G.I. Joe: Renegades was an animated show that only ran for one 26-episode season on The Hub from 2010 through 2011 before it was canceled. It was actually a pretty decent G.I. Joe series and it sounds like had it been given the chance to continue, it would’ve taken fans on a crazy ride!
What I liked about this series is that it focused on a smaller group of G.I. Joe characters and the story followed them as they are forced to become fugitives, after uncovering suspicious activity at a Cobra Industries pharmaceutical facility. The media brands them as renegades for terrorist crimes that they did not commit and are pursued by the military as well as Cobra mercenaries. They have to fight a covert battle to clear their names and expose the insidious enemy that is… Cobra.
The series left audiences on a cliffhanger, but now we have information on what would have happened in the story had the series continued! The information was shared by writer Henry Gilroy in an interview with /Film, and he explained that Cobra Commander was Osama bin Laden. He said:
“We had a second season where literally Cobra Commander was Osama bin Laden, who’s basically on the run full on […] They were terrorists…Then the Joes were brought back to be special agents for the government who were hunting down Cobra terrorists so, it was going to be really fun. We had … really fun stories for it, but this, c’est la vie.”
It’s a bummer that we never got to see the story for this series to continue to play out. In case you’re wondering why the series was canceled, Gilroy explained that it was because of Hasbro, the 2009 movie G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, and toys.
One of the issues regarding The Rise of Cobra is that it had a similar plot and a corresponding toy line. When they asked Hasbro about it, it was explained: “We were like, ‘Wait a second. You guys can’t do that. That’s what…’ And they’re like going, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.'” Hasbro also has a rule that they can’t have multiple toy lines from the same property around the same time, and they decided to focus on the movie side of things.
Then there were the other ideas for G.I. Joe action figures that they were looking at. Hasbro wanted Avengers-inspired G.I. Joe figures! Gilroy explained that one executive asked:
“Can you make all of the Joes into Avengers?” The executive also asked if Snake Eyes could be more like Wolverine or if Roadblock could be more like the Hulk., and I think they were thinking, like, ‘Oh, right, we’re going to give Duke a bow, so he’ll be like Iron Man and Hawkeye.’ All those weird things, where the toys come first and then you write your story after.”
You gotta love how some of these big corporations work. They make some of the dumbest decisions. At least right now, the G.I. Joe action figure line is on the right track and doing really cool things!