In the final few moments of last week's Secret Invasion, Varra - a.k.a. Priscilla Fury - was revealed to be in cahoots with Gravik and ordered to report in by a mysterious man on the phone.
We say "mysterious," only because we know there were many fans who failed to recognise the voice as belonging to Rhodey. In fairness, the fact he's a Skrull imposter wasn't made obvious, but that all changed in today's episode.
The imposter is shown ordering Varra to kill her husband (she doesn't), and is later depicted transforming from her Skrull form into the Avenger.
Secret Invasion's credits identify the Skrull as Raava, a relatively obscure character from the comic books who first appeared in 2017's Black Bolt #1. There, she helped the Inhuman King escape one of the Skrull Empire's prisons and was a rogue pirate who never actually learned how to shapeshift.
Needless to say, that's a history we don't anticipate being explored in Secret Invasion.
Fury later meets with "Rhodey" and plants a tracker on him, and the last time we see Raava/Rhodey, it's as she/he calmly watches on while President Ritson is targeted by Gravik's team. They're posing as Russians in order to start a war, and based on how things end, we're guessing the Colonel will remain undercover in the U.S. Government for now.
In terms of how long Rhodey hasn't been Rhodey, we're assuming the switch took place between his appearance in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier and Secret Invasion. The character acts way too differently for it to have been him dispensing that advice to Sam Wilson back in 2021.
Whether War Machine's armour will come into play throughout the rest of this series is hard to say, though we'd love to see it. If, for example, he uses that to attack the President, it may go a long way in setting the stage for Marvel Studios' Armor Wars movie.
Were you shocked by this latest Skrull reveal?