Editor’s Note: The following are spoilers for Episode 3 of Secret Invasion.
One of the main attractions of Marvel Studios Secret Invasion it’s his suspense, waiting to find out which character will turn out to be the next shape-shifting Skrull impostor. But the most recent episode hints that the series’ next twist might have been best avoided. Not only will this twist not actually come as a surprise, it will also lessen the impact of earlier developments in the series and past projects in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
At the end Secret Invasion Episode 3, “The Betrayed”, Varra/Priscilla (Charlayne Woodard), Skrull wife Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), examines the gun she kept in a safe deposit box. She then calls on the phone, and the voice on the other end of the line gives her instructions on where and when to go to the meeting. Varra says she needs to talk to Skrull resistance leader Gravik (Kingsley Ben Adir), with whom both she and Fury are supposed to have a long history, but the voice replies “Yeah, well, you’re talking to me” before hanging up. The voice sounds exactly like James “Rowdy” Rhodes/War Machine (Don Cheadle), a United States Air Force colonel and member of the Avengers who worked closely with the President of the United States (Dermot Mulroney) throughout the series. This suggests that Rhodey, who appears in the series, is actually a Skrull impersonating him, but that would be a poor choice for a story for several reasons.
Who is James “Rowdy” Rhodes?
Rhodey first appeared in the original MCU movie. iron Manin which he played Terrence Howard before Cheadle took over the role he has been playing for over a decade in iron Man 2. The character was originally a Stark Industries military liaison and close friend of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), although the couple’s vastly different lifestyles have sometimes caused conflict between them. After Tony used the first version of his Iron Man armor to escape the Ten Rings terrorist organization, Rhodey found him in the Afghan desert and brought him home.
IN iron Man 2, the pair clashed on numerous occasions when Rhodey began to believe that Tony was using the armor irresponsibly, and they got into a fight when both were wearing suits after Tony got drunk in his. After the fight, Rhodey took the armor to his Air Force unit, where it was modified by Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), creating the first War Machine suit. In the end, Tony and Rhodey make up and team up to defeat an army of Hammer drones that have been captured by Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke). After the two defeated Vanko, Tony allowed Rhodey to keep the suit, and he became the first modern MCU superhero to work directly for the US government. Rhodey joined the new version of the Avengers that formed at the end Avengers: Age of Ultronalthough his loyalty to the government sometimes conflicted with his loyalty to the team, as in Captain America: Civil War.
Why would turning Rhodey into a Skrull be a mistake?
Marvel Secret Invasion comics first showed that several major superheroes were replaced by the Skrulls at various times, but this will not work in the MCU. The comic book universe has been around for decades, so even when it was said that the characters were replaced many years ago, much of their long history remained intact. Because most of the main characters appeared in multiple issues a month, the original versions were able to quickly catch up and add a lot of new detail to their stories after they were rescued from the Skrulls.
In comparison, the MCU only exists for a fraction of that time, and its characters typically only appear once or twice every few years. To say that some of them were replaced very recently runs the risk of delegitimizing much of their history. Rodi is a good example of this. The character never received much attention or development, but he still had important experiences while working on the franchise. One of them was a life-changing injury he received in Civil War which paralyzed his legs. Another was his heartbroken reaction to Tony’s death Avengers: Endgame. These things had to happen to the real Rhodey in order for them to retain their current meaning. If they were said to have happened to an impostor, the original version of the character would have lost all the nuance they gave him, and the scenes in which they happened would retroactively become less meaningful. For a franchise like the MCU that prides itself on constantly building on what has gone before, that would be a major mistake.
In addition to devaluing his past, making Rhodey a Skrull would also lessen the impact of his role in Secret Invasion, especially his interactions with Fury. In the second episode of the series, an amazing scene was shown in which Fury warned Rhodey about Gravik’s plans to take over the world in the hope that another person would help fight them, but Rhodey refused. When Fury tried to address Rhodey as a black man in power, the latter got even angrier and fired Fury, revealing that he even volunteered to do so. This scene is pivotal in both characters’ story as it reveals some of their feelings about race relations in America that their previous appearances didn’t go into. If Rhodey, who had this conversation, turns out to be a Skrull and not a real Black Man, his involvement in this loses its meaning.
Rhodey’s unexpectedly hostile behavior towards Fury makes him an obvious Skrull suspect, so it would be more surprising if he wasn’t. In addition, such behavior has more impact if it really belongs to him. Recurring theme throughout Secret Invasion there was the idea that Fury had lost some of his spy superiority, and the current crisis has been repeatedly blamed for his failure to honor his end of the deal he made with the Skrull population. This makes the character appear more error-prone than in the past, which in turn makes it more likely, though unlikely, that he really failed to stop Gravik, increasing tension throughout the series. While the character will almost certainly prove his doubters wrong and win at the end, at this point in the series, when a former ally like Rhodey goes up against Fury because they genuinely don’t believe in him, it’s more dramatic than they do it because they are part of an enemy conspiracy.
It’s worth remembering that it’s by no means confirmed that the show makes Rowdy a Skrull. A phone conversation between him and Varra ends up creating more questions than it answers. But the creators of the series clearly want the viewer to at least think about the possibility of replacing the Avenger. I hope they also realized that it would actually do more harm than good. Secret Invasion and the MCU in general.
New episodes Secret Invasion Premieres every Wednesday on Disney+.
Source: Collider
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