Iron Man 2 Predicted When MCU's Armor Wars Would Happen
Iron Man 2 predicted when the MCU's Armor Wars would happen - and it was only slightly out. Marvel used Disney's Investor Day on December 10, 2020, to delight viewers with a stunning series of MCU announcements - mostly focused on new Disney+ content. Two of the freshly-announced shows will help give a sense of Tony Stark's legacy in the MCU, with a teen superhero Ironheart following in his footsteps - while James Rhodes finds himself caught up in the Armor Wars.
The title is lifted straight from a comic book storyline that ran through 1987 and 1988. This saw Tony Stark realize too much Stark technology had gotten into the wrong hands, and consequently he began a campaign to take down everyone else who was using Stark tech in their armor. The "Armor Wars" event saw him go head-to-head with everyone from the Titanium Man to the Beetle, from Crimson Dynamo to Stingray. Iron Man grew increasingly reckless as the story went on, clashing with Captain America and getting booted off the West Coast Avengers team by Hawkeye. No doubt the MCU version will be a little different - but it's been set up since 2010's Iron Man 2.
One key scene in Iron Man 2 saw Tony Stark summoned to a Senate hearing discussing the Iron Man armor. Politicians were attempting to force Stark to hand over his technology, but Stark refused, insisting he had successfully privatized world peace. The senators attempted to put on pressure by playing videos of other countries attempting to duplicate Iron Man's armor, supposedly proving it was just a matter of time before someone succeeded; in response, Stark hacked into the feed, and played videos showing how catastrophically wrong these experiments were going. "Yeah, I'd say most countries, five, ten years away," Tony observed. "Hammer Industries, twenty."
But here's the catch; Iron Man 2 is set in 2011, just a year before Loki's invasion of New York in The Avengers. In-universe, a substantial amount of time has passed since then, particularly when you factor in Avengers: Endgame's five-year time jump. It has been well over a decade since Tony Stark uttered those words, meaning other scientists, businessmen, and even countries have been attempting to duplicate his Iron Man armor for quite some time now. Interestingly, Marvel recently published a book called The Wakanda Files that teased one country even possesses reservoirs of palladium, which powered the first-generation Arc Reactor. That country is Russia, and promotion for Black Widow has suggested Russia and the US have been in a superhero arms race since the Cold War. It's a clear setup for Russia to be working on their own Iron Man - most likely meaning Armor Wars will feature the classic Iron Man villain the Crimson Dynamo.
Time doesn't exactly pass at a normal rate in Marvel Comics, but in the MCU there is a clear progression of time. In this case, the timeline actually creates fresh story opportunities, allowing Marvel to pick up on ideas they literally seeded a decade ago. And so Armor Wars has become the spiritual successor of Iron Man 2, with James Rhodes attempting to close the Pandora's Box his friend opened so long ago.