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Folks who follow myself or the rest of the What’s on Joe Mind crew on Twitter discovered last night that we had a very cool guest during that recording.  We had a chance to speak with Jason Marsden, who is none other than Duke in G.I. Joe: Renegades!

To say this was a pleasure for me would be a drastic understatement, and as Gary deals with the editing process there were some neat details that I wanted to reveal to some folks, just because I think they’re cool talking points, and also because they add some interesting insight.

First and foremost, Jason Marsden actually found out that G.I. Joe: Renegades would be going on “hiatus” before the show even began airing.  This is pretty stunning to me, and is a perfect example of the mismanagement of this property on Hasbro’s part.  Mr. Marsden did confirm that the show was pulled in order to bring something more in line with the G.I. Joe: Retaliation film, and he actually sited Duke’s “removal” as a component of that.  Is this confirmation of Duke’s death in the film?  Not necessarily, but an interesting point of discussion.

Marsden also revealed that G.I. Joe: Renegades actually had terrific ratings and it was one of The Hub’s top rated shows during it’s run.  He suspects that they weren’t sure it would be so well-received, but by the time it began receiving critical and audience acclaim, the ship had sailed.  He believes there are still some very strong supporters of G.I. Joe: Renegades at The Hub who are fighting to bring it back in some form, but wasn’t sure where it stood currently, and he hadn’t heard anything specific about it.

One of the coolest things he did share with us was that he had read some early stuff about Season 2, and apparently Duke was going to go to “a pretty dark place”, and seemed to have a personal vendetta against Cobra Commander.  This sounds like an awesome twist, and only served to make me more depressed that we’ve seen all of what we’re likely to see from the series.

For the record, he was lukewarm on the treatment of Duke from Channing Tatum in the Rise of Cobra film, but he is extremely excited to see G.I. Joe: Retaliation.  He immediately recognized the ties to the Renegades series and can understand (to a degree) what motivated Hasbro to rethink things a bit.

All things told, it was a fantastic interview.  I loved every minute of recording it, and I think you guys will love listening to it.  It should be posted later this week, so keep your eyes peeled here and at our Podbean Page to listen to the entire interview in it’s 60 minute glory.  You won’t be disappointed.