SECRET INVASION Director Shares When He Thinks Rhodey Became a Skrull in the MCU
If you haven’t watched Secret Invasion yet you might want to skip this post because we get into some spoiler territory.
The fourth episode of Secret Invasion confirmed that James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes (Don Cheadle) is in fact a Skrull. Up until now, we don’t really know how long this Skrull version of Rhodey has been around. Well, according to Secret Invasion director Ali Selim, Rhodes has been an alien invader since the events of 2016's Captain America: Civil War. During a recent interview with CB, the filmmaker said:
"A lot of people have asked about, 'Definitively, when did Rhodey...?' I think his legs not working in the end of episode six and him being in the hospital gown points to [Captain America: Civil War]. And, from there, does it have to be definitive, or is it more fun for the audience to go back and revisit every moment, every Rhodey moment and look at it with a different lens now that they think, 'Oh, he might've been a Skrull there.' And make the decision for themselves, or it'll be answered in Armor Wars."
That timeline seems to make the most sense for Rhodey to be replaced with a Skrull. It’s a time when he’s at his weakest and most vulnerable. This means that Rhodey was a Skrull in Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. The real Rhodey didn’t even get the chance to go to Tony Stark’s funeral, one of his closest friends, which sucks.
The real Rhodey, who is awakened at the end of Secret Invasion, most likely didn’t even know that Tony Stark died saving the universe! He also doesn’t know that Sam Wilson is Captain America or that Natasha Romanoff is also dead. This is actually one of the more interesting story arcs to come out of Secret Invasion, and it will continue with the upcoming Armor Wars project.
During a previous interview with Cheadle, he teased how his character will be explored in the Marvel movie, explaining that for the first time, we’ll get to see what makes Rhodey tick. He said:
"The fun part about it is that we're going to continue to explore Rhodey and — in some ways for the first time — get to see what makes him tick. We understand his physical challenges, but we haven't really yet dug into a lot of his emotional and psychological [challenges]."
We don’t know much about Marvel's adaptation of Armor Wars, or the story that it will tell. But Yassir Lester is writing the script, and Cheadle will be joined by Walton Goggins, who is returning to reprise his role as Sonny Burch from Ant-Man and the Wasp.
Armor Wars was originally planned as a series, but was reworked as a movie because the studio was committed to “getting the story told the right way and in that process realized that a feature was better suited for the project.”
Marvel producer Nate Moore (Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) previously opened up about why Armor Wars is the kind of project that needs to be a film versus a series, saying:
"When you're talking about a show that wants to be about seeing all the cool armors and Don Cheadle interacting with all these armors and, sort of, the legacy of Tony Stark? That became kind of cost prohibitive to do as a show."
What are your thoughts on how Rhodey’s story arc is being handled in the MCU?