LOS ANGELES — For 22 months, Walt Disney Co. has been run by “the two Bobs”: Bob Iger, the visionary leader who meticulously built an entertainment juggernaut; and Bob Chapek, his loyal lieutenant and successor as chief executive.

Internally, they were known as “Bob I.” and Bob C.”

Now, Chapek can finally drop the “C.”

Iger’s retirement this week, at age 70, leaves Chapek as the singular chief guiding the Burbank entertainment giant into an uncertain future.

The challenges are enormous: Disney is still recovering from a pandemic that closed theme parks and movie theaters and halted TV and film production, and the crisis may not be over as new COVID-19 variants rapidly spread.

And Chapek must simultaneously steer Disney through a cataclysmic transformation while keeping it the world’s most powerful and recognizable entertainment company — despite incursions from powerful and deep-pocketed streaming competitors Netflix, Apple and Amazon.

Iger’s selection of Chapek to succeed him, announced in February 2020, stunned many. Producers, talent agents, programming executives and Disney’s competitors privately expressed skepticism that a guy who once managed mass distribution of videocassettes and Mickey Mouse merchandise had the creative chops to run Hollywood’s most famous company.

Feeding that perception, Disney established an unusual power-sharing arrangement to allow Iger to stay on as the company’s creative leader during the transition as Chapek, 61, eased into the job. The two men navigated the terrain in a way that some observers compared to a three-legged race.

“Chapek was faced with following a guy who’s literally a living legend,” said Jeffrey Cole, director of the USC Annenberg’s Center for the Digital Future.

In taking over Disney at the moment the COVID-19 pandemic walloped the U.S., Chapek faced a near-impossible task, while also having to operate in the shadow of his predecessor.

His record so far has been mixed. While Disney under Chapek has received high marks for adapting to fast-changing audience behaviors accelerated by the virus, some of his decisions have jostled key talent and, internally, bruised Disney egos. But with Iger finally out the door, Chapek has an opportunity to show his own strategic abilities, in the way that Iger had to prove himself after succeeding Michael Eisner — yet another larger-than-life Disney chief — in 2005.

Iger, in his 15 years at the helm, reshaped Disney into the world’s entertainment leader with the acquisitions of Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilm and much of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox.

He presided over the opening of Shanghai Disney Resort and the birth of streaming service Disney+. But he also maintained a soft spot for less flashy parts of the business, like local news.

Ahead of his exit, he trekked to KABC-7 in Glendale to deliver the morning weather report, a nod to his humble beginnings as a weatherman in Ithaca, N.Y.

“There’s no vacuum when Bob Iger is present. He fills all of the available space. He is a creative force and personality,” said FX Chairman John Landgraf, who joined the company with the 2019 Fox purchase. “Bob [Chapek] intentionally hung back and dealt with all of these complicated logistical challenges, COVID, and all of that.”

But now, Landgraf said, “The story of his tenure as the leader of the organization starts.”

Chapek, an Indiana native who studied microbiology in college, joined Disney in 1993 and came up through the operational rungs of Disney, including home video, consumer products and theme parks. He was an unknown to most of Wall Street and the more glamorous creative realm of the industry, despite his nearly three decades at the company.

Chapek is credited with spearheading Disney’s lucrative “vault strategy,” in which well-loved titles, such as “Bambi” and “The Lion King,” were kept off video-store shelves for years before being reintroduced to a new generation of children.

The ploy created artificial scarcity and made the videos all the more valuable to families — and to Disney.

But he landed the top job with the worst possible timing — on Feb. 25, 2020. Within weeks, the pandemic forced Disney to shut down its the parks and ocean cruise lines. Movie theaters went dark. ESPN suddenly had no live sporting events to cover.

With Disney’s cash spigots turned off, the company furloughed or laid off more than 100,000 workers, many of whom were affectionately known as “cast members,” at the dormant resorts, theme parks and cruise ships.

“Chapek was dealt a really bad hand,” said analyst Michael Nathanson, who covers Disney. “Whatever plans you’ve had are thrown out the door.”

But the pandemic gave Disney an opportunity to experiment with alternative business models.

“It’s that old line ... that ‘no great crisis should go to waste,’” Cole said.

The company scrapped the decades-old Disneyland annual pass program, replacing it with a new system to reduce crowding on high-demand days. It launched a new mobile app service, called Genie, that charges parkgoers a fee to skip long waits for popular attractions.

These decisions sparked backlash from some fans, who complained that Disney has found yet more ways of extracting cash from families who visit the parks.

Chapek, who was unavailable for an interview for this story, often is described as less sentimental, and more blunt and bottom-line-oriented than Iger, who could wax romantic about intangible aspects of show business. Some people, including some business partners, said they appreciate Chapek’s candid and direct style.