10 Big MCU Revelations That Didn’t Come From The Movies

3. Why War Machine Didn't Help In New York

Iron Man War Machine
Marvel

One of the problems with creating a cinematic universe is that it's hard to consistently explain why character X didn't show up in movie Y. Why didn't the other Avengers help out in Iron Man 3? In Captain America: The Winter Soldier? In Thor: The Dark World?

These are understandable questions, and while not all of them have answers (in-universe ones, anyway: the real-world answer is boring stuff like money and contracts), some do: for example, Rhodey's whereabouts during the Battle of New York in The Avengers are explained in the Iron Man 3 prelude comic.

The first issue reveals that, between Iron Man 2 and Iron Man 3, Rhodey spent several months flying around the world investigating the shady Ten Rings organisation - the same people who captured Tony in the first movie.

While Tony was fighting the Chitauri in New York, Rhodey was stuck in Hong Kong dealing with a problem of his own.

iron man 3 prelude comic rhodey tony
Marvel Comics

He says that even at supersonic speeds, it would take him an hour to reach New York. We don't know exactly how long the Battle of New York lasted, but Rhodey would probably have missed all the action even if he had decided to fly there.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!