Given that Tony Stark is dead in Marvel Cinematic Universe canon after making the ultimate sacrifice play at the end of Avengers: Endgame, Disney Plus series Armor Wars was always going to make substantial deviations from its source material.
The comic book run that lasted for eight issues between December 1987 and June 1988 saw Iron Man discover that his designs and weapons were being used by his enemies, forcing him to put a stop to those trying to turn Stark Industries technology into a means for causing mass chaos and untold destruction.
It’s a fairly straightforward swap for the live-action show, then, with Don Cheadle’s Rhodey stepping in to take top billing after spending more than a decade in a supporting role. Speaking to ComicBook in the wake of the D23 Expo, the actor teased what we can expect from Armor Wars when it eventually arrives.
“If you know anything about the lore, and you’ve read the comic books, you understand that it’s a series that was built around Tony’s Stark Tech getting out and Rhodey taking it on to go get this tech back from the bad hands, the bad actors whose hands it is in. And as Marvel does, it’s also an opportunity to take the mythology and tip it on its head a little bit and come up with different ways to tell the story, so it’s doing that and has done that in spades.”
Armor Wars has been taking its sweet time to get started, leading many fans to wonder if it was still on the schedule at all. Thankfully, Cheadle was there to reassure everyone that his long-awaited solo project is indeed coming down the pipeline, and it’s not as if one of the MCU’s most recurring background players is going to be disappearing from our screens anytime soon, with Secret Invasion up next.