Nearing five years after it was first announced, Marvel’s Ironheart is finally here, dropping in two three-episode bundles on Disney+ in a release schedule that only really makes sense when you’ve seen all six. Dominique Thorne returns as ambitious tech prodigy Riri Williams after her debut in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and is joined in Ironheart‘s cast top-line by Anthony Ramos (villain The Hood), Lyric Ross (her dead best friend/AI Natalie), and Alden Ehrenreich (“Joe McGillicuddy” — it’s a fake name for reasons that will become clear). But was the show worth the almost five-year wait? Frustratingly, the answer is not as straightforward as I’d like.
Ironheart is an ambitious Marvel TV show that has some very good ideas, an excellent cast (and some very interesting characters), and high-gloss execution that includes very impressive VFX work. It’s also muddled, imbalanced, and deeply frustrating, suffering from stuttering pace issues in the first half, some incredibly insufferable characters, and head-scratchingly odd decisions. The show picks up some time after Wakanda Forever saw Riri given a taste of superheroism and — crucially — access to Wakanda’s untold resources, and sees the MIT student dealing with a sort of privilege hangover. She’s crashed back to normal Earth, where she can’t just do what she wants — which is not to be a hero, but rather to prove herself the most gifted inventor of her generation.
That’s probably the biggest divergence from the Iron Man story that sits sidecar to Riri’s own: while she and Tony Stark are both driven by ambition, hers is about being recognized, while his was about an all-encompassing fear that if he didn’t save the Earth, nobody else would be able to. That difference means Riri turns almost comically quickly to crime, which is never entirely justified because her urge to build the best armor possible using ill-gotten funds lacks depth. There’s not enough emotional conflict between the suggestion of breaking the law and her suddenly doing the kind of things you usually end up on FBI lists for.
The question of character motivation is easily the most interesting part of Ironheart, as three different characters deal with the crushing weight of legacy and expectation. Throw in some generational trauma and cultural trauma for Riri (whose respect for Tony Stark is increasingly tempered by a disdain for his privilege), and there’s a really intriguing concept that I wish more of the story was overtly written around. Unfortunately, the writing doesn’t always live up to the quality of the idea, and character development isn’t as well handled as it needs to be. The result is that lots of characters make breakneck decisions in moments, and a group of people we’re told are all geniuses-level intellects come off as idiots. Yes, emotion and temptation are things here, but there’s not enough space to play with that.
Identity plays a major part here, too: Riri is not incidentally Black, and her culture and upbringing as part of that community are an important part of her arc. Class is a big factor, too: Ironheart is sort of like a what-if mirror held up to Tony Stark’s life. What if he wasn’t born into wealth? What if generational trauma led him to misplace his ambitions? What if he had to work harder for his natural skills and genius to manifest in any way beyond frustrated potential? Iron Man’s arc explored how far he’d go to save Earth, Riri’s explores the same thing on a different scale, but it’s interesting how close the instincts and the self-destruction run in both of them despite their lack of a direct link.
Marvel Cinematic Universe newcomers Ramos and Ehrenreich are both very good, and so is Manny Montana as The Hood’s cousin John, and there’s a very good appearance in the final episodes by someone too important to spoil here. He’s worth the wait, though. At the other end of the spectrum, the Hood’s “Young Lords” supervillain group is all completely insufferable in a way that made me question whether I just didn’t understand Gen Z. But no, it’s the kids who are wrong. We’re also supposed to attach the story’s heart to Natalie, Riri’s best friend who is killed and accidentally reborn as Riri’s AI through an inexplicable tech-miracle, but for the first three episodes, she is the MCU’s answer to an unholy marriage between Microsoft’s Clippy and Scrappy Doo. She gets better, mercifully.
There’s an old cliché saying that sticking the ending can forgive a lot of sins on the way there, and if that’s true, Ironheart‘s reception will be more positive than this review. The final episode (and its set-up) bristles with confidence, is genuinely transformative for the MCU, and sets up a surprising (if a little jarring) future for the hero. I will absolutely be excited to sit and watch a Season 2, if it comes. If it doesn’t, Marvel has just written Riri into an almighty cul-de-sac that would take some creativity to solve.
There are a lot of things I liked about Ironheart: The Hood’s story of magical corruption is so intriguing that it probably deserved its own show or miniseries event; Riri’s parallel corruption by her own ambition is also interesting; and the idea of legacy being a curse is great. And it’s fair to say that the second half of the show is better than the first three episodes, culminating in a far superior finale that brings all of the good ideas together. My issue is that the execution at times feels like disparate stories being told simultaneously, with nothing given enough time. And the result is just too much of a muddle without the necessary depth to elevate its best ideas from the parts that drag it down.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Ironheart debuts on Disney+ on Tuesday, June 24th at 9 p.m. ET. The second three episodes release a week later on July 1st.
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