Few details have been revealed about the plot of “Armor Wars,” or even the trajectory of Rhodey’s arc, but knowing that the film takes inspiration from the comic storyline of the same name does provide a few helpful hints. Should it follow directly in the footsteps of the comic, Rhodey will be kept very busy by his friend’s legacy, trying to prevent Tony’s tech from falling into the wrong hands. Even so, he will still be the heartbeat of the story, even as it grapples with Tony’s mistakes. In Cheadle’s words, “Obviously, you have to pay off the Marvel stuff and be in the lore of the mythology of the character and the MCU in general. But trying to really build out this character and make him a three-dimensional dude … is what the goal [is]. So I’m excited about that.”
Before we get to “Armor Wars,” there’s another Cheadle-starring MCU project on the way: “Secret Invasion.” The upcoming series sees Samuel L. Jackson taking center stage as hardened secret agent Nick Fury, the former S.H.I.E.L.D. director who once again has his hands full with alien activity. In the series, Fury learns that a radical group of Skrulls has been secretly infiltrating Earth and, given their shape-shifting powers, could be literally anybody in the world — he should know, he once had a Skrull assume his identity!
So where does Rhodey fit into this narrative? According to Cheadle, the events of “Secret Invasion” will be the spark that sets “Armor Wars” into motion. “I’m in ‘Secret Invasion,'” Cheadle explained. “So I’m in Sam Jackson’s show. There’s a part of that, that kicks off what happens in ‘Armor Wars.'”