Ironheart Makes The Most Of A Messy Origin Story
Marvel’s new series is a few bolts shy of perfection, but its charm and innovation could be just what the MCU needs right now.
For better or worse, Marvel’s Cinematic Universe has a monopoly on kid geniuses. Every young hero feels like a tech wiz of some kind — perhaps that’s why the MCU’s take on Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), aka Ironheart, feels like such a departure from her counterpart in the comics. By the time she made her debut in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, so many aspects of Ironheart’s character had been claimed by other heroes. Spider-Man (Tom Holland) co-opted her surrogate mentorship with Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) before the latter’s untimely demise in Avengers: Endgame. Shuri of Wakanda (Letitia Wright), meanwhile, got dibs on the high-tech lab with unlimited resources, not to mention the burden of succeeding another Avenger gone too soon. Consciously or not, all that forced Marvel Studios to remix Riri entirely, with its efforts culminating in Ironheart.
Three years after Black Panther’s Ryan Coogler brought Riri into the MCU, the director has passed the torch to showrunner Chinaka Hodge. Her six-part series continues Coogler’s efforts with sanguine flair. Admittedly, it does take a few tries to build a better Ironheart — but whatever glitches we get are in service of the kind of origin story the MCU has sorely been missing.
Ironheart may stumble out of the gate, but its titular heroine eventually lands on her feet.
Despite the work that Wakanda Forever did to introduce Riri without Tony Stark, Ironheart initially struggles to turn its eponymous heroine into a character that stands alone. After her stint in Wakanda, Riri was forced to abandon her state-of-the-art vibranium suit. Naturally, though, she’s still fixated on recreating that armor with the resources she has at MIT... which, as she explains to her counselor, are few and far between. Even at one of the best schools in the world, Riri has to beg for the recognition she deserves, downplay her own brilliance, and navigate a minefield of red tape while she waits for her professors to catch up to her designs. It’s a plight that plenty of Black women who’ve cut their teeth in predominantly white institutions will likely recognize — but it’s hard to believe that Riri, of all people, would still be caught in the same cycle.
Ironheart’s first episode brings up more questions than it has answers for. Time and again Riri is asked about her fascination with Stark’s legacy: What is this innate need to make a better, faster, stronger iron suit? If she’s so strapped for cash to build it, why not take her talents to Stark Industries, Pym Technologies — or, better yet, to one of Wakanda’s stateside facilities? The answer lies partially in Riri’s hubris: She can’t see herself as a cog in any white man’s machine, and she’ll do anything to make sure her intellectual property remains just that. That dogged self-reliance sees her stepping up her clandestine business selling cutting-edge prototypes to her fellow students. But when she’s inevitably caught, she’s expelled in the blink of an eye, forced to continue her work from her childhood home in Chicago.
Riri’s expulsion becomes a core facet of her character, a moment that defines the uphill battle she faces as an outspoken Black woman in STEM. This wrinkle also challenges her origins in the comics written by Brian Michael Bendis, which felt convenient at best, and like empty wish fulfillment at worst. It’s not the most graceful explanation for the chip on Riri’s shoulder, but when it comes to challenging the limits of our empathy, it mostly works. It also paves the way for a truer reckoning on Riri’s home turf.
Riri is brought down to her core foundations in Ironheart, and rebuilt in surprising ways.
In truth, Riri’s obsession with armor boils down to a simple need to protect her own. Years before Ironheart and even Wakanda Forever, Riri’s stepfather and her best friend, Natalie (Lyric Ross), were caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. Riri’s been haunted by her “failure” to protect them ever since, and she’ll do anything to keep her surviving loved ones — like Natalie’s brother Xavier (Matthew Elam) and her mom, Ronnie (Anji White) — out of harm’s way. That includes joining up with a team of vigilantes disrupting Big Tech in her own backyard.
Led by the mysterious Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), Riri’s new crew is basically Marvel’s take on Fast & Furious. They blackmail and steal from Chicago’s most elite leaders in tech, but it’s more about revenge than the money for Parker. He lures Riri into his ranks with a near-unlimited cash flow and the promise of mutual discretion. Riri happily takes the money to rebuild her suit, but the ancient-looking hood that Parker sports on every mission will keep her from fulfilling the other end of their bargain.
Ironheart takes its time teasing out Parker’s true motivations, a choice that mostly works in the show’s favor. With only six episodes to establish Riri as the MCU’s next armored Avenger, it makes sense to keep the bulk of the action on her. She needs all the spotlight she can get: Even after Wakanda Forever, we still don’t really know who she is or what she stands for. The 2022 film introduced a fun idea of the character, but like most of the Young Avengers introduced post-Endgame, Riri was more of a walking-talking MacGuffin than a person with purpose.
While her origin story takes a lot of risks, Riri is more important to the MCU than ever.
Fortunately, Riri does find her place in the MCU, even if it does take all six episodes to get her there. Her initial adventures with Parker’s team are equal parts riveting and wincingly awkward: For all its snappy action, Ironheart’s opening episodes are frequently kneecapped by jokes and tech jargon that’d feel more at home in a 2018 comedy. But the series turns a corner when it leans more into Riri’s weird science and Parker’s weirder magic. When our heroine accidentally develops an AI companion who looks and acts just like Natalie, the series pitches headfirst into a messy (and timely) moral debate. There’s also her odd-couple partnership with Joe McGillicuddy (Alden Ehrenreich), who steals every scene with gravitas, humor, and a surprising transhumanist twist. Their relationship offers Ironheart its most tangible connection to the Iron Man saga (obviously, “McGillicuddy” is not this guy’s real name), and forces Riri to face the true consequences of her ambition.
Parker, meanwhile, introduces dark magic to this corner of the universe. He’s really not the most compelling antagonist, but he does pave the way for a supernatural threat that turns Riri’s world — and the MCU itself — completely upside down. Ironheart arguably has the most fun with its magical subplot, especially when Thorne shares the screen with actors like Cree Summer and Regan Aliyah. The series breaks its protagonist down to basics and rebuilds her with alchemy; though that occasionally clashes with the left-brained stylings of Riri’s inner world, it does all click eventually. Every pivot the series takes is a risk, not just within the MCU, but in a world that’s all too willing to write off a character like Riri (or a show that refuses to center on another white male genius). But when the dust settles, she might just be the franchise’s most important, and unique, new hero.
