Marvel Legends Designers Explain Why Iron Patriot War Machine Made Their Endgame Wave

Back at San Diego Comic-Con, Hasbro unveiled an all-new slate of figures as part of the wildly collective Marvel Legends line with some selections from Avengers: Endgame. One hero that made fans raise their eyebrows was War Machine in his Iron Patriot armor. People couldn’t help but ask how this armor made the wave and what was the decision making that led them to include an alternate version of Rhodey over any number of other heroes.

ComicBook.com’s Matthew Aguilar was on hand at the event and later had the chance to ask General Brand Manager for Hasbro‘s Marvel line Ryan Ting and Senior Design Manager Dwight Stall about what went into this choice. The full interview is located up top and subjects like the Endgame slate, X-Men presence, and of course, Fat Thor are all discussed.

Aguilar asked: We also have in that line an Iron Patriot which is kind of like an Iron Patriot version of War Machine’s armor. That’s kind of a kind of an interesting pick for the wave what kind of went behind that and was that something like requested or was that something you guys wanted to do?

Dwight Stall began, “That was a little bit of a make-up. In the long in the process of developing a toy line based on a movie, we have certain timelines that we have to meet to get figures out. It is a much different timeline than what the filmmakers have to make adjustments, especially only CGI characters and things like that,” Stall continued, “Principle photography for a movie, they shoot and they still have their pickups, but that’s done. Yet, the CGI stuff involved can change a lot from the time that the photography is over to the time the film actually comes out. We had some amazing concept art of War Machine and we made a toy of that, at the end of the day that wasn’t the armor that ended up appearing in the film in that way (in the final battle).”

These comments give fans a window into just how many decisions go into creating merchandise around a film like Avengers: Endgame. There are so many small changes and approvals necessary that there will undoubtedly be some things that fall through the cracks. Just because that figure was finished, doesn’t mean that the team over at Hasbro wasn’t focused on making good on getting things to be as authentic as possible.

“So, when we saw that there was going to a second opportunity to look at it and make a more film-accurate version we all thought, ‘Well that’s great, we’ll do that, but that’s not good enough. If we’re going to come back and revisit a character, we’re going to try and up our game.’ Which is why we added all of the exposed openings, we have new thighs, new feet with rocket pods on the forearms, gatling cannons, missile pods, and giant guns. We wanted to put everything we possibly could into this figure to make it special and say, ‘Hey we’re sorry we didn’t have it right the first time and we’re going to nail it with a really really amazing version,” Stall added.

When you hear this reasoning, it’s not hard to see why selected this figure over some of the other heroes that must have been on the board. The three-plus hour movie packed in quite a few characters and some fans were even confused by how War Machine and his new Iron Patriot armor in Avengers: Endgame.

During the film’s final act, after Thanos levels the Avengers compound, War Machine had to leave his main suit behind in order to escape the crumbling structure collapsing on top of him. Ant-Man rescues Rhodey later, though he appears in a brand new Iron Patriot armor. However, the film actually does show how he got it.

Fans have been able to spot a quick glimpse at the Iron Patriot armor when Ant-Man pulls himself out of the debris; the suit briefly appears in the background. This small detail quickly ties the whole thing together. But, at least fans have both explanations in hand now.