Tony Stark’s death in Avengers: Endgame left a void the MCU long needed to fill. New heroes arrived, threats emerged, and yet none carried the specific weight of the man who started it all: a genius inventor whose technology and intellect carried the entire franchise.
Now, the official art book for Fantastic Four: First Steps makes it clear that Tony Stark's successor is finally here. Concept illustrator Joshua Viers, describing his work on the FantastiCar, drew a direct line from Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards to Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark, highlighting what makes them similar and yet so different.
Viers spoke about illustrating the FantastiCar, "the car of a rich genius inventor," a design modeled by Concept Vehicle Designer Joe Hiura, with production designer Kasra Farahani leading the creative vision:
“It was so satisfying to illustrate a design made of strong choices, because this is the car of a rich genius inventor.”
He then articulates the Stark comparison, describing "Reed Richards as very much a Tony Stark type:"
"I think of Reed Richards as very much a Tony Stark type, but coming from a different world with different sensibilities — and what is really cool about the FantastiCar is that this isn’t just another cool car for Tony Stark. This is coming from another universe, and this utopian version of the 1960s. Reed definitely has his own style and aesthetic — but this is really Kasra’s vision. Kasra has the sensibilities of a wealthy, brilliant inventor — he’s our Mister Fantastic."
This is the most direct creative confirmation that Marvel’s architects of First Steps built Reed Richards with Tony Stark in mind, not necessarily to copy him, but to succeed him on different terms.
Marvel Studios Found Its Tony Stark Successor & He’s Perfect
Reed Richards and Tony Stark share a specific archetype that no other MCU hero fills properly: the genius inventor who thinks faster than everyone around him and builds the solutions the rest of the team cannot.
Both men anchor their respective teams intellectually. The Avengers deferred to Stark’s engineering when threats exceeded conventional response. It was Tony who cracked time travel in Endgame, Tony who built the nano-gauntlet, Tony who delivered the final snap.
Reed performs the same function for the Fantastic Four. In First Steps, he eliminated all crime in preparation for his son’s birth, developed light-speed space travel, and designed systems the world depends on daily. He is, as director Matt Shakman describes to Entertainment Weekly, "the most scientifically intelligent person" on his Earth.
The personality parallels run just as deep. Both men carry the curse of seeing too much. Stark spent years haunted by the invasion he knew was coming long before the world believed him. Reed, as Pascal described the character, performs "the ultimate version of catastrophising. A brain that has an overview of threats on a mathematical level." Neither hero rests easy. Their intellect is simultaneously their greatest asset and the source of their deepest anxiety.
Both also carry ego as a defining flaw, a confidence in their own reasoning that sometimes outpaces their emotional judgment. Stark’s ego built Ultron, Reed’s, in the comics, famously drove colleagues away, and nearly cost him his family repeatedly. It’s the same character DNA: a man brilliant enough to solve almost anything, blind enough to occasionally miss what matters most.
What separates them is the world that shaped each man. Stark’s genius grew in the shadow of weapons manufacturing, Cold War anxiety, and inherited guilt. His technology spent years serving military interests before it served heroic ones.
Reed’s world never required that compromise. Earth-828 is the utopian version of the 1960s, a civilization where futurism delivered on its promises, where Reed’s influence bent architecture, transportation, and daily life toward optimism rather than defense.
That difference is why the FantastiCar tells the story so well. Tony Stark’s vehicles were weapons platforms with sports-car aesthetics. The Mark XLII could disassemble and reassemble in combat, while the Iron Man armor was always first a weapon. The FantastiCar is a family vehicle with jet-age elegance, with the same caliber of mind but entirely different application.
Shakman again described Reed as a combination of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Robert Moses, a builder of systems, of civilizations, not just gadgets. That captures the evolution from Stark. Tony built things to survive the next threat, while Reed builds things because he believes the future should look better than the present. It's a beautiful contrast if you think deeply about it, how the application of intellect can be so vastly different yet so similar.
What To Expect From Reed Richards in the MCU
Reed Richards arrives in Earth-616 at a critical juncture. The Fantastic Four cross into the primary MCU timeline at the end of First Steps, carrying with them Reed’s intellect, the team’s experience against cosmic-level threats, and a personal history with Doctor Doom that predates the Avengers’ formation.
In the comics, Reed Richards and Victor von Doom share one of Marvel’s defining rivalries, two genius-level intellects whose relationship calcified into mutual obsession. Doom blames Richards for his disfigurement while Reed carries the weight of that history every time they meet.
It's been confirmed that Pascal plays an integral role in Doomsday, though not the film’s centerpiece. This is fitting for an ensemble this large, which includes the returning Avengers, the X-Men, the Thunderbolts, and Robert Downey Jr.’s Doom commanding the center. Reed doesn’t need to lead the charge to matter. When the assembled heroes hit a wall that strength can’t solve, the camera will turn to the one person in the room who might have already thought three moves ahead.
That’s the specific function Tony Stark served in most Avengers films. He is not always the leader, not always the moral compass, but always the one whose mind the others needed when conventional heroism fell short. Reed steps directly into that role in the MCU. This nerdy intellectual might not have the charisma and Playboy features that make Tony cool, but he's a massive asset in a way that makes him a worthy successor to the beloved Iron Man.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
