ about being in a future Star Wars project."

Now, either this was such a big scoop that he was forced to take it down. Or it wasn’t much of a scoop at all, and as such, it was probably best not to let it circulate any more. (Spoiler alert: it already did.)

It’s also been noted that scoop extraordinaire Daniel Richtman apparently shared similar information on his Patreon account. The rumor went that Iron Man director and The Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau wants to potentially work with Robert Downey Jr. again. As such, it’s not clear if that means Favreau would specifically want to work with Downey via The Mandalorian or if the two just want to team up for another project in general.

Again, these are all rumors, so make of them what you will. But this has gotten some fans excited for a possible return of Robert Downey Jr. on screen if he were to be in the Star Wars universe. As WinterIsComing.net writes, some people latched onto the idea of Downey being Thrawn. There’s even some amazing fanart of Downey as Thrawn from artist Yadvender Singh Rana on Instagram.

Overall, Robert Downey Jr. having a role in Star Wars would probably be awesome no matter what he did — even if it was a short cameo. Star Wars is really sharing assets with Marvel anyway, as the Kevin Feige-produced Star Wars movie just gained the Loki series writer for its script. So bringing on Downey would just be keeping it in the family.

As far as rumors go, this one is certainly a shot in the dark. But while we’ve reached a bit of a quiet time in the Star Wars fandom with The Mandalorian over, it’s fun to imagine the possibilities of what’s to come.