james eason garcia
@jameseasongarcia/Instagram

With the Disney Junior series, "Iron Man and His Awesome Friends," executive producer and writer James Eason-Garcia found himself with a huge undertaking. Not only does he have the responsibility of introducing an iconic superhero to a new generation of young children, but he has the comics to live up to and follow Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But with the target audience being young children, certain things had to change.

"I think... our show is a different version of Tony Stark," Eason-Garcia said in an interview with The Latin Times. "He's still like the character that we know and we love, but he's a kid version of him. So he's not quite like the Robert Downey Jr version of Iron Man, or even the version that we've seen in comic books," Eason-Garcia continued.

tony stark awesome friends
Courtesy/Disney Junior

While most versions of Tony Stark portray him as a cynical, arrogant weapons manufacturer who learns to see the error in his ways, the Tony we follow in "Awesome Friends" is an optimistic eight-year-old who dedicates himself to, as Eason-Garcia puts it, "make the day as awesome as possible for everybody." He says that this was the team's "mantra for every episode and the stories we were trying to tell."

But while significant changes are made to Tony's backstory, Eason-Garcia emphasizes that "he definitely has that confidence and that swagger, and we wanted to be able to keep that as part of as part of this. Tony Stark, our eight year old version of him... has just unbridled confidence...And... that is the core of Tony Stark, right? This guy is just pure confidence. And so that was something we were able to bring, you know, bring over from the main character."

tony riri amadeus
Courtesy/Disney Junior

At Iron Man's side are his "Awesome Friends," RiRi Williams/Ironheart and Amadeus Cho/Iron Hulk, who are mostly their own independent heroes. In the comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, RiRi, a young woman inspired by Tony, builds her own suit of armor and becomes Ironheart. Amadeus Cho is less directly associated with Tony and takes up the mantle of the Hulk after Bruce Banner.

However, Eason-Garcia felt that they were the perfect fit for Tony's titular group as "when we were looking at the show and thinking about the way we wanted to create it, we always knew we wanted it to be like a group of super geniuses... we wanted the characters that surrounded Tony to be at the same equal footing of intelligence... that Tony had. And that's why that's why we all kind of cohesively agreed that these were going to be, like, the strongest characters to help support him."

The choice to include RiRi, who is African-American, and Amadeus, who is Korean-American, also bolsters the show's diversity and portraying superheroes of all ethnicities was important to Eason-Garcia. He adds that "to me it was really important to have as much representation on screen as possible."

Besides Eason-Garcia, who is Mexican-American himself, the show has plenty of Latin representation, with actors Alana Ubach, Carlos Alazraqui, and Jessica Mendoza lending their voices to characters on the show. However, he played coy when asked if the Tony Stark we followed in the series is Latino, like his counterpart in the Ultimate comics, where his full name is Antonio Stark.

However, the show does have an explicitly Latin character don an iron suit in the show, with Anya Corazon becoming the Iron Spider. Eason-Garcia feels that the show's diverse set of characters comes from a writer's room full of "different ages, different ethnicities, and different genders. And to me, that just made everything feel fresher because we're getting ideas from all over the spectrum, different walks of life, and different people's points of view, and we can all come together."

You can watch all episodes of "Iron Man and His Amazing Friends" on Disney Junior or Disney+.

© 2025 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.