Marvel's original plan for Iron Man 3's villain was very different than what we got, with Rebecca Hall's Maya Hansen set to have a larger role before corporate fears changed these plans. As the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film to hit theaters after The Avengers, anticipation could not have been higher for Iron Man 3 in 2013. Robert Downey Jr.'s final solo film became the highest-grossing solo MCU film to date, as the Shane Black-directed film earned over $1.2 billion worldwide.

The film's reception was favorable, but the most common criticism of Iron Man 3 is its villains. The Mandarin was sold as the main antagonist for Tony Stark's next adventure. Ben Kingsley played a reinvented version of a character who has a history of being portrayed as a bad stereotype in the comics. But, Iron Man 3 surprised everyone with it's Mandarin twist. It was revealed Kingsley's character was an actor named Trevor Slattery, who was hired by Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) to act the part of the Mandarin. This change shifted the focus back to Killian for the third act, as he powered himself with Extremis and took the spot as the film's big bad. Iron Man 3 then ended with Pepper Potts killing Killian and Slattery being sent to prison.

Some viewers found Iron Man 3's twist to be a refreshing change from the Marvel formula, but it has also served as one of the more divisive moments in the MCU. The fake-out of including the Mandarin was not universally well-received, although Tony Leung will now play the real Mandarin in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Killian's upgrade was underwhelming. However, this story was only chosen after high ranking Marvel executives forced changes to be made to Iron Man 3's villain story.

Iron Man 3'S Original Villain Plan

Just like the prior two installments of the Iron Man franchise, the development of Iron Man 3 saw many changes made to what Shane Black and writer Drew Pearce first developed. Early on, they locked on to the idea of having a female character be the main villain of the film. The female villain of Iron Man 3 was set to be Maya Hansen, giving the character a more significant role than she received in the final script. This early version of Hansen would've served a similar function as Killian in Iron Man 3's story, where she would be revealed as the antagonist in the third act. Some reports claim that the addition of Mandarin didn't come until later drafts, but no one involved has directly confirmed that was the case. Instead, Maya would've been the one pulling strings on the fake Mandarin and presumably running Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM), in addition to still inventing Extremis.

This would've been the first main female villain in the MCU, a title that instead fell to Hela in Thor: Ragnarok four years later, and multiple actresses circled the part. Early on in development, Emilia Clarke was secretly attached to Iron Man 3 and possibly lined up to play Maya Hansen. Jessica Chastain later entered negotiations after rewrites happened, but she passed on the role and resulted in Rebecca Hall signing on to play Maya instead. She officially joined just a few weeks before production began, but she's helped reveal some additional details about what the original plan for Maya might've entailed. Hall confirmed Maya always was the one who invented Extremis and that she had a turn of heart at the end instead of dying. This would've not only changed Maya's arc from the one she received in Iron Man 3 but altered the movie as a whole.