‘Secret Invasion’s latest Rhodey twist makes his iconic ‘Age of Ultron’ scene a lot more sinister

With Marvel’s Secret Invasion, we have learned that Don Cheadle’s Colonel James Rhodes is not who he appears to be. Specifically, Rhodey is being impersonated by a female Skrull named Ravaa, and is involved in the plot to plunge the world into chaos.

As part of Skrull-Rhodey’s loyalty to Kingsley Ben-Adir’s Gravik, the imposter colonel advises the president that the Skrull invasion is in collaboration with Russia and that he should attack the country to nip it in the bud. In reality, it is part of Gravik’s genocidal plan to trick America into attacking the Skrulls in Russia in order to ignite World War III so that he can divide and conquer the humans.

Reddit users on the r/MarvelStudios subreddit imagined injecting some of Rhodey’s quippy dialogue from Avengers: Age of Ultron into his plea with the president with the famously flat punchline to his War Machine story, “Boom, you looking for this?”

Maybe a “War Criminal story” would be a more appropriate moniker.

In fact, “War Criminal” might be a better moniker for Skrull-Rhodey than War Machine at this point.

In truth, we don’t truly know how long Rhodey has been a Skrull imposter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe at this point. However, Marvel boss Kevin Feige himself has hinted that more information will come to light, eventually, that should reveal Rhodey’s past appearances in movies and TV shows may be affected by the retroactive plot point. So it’s still unclear whether Rhodey was a Skrull in Age of Ultron, specifically, for instance. That said, Skrulls have been on Earth for a good 30 years at this point in the timeline so it is theoretically possible that Rhodey has been an imposter for the entirety of the MCU continuity.

However, my personal theory is that if Rhodey was a Skrull in any past movies or TV shows it would have been at some point after the first Iron Man movie, since his reaction to drinking on the job was notably different in that film than how he responded to a similar situation in Secret Invasion.

One thing is clear, though: the real Colonel Rhodes is still out there in the world somewhere, because an Armor Wars movie starring Cheadle is in the works. That also means the character is not likely to get killed off by the miniseries’ conclusion unless Disney goes with some kind of misguided prequel route, Black Widow-style.

Hopefully, we’ll find out more about Rhodey’s past, and the legitimate War Machine’s whereabouts, when the final episode of Secret Invasion comes to Disney Plus on July 26.