Summary
Ironheart has a surprisingly ballsy ending that nonetheless suffers from muddled writing and an unclear purpose, which is distractingly obvious in these final three episodes.
And just like that, it’s over. Feels weird, doesn’t it? Ironheart debuted with the first three episodes, and the ending arrives just a week later. There’s little about Episodes 4, 5, and 6 that wouldn’t have been improved with a more gradual development, giving audiences the time and space between instalments to discuss things and throw theories around, especially since one of the key things is the introduction of a really exciting new – though long-awaited – villain. And this all feels like a shame, since despite some predictable backlash from the usual suspects, Ironheart has been, in its totality, a pretty good show grappling with some unusual ideas and themes.
You’ll see some of that in the breakdown that follows. But a lot of it has been implied and consigned to the margins of a more straightforward MCU-style story that wants Riri Williams to fill the Iron Man-shaped hole left behind by Robert Downey Jr.’s albeit temporary departure from the franchise. In the same way that dumping this series in two three-episode batches felt like Disney kicking it out of the door and trying to wash their hands of it as quickly as possible, that underlying push-pull between the show’s more interesting constituent parts and its obligations to broader and necessarily less interesting storytelling is very obviously felt.
These two things taken together mean that the show’s final moments being its most daring feels strangely at odds with what seems like Disney’s lack of interest and trust in the character. It’d be a terrible waste to build to this conclusion – which we’ll get to in a minute – and then fail to meaningfully explore the repercussions. But such seems to be the way of anything Marvel these days. The left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.
Riri’s Life Is Falling Apart
Episode 4 of Ironheart begins with everything going wrong for Riri to an almost cartoonish extent. After leaving John for dead, Parker is deeply suspicious of her, and more inscrutable – and probably dangerous – than ever on account of his grief. But, of course, the crew needs Riri for their continuing plans, especially since Riri leaving behind Ezekiel Stane’s biomesh on the previous job has landed him in jail on a domestic terrorism charge.
If you’re not keeping count, this means that both the obvious bad guy and one of Riri’s only allies have it out for her in just about equal measure. And, really, she only has herself to blame. The Parker problem was mostly unavoidable, since she needed to get that cloak checked out one way or the other, but Zeke is pretty accurate in his assessment that she has no issue with lying, cheating, and manipulating people if it means getting her own way.
You can see a version of this in what happens with Xavier, too. When he discovers that Riri engineered an AI with the exact likeness and personality of his late sister, and has kept that AI around for her own selfish reasons, irrespective of the potential consequences of Natalie’s loved ones getting a glimpse of her digitally resurrected form, you should be on his side. Riri has been selfish. But it’s also an outgrowth of very deeply held grief and guilt. I can’t help but wish the script gave more weight to Riri’s interiority, because stuff like this would have been better explored more deeply instead of what actually happens, which is that everyone just kinda gets on the same page to enjoy a maker-nerd bonding session in Gary’s Auto.
It’s A Kind Of Magic
On the subject of things being dangerously under-explored, the same can be said of the way Ironheart officially introduces magic into the equation. This isn’t a total surprise, since it was obvious from the jump that Parker’s hood had some otherworldly qualities to it, but the ease with which Riri secures the services of a witch and her daughter who deliver some helpful exposition about Kamar-Taj and Dormammu still feels slightly at odds with the show’s more grounded tech enthusiasm.
That enthusiasm, for what it’s worth, is taken a bit far by Parker, who springs Zeke from prison in exchange for using him as a lab rat, shaving his head and stuffing a bunch of experimental hardware inside him to turn him into a budget souped-up henchman entirely under his thrall. Ironheart doesn’t totally commit to this heel turn, especially later, but we’re required at least for a while to buy into the idea that Zeke is mad enough with Riri to completely abandon all of his previously held principles and motivations. It doesn’t quite take.
It also requires Riri to be bested rather easily by Zeke right on the heels of a cool and great-looking action sequence in which she finally gets to let loose as a hero a bit. Zeke letting Riri live is obviously telegraphing for his redemptive arc later, but it feels a lot like Marvel just being totally afraid of not meeting a nebulous quota of quintessential Marvel stuff. Later scenes involving Parker, Zeke, and indeed Riri would have all worked a lot better if more time had been spent on these characters working through their emotional baggage.
Dominique Thorne in Ironheart | Image via Disney+
Too Little Too Late
You can really feel the lack of attention in these areas coming back to bite Ironheart in its finale. Parker especially suffers. His entire plan involves his father in a turn that feels like it’s coming out of nowhere and would have been better being explicitly addressed, but Riri recklessly allowing Zelma to supercharge her armour with forbidden magic and then being surprised when the decision results in the sacrifice of N.A.T.A.L.I.E. feels weak in context, especially given the entire season has been about how her rash actions have real consequences.
I can definitely appreciate how making Riri’s morality the key focus of the series instead of her genius or other heroic credentials is, broadly speaking, a good idea. But based on the ending of Ironheart, she hasn’t really learned any lessons. Granted, her arc isn’t over yet, but her defeat of Parker and her deal with the devil – more on this in a bit – all hinge on her still being unable to see the forest for the trees. It’s an unsatisfying note to end on even though it’s pretty thematically ballsy by the standards of a Marvel show, so let’s talk about it.
Introducing… Mephisto
So, as it turns out, Parker’s hood was given to him in exchange for “something he won’t even miss” by a mysterious stranger played by Sascha Baron Cohen. It’s a tale as old as time – someone struggling with rejection, abandonment, and a need for approval is offered it in a disguised form at a skillfully obscured cost. We’ve seen firsthand what the real cost of that deal was; Parker gradually lost himself. And Riri saw it too, which makes it all the stupider that she’s still willing to entertain a deal of her own.
Of course, the mysterious stranger turns out to be Mephisto, an iconic Marvel villain akin to the Devil himself in comic-book-y form. And he presents Riri with an offer: The thing she most covets – Natalie not being dead – in exchange for something she won’t even miss. Almost no hero in the MCU would take this deal. But Riri does. The finale plays it coy at first, but it eventually becomes clear that Riri has allowed Mephisto to bring Natalie back, as the same creeping tendrils of rot begin to snake through her as they did with Parker.
On some level, this is a very daring climax, but it’s also one that would have worked infinitely better if the appropriate legwork had been put in with the characterisation. And it’s also tough to swallow the idea that Riri would entertain this deal for a second, given that she saw firsthand what it did to Parker. She should have learned her lesson several times over. As it turns out, she hasn’t learned anything at all.
