Josh Reviews Ironheart
Ironheart is a six-episode Disney+ series centering on the character of Riri Williams, who appeared in 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. As the series opens, Riri gets kicked out of M.I.T. and returns home to Chicago. Although it’s clear that Riri has a community of family and friends in Chicago who care about her, she has isolated herself following the deaths of her stepfather and best friend Natalie in a drive-by shooting several years previously. Riri just wants to focus on perfecting her A.I.-driven suit of armor, but needing money she winds up wrapped up in a group of low-level criminals run by Parker Robbins, “the Hood”. Parker’s mysterious powers seem to be a form of dark magic. Riri finds Parker’s ethos of building something for themselves to be compelling at first, but it’s not too long before they’re facing off against one another in a battle between magic and technology.
Ironheart has been in development for what seems like forever. The series was announced by Kevin Feige way back in 2020. The series was filmed in 2022. And then it sat unreleased for three long years. (Both Riri Williams and the Hood appeared in the third season of What If…?, which came out a year ago; clearly that show was intended to come out after Ironheart, not before it.) I have no idea why this show was delayed so long. I assume some of it was a result of the back-and-forth shifts in strategy for Disney+, in which the early flood of shows (in which it seemed at times like the idea was to have a steady stream of Marvel and Star Wars show on the streamer) ground to a halt.
This long delay gave this show the appearance of being a stinker (as did the rushed release in which the first three episodes of this six-episode series were dropped all at once). But I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this show is not bad. It’s not a home-run, but it’s a solid double. The show has a lot going for it. I enjoyed the six episodes.
The main cast is strong, and I was happy that they surrounded the main hero with a wonderful ensemble of supporting characters. (Several of the best Marvel Disney+ shows have done this — shows like Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. It makes me lament the fact that we’re unlikely to see follow-up seasons of any of these shows which might have further developed these characters.)
Dominique Thorne was great in Wakanda Forever, and she’s a charismatic, confident lead here. I can understand why the Marvel folks wanted to build a show around her! Ms. Throne is so watchable; she lets us see through the cracks in Riri’s emotional armor just enough so that we care about the character and want to follow her journey. Show-runner Chinaka Hodge and her team did a nice job building out a backstory for Riri, expanding what we’d learned in Wakanda Forever. I like getting to explore Riri’s home life, and to meet her friends and family in Chicago; it’s interesting to see where this super-genius came from. I like the idea of having this technological genius have to confront a magical enemy. (I think Ms. Thorne is way too old to be playing Riri, but I can get over that.)
I love the idea of casting Anthony Ramos (Hamilton, In the Heights) as Parker Robbins, though I thought the character didn’t quite work as well as I’d hoped. There were moments in which I thought Mr. Ramos nailed the smooth-operator salesmanship of the characters, and the way his philosophy — that the ignored people from the neighborhood have to work together to take what they want, because no one is going to help them — would be appealing to Riri and the others in his crew. But the character also came across as so clearly evil and untrustworthy that I didn’t really buy that Riri, even when desperate for cash to fund her work, would have anything to do with him. I don’t think the writing for this character was strong enough, and unfortunately while I liked Mr. Ramos, I didn’t feel he was able to elevate the material.
On the other hand, I was surprised how much I enjoyed Alden Ehrenreich (who was great in Solo even though I thought the idea of a Han Solo origin film was dumb; and he was also terrific in Hail, Caesar!) as black-market tech-dealer “Joe McGillicuddy”. (That’s not actually the character’s real name; his identity was one more fun surprise about the character.) Joe starts as a timid nobody, but quickly forms an unexpected friendship with Riri, before then dancing with the dark side. Mr. Ehrenreich plays all the different versions of these characters very well. I loved his chemistry with Ms. Thorne’s Riri. Some of my favorite scenes of the show were when these two were on-screen together. I do wish Joe’s storyline had been given more time to breathe; it felt to me like we got his character arc on fast-forward during these six episodes, moving very quickly through various phases of Joe’s personality and relationship with Riri. But Mr. Ehrenreich did a great job selling it. I’d love to see him again.
Anji White is memorable as Ronnie, Riri’s mother. I loved how grounded and spiritual Riri’s mother was; a nice contrast with the scientific, technical-minded Riri. Cree Summer is a hoot as Ronnie’s friend Madeline Stanton. At first I thought her mysticism was a joke; then we discover she’s trained at Kamar-Taj (as seen in both Doctor Strange movies). (I liked this character, though I think they missed an opportunity by not making her be Jen (Sasheer Zamata) from Agatha All Along! Wouldn’t that have been a fun crossover?) I really liked Regan Aliyah as Zelma Stanton, Madeline’s daughter. I wish Zelma had more to do in the story. Lyric Ross is a lot of fun as Riri’s best friend Natalie. Ms. Ross has an endearing energy and brings a spunky good humor to the show. I enjoyed watching Natalie/N.A.T.A.L.I.E’s character develop over the course of the six episodes. This is one of the characters from the show who I’d most like to see again, to follow what happens to her. Matthew Elam is solid as Xavier Washington, Natalie’s brother and a potential love interest for Riri. I liked this character and this actor; I wish he had more to do in the story. (His dramatic rejection of Riri at one point felt unearned to me; like a writer-driven plot twist that I didn’t quite believe for the character.)
The members of the Hood’s gang are fine; the actors all seem to be doing their best to bring life to their fairly one-dimensional characters. There was potential here. They assembled a good group to play these roles: Sonia Denis as Clown; Shea Couleé as Slug; Zoe Terakes as Jeri Blood; Shakira Barrera as Roz Blood; Eric André as Rampage; and Manny Montana as John. I wish we’d gotten to know these characters better as individual people. (I had to look up all of their names when writing this review; the only one whose name I remembered from the show was Rampage.)
As you can tell from this review so far, there were a lot of characters on the show, and I liked most of them! But I also felt we didn’t explore many of them as deeply as I’d have hoped. A six-episode season is not a lot of runway. I could see this being a stronger ten-episode season, with more time spent to allow these character arcs to develop. On the other hand, six episodes is the length of two or three movies. That should be enough time to develop the characters.
The visuals in the show were solid. There were some times when we saw Riri’s suit standing still and it looked a little too much to me like a suit on a set (which is likely what it was). On the other hand, we saw a good deal of the suit in action, and for the most part I felt it looked great in those sequences. I didn’t notice much if any drop in quality from what we saw in the Wakanda Forever film. I also liked the look of Riri’s suits at their various stages, especially the final suit. I thought that was an improvement on the design of Riri’s final suit in Wakanda Forever, actually. I could see fans tuning into this show centering on a character wearing an Iron Man-like suit and expecting more action. That’d be a reasonable complaint. I wouldn’t say this show is action-packed. But I can understand that makers of this show clearly had a budget to stick to. I was satisfied by the action we got. (I particularly enjoyed Riri’s fight against a powered-up former friend in episode five, as well as her final battle with the Hood in episode six.)
I also want to highlight that I liked the various visual ways we got the show’s main title on-screen at the start of each episode. (Ms. Marvel had a similar playfulness.) That was a nice touch!
There were some pieces of storytelling during the season that felt a little undercooked to me. The show does a poor job setting up exactly how the Natalie A.I. was created in the first place. (Why exactly was Riri scanning her own brain??) Mid-season, I groaned out loud when Riri drops an important piece of evidence (the piece of bio-mesh), that we know is going to be a problem. (I know Riri is a kid, but that seemed like such a dumb move for her. This was another example of something that felt like a writerly necessity to create a plot turn they wanted, rather than something I felt the character would actually do.)
The finale was interesting. For the most part I was intrigued by the choices they made, though one choice in particular frustrated me. If you don’t mind SPOILERS, then stick around and we can dig in!
Still here? I mean it, SPOILERS ahead!
SPOILERS!!
First off, let’s talk about “Joe”. I loved the mid-season twist that he’s actually Zeke Stane, the son of Obadiah Stane from Iron Man. It was fun to get that connection all the way back to the very first MCU film. Suddenly a very silly character became far more interesting to me. I like that Zeke didn’t start (or end) as a one-dimensional bad guy. Seeing this guy struggle with the weight of who his father was, and trying to find his own identity separate from his father’s shadow, was interesting. At first it seemed strange that Riri and Joe/Zeke were hanging out (another example of some slightly wobbly storytelling), but as I’d written above, I wound up loving their scenes together. I wish we’d gotten more time with Zeke and Riri and less time with the Hood and Riri.
As for the finale… it was a delight to finally see Mephisto in the MCU! (Online fans have speculated for YEARS that Mephisto would appear in one of these MCU movies or TV shows. I’m thrilled he finally arrived!) Casting Sacha Baron Cohen was genius, and I loved Mr. Cohen’s scenes. He played the character absolutely perfectly! I loved his jovial charm, which almost but not quite covers the slimy manipulations underneath. I do wish we’d gotten one or two shots of Mephisto in his classic demonic form for the comics, but I can forgive the show for not going there. I really, really hope we see Mephisto again, and that when that happens we do get to see him (at least for a few moments) in his classic comic book look.
I have a love/hate relationship with the ending of the season. I was certainly surprised to see Riri accept Mephisto’s deal at the end! That was not at all what I’d expected, and I love being surprised. On the other hand, I have two big problems. First off, it negated Riri’s entire arc from this season. I didn’t mind seeing Riri make dumb decisions in the early going (like getting involved with the Hood’s criminal activities in the first place), because I understood that we were going to get to follow her journey of self-discovery and healing as the show progressed. I was hoping to get a satisfying resolution in the finale, in which Riri finally starts accepting help from her friends and making better choices. Deciding that only she alone can save the day, and being willing to make a literal deal with the devil to do it made it seem like Riri had learned nothing, which made me question what the point of this whole show was. Second, if I judge this just on the level of this being an exciting and surprising cliffhanger, it certainly was… but that’s a problem for me! As I have written about many times before, in this age of streaming shows that take years between seasons, I think season-ending cliffhangers are a huge mistake. It’s unfair to ask the audience to have to wait years and years for a story to be resolved. It’s even more of a problem here with Ironheart, because it seems unlikely we’ll ever get a second season of this show. If we do, it’s years away. But the show was released months ago and there’s been no news about a second season being in the works, so I am extremely doubtful. Frankly, I’m not sure when we’ll ever see Riri again! So it’s very frustrating not knowing if this will ever be resolved. I wanted this show to feel like it told a complete story, but with this cliffhanger that is not at all the case. That’s a bummer. (The mid-credits scene showing the Hood still alive and at large, and potentially a danger to Zelma, was also frustrating to me. I can maybe believe that Riri will pop up in another MCU project eventually, even if this is the end for her show. But it’s extremely doubtful to me that we’ll ever see Zelma, a minor supporting character, again. So this “tease” at potential future storylines that I don’t believe we’ll ever see is aggravating to me.)
Sigh. So the fun of seeing Mephisto was balanced for me by that cliffhanger, which left me unhappy.
That doesn’t overshadow my feelings that Ironheart was a solid show. As with several of the recent MCU shows, it doesn’t feel at all central to the MCU in the way the early shows did (WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, etc.). This feels a lot to me like Agatha All Along, a show which I didn’t feel needed to exist, but which was an entertaining digression into a corner of the MCU. Frankly, that’s what I think these Disney+ shows should be doing, exploring the nooks and crannies that the big movies won’t have time for. I wish it didn’t feel like the Disney/Marvel folks had abandoned this approach. Ironheart feels like a relic from a version of the streaming world, and Disney+ in specific, that has already gone away. That’s a bummer. If this was the first of three six-episode seasons, I think this could have been the start of something very cool and interesting. I’d have loved to have seen this world and these characters given more of a chance to grow.
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