'Armor Wars' Is About War Machine's Journey — What About Iron Man?

Disney Plus is basically "Marvel Cinematic Universe on TV Plus" these days with all of the Marvel content being churned out at such a constant rate. Don't get it twisted, though, because Marvel fans aren't complaining, especially with the news of a War Machine-centric series, Armor Wars, coming out eventually. The series follows Iron Man's prodigy War Machine, but could Tony Stark make some kind of cameo?

Right now, that's the question on plenty of fans' minds. We all know he died bravely in the final Avengers movie and there's really no going back where that's concerned. Through flashbacks or holograms, it certainly seems possible. But bringing Tony back from the dead really doesn't seem like a viable option at this point.

At the end of Avengers: Endgame, Tony Stark sacrifices himself to save the world. Just in case there were any doubts about it, there is even a full-blown funeral to say goodbye to him. So it's unlikely that he will appear in Armor Wars in any capacity, even if War Machine, or Rhodey, was once good friends with him and wouldn't be War Machine if it wasn't for Tony.

Still, Don Cheadle, who plays Rhodey, spoke to BroBible about how his show will go on without Tony and how it will explore Rhodey's own journey as a superhero himself, sort of out from under Iron Man's shadow. He explained that he believes the series will address Tony's death, but it doesn't look like Tony will actually be in it.

"The death of Tony Stark, I'm pretty sure, will play a role in the series," Don said. "Where we've been sort of progressing Rhodey — even in the last film where he's now up again and he's now walking again and he's now mobile again — so as the technology continues to develop and we keep making innovations in the suit and what happens, I imagine there's gonna be another elevation and another way that we're going to keep digging into that part of Rhodey."

Even if Tony is gone for good (which most of us had assumed anyway, even if there was a tiny spark of hope that he would somehow appear in Armor Wars), War Machine will likely be reuniting with other members of the Avengers. In the same interview, Don mentioned Rhodey making a cameo in the other Marvel Disney Plus series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, so there's that at least.

Armor Wars joins a handful of other Marvel series coming to Disney Plus. Unfortunately, fans may be waiting a little while longer before they get to be reunited with War Machine. In February 2021, Don Cheadle told Entertainment Tonight that the crew was set to begin filming a few months from then. So if filming is underway in April 2021, you can likely expect a release date in early or mid-2022.