Next Marvel phase to begin with Iron Man in the shower as Pepper realizes his death was a dream

In order to accommodate the return of Robert Downey Jnr’s Iron Man to the MCU, the first film in the next phase will reveal that all the events of MCU the since The Avengers: Infinity War were just a dream

The film will open with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts waking to the sound of water.

She gets out of bed and wanders through Avengers tower to the bathroom where she finds someone in the shower.

She flings the shower door open to reveal Iron Man polishing his helmet.

He asks her what the matter is and she replies that she’s had the most terrible dream.

“We needed Robert back. Definitely. It’s pretty clear that we can’t do Marvel without Robert,” said producer Kevin Feige.

“But you know, he died of infinity stones.”

“The only credible way to deal with that is to make everything that happened since just before he died a dream.

“Pretty clever, right? Well, you don’t get to run the most successful franchise of five years ago without being a world-class storyteller.”

He went on to reveal that a number of other options were considered.

“Oh sure, we considered a black magic resurrection, an Invasion of the Body-Snatchers pod person, adding a bit to that big death scene where, after everyone but Gwyneth leaves, Tony opens his eyes and goes ‘actually, it wasn’t that bad.’

“And, of course, doing something with alternate universes. But it would be really nice to do a superhero film without an alternate universe plot, so we went with the dream thing.”

Iron Man 4: Back in the Habit will kick off the next Marvel phase.

Unless this whole article was a dream.