Warning: This article contains spoilers for Marvel's Secret Invasion series.
Don Cheadle's Col. James Rhodes is certainly in a very interesting place following the events of 2023's Secret Invasion. The final episode revealed that Rhodes, who had traded in his armor for a new position as Secretary of Defense, was replaced by a Skrull impostor. Based on a new deleted scene from 2021's The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, it would seem Marvel was laying the groundwork for that twist even earlier in Phase 4.
IGN can exclusively reveal this deleted scene from the first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which is titled "Flight Lesson" and will be featured as one of the exclusive extras on the series' 4K UHD and Blu-ray release. You can see it embedded below or in the video player above:
Reuniting The Falcon and War Machine
This scene takes place early in Episode 1, shortly after Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson gives his speech at a ceremony where Captain America's shield is being put on display at a museum. At this stage, Sam is still very dubious about Steve Rogers' request that he take up the Captain America mantle.
While it's not hard to understand why Marvel might have cut this scene for pacing concerns, it does offer a valuable glimpse at the warm but slightly awkward friendship between the two former Avengers. Sam and Rhdoey found themselves on opposite sides of the conflict in 2016's Captain America: Civil War. And there's the little matter of Sam being partly responsible for Rhodey's paralyzing injury during the film's airport battle.
We can see from this scene that Rhodey doesn't harbor any ill will toward Sam for that incident. Moreover, he seems to have more or less fully recovered, referencing a new procedure that healed his shattered spine and restored his ability to walk. There's just one problem here - based on how Secret Invasion ends, we know this isn't the real Rhodey.
When Was Rhodey Replaced?
In Secret Invasion, we learn that Gravik's faction of Skrulls has been kidnapping key political and military figures and replacing them with Skrull sleeper agents. Rhodey turns out to be the most significant Skrull impostor (that we know about), one who nearly succeeds in triggering Gravik's plan of wiping out humanity in a nuclear holocaust and leaving Earth ripe for a Skrull takeover.
The real Rhodey is rescued from captivity at the end of the series. As he's escorted to safety, we can see that this Rhodey is still struggling to walk under his own power, a clue that he's been a prisoner of the Skrulls for quite a while. We know that he was taken at some point between the airport battle in 2016 and when he was supposedly healed after the events of Avengers: Endgame in 2023.
This deleted scene suggests that the Skrull Rhodey has been in play since at least the beginning of Phase 4. It would seem that there was never any procedure that fixed Rhodey's spine. Instead, it was merely a cover story to explain why his impostor didn't need to rely on the Tony Stark-designed leg braces. At a minimum, this means Rhodey was a Skrull prisoner for at least two years.
We still don't know exactly when Rhodey was replaced, however. Which version of the character were we seeing in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame? Did the Skrulls use the chaos of Thanos' Snap as a smokescreen to secretly kidnap Rhodey? Was it a Skrull who helped defend the planet from Thanos' final attack in Endgame? Was the real Rhodey robbed of his chance to say goodbye to Tony?
If we're ever going to get hard answers to those questions, we assume it'll come in the upcoming Armor Wars movie, which deals with Rhodey resuming active duty as War Machine and fighting to prevent Tony's weapons from falling into the wrong hands. Armor Wars was originally announced as a Disney+ series, but in 2022 we learned it's being reworked to become a theatrical film. The movie may be as much about Rhodey's struggle to reintegrate into a post-Blip MCU as it is the war over Stark Tech.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Season 1 is available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray now.
For more on the current state of the MCU, find out why Hugh Jackman's Wolverine may be the new Loki and brush up on every Marvel movie and series in development.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
