Ironheart review: "A relic of Marvel's content-at-all-costs era"

Earlier this year, Disney CEO Bob Iger offered up a rare mea culpa – one that would have far-reaching ramifications for Marvel Studios.

"We all admitted to ourselves that we lost a little focus by making too much," Iger told Wall Street analysts in May. The big picture readily became apparent: Marvel Studios would course correct, only dishing out home runs and big hitters instead of flooding the streaming landscape with quantity over quality.

Perhaps unfairly, Ironheart is one of the poster children of that approach, an unlikely spin-off greenlit at a time when Marvel Studios probably felt they couldn't fail.

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Dropping with relatively little fanfare across two weeks on Disney Plus, Ironheart arrives in the long shadow of that Disney mandate. Worse still, it has to contend with the spectre of what any hero with 'Iron' in their name – I Love You 3000 and all the rest of it – conjures up in the MCU.

While it never quite escapes the clutches of those comparisons, Ironheart initially propels itself into fun-and-familiar territory, before running out of juice by the time its puzzlingly-placed final act rolls around.

Ri-Town

Welcome back, Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne). Awkwardly shuffled onto the MCU chessboard next to the kings and queens of Talokan and Wakanda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, we find her at the onset of Ironheart busily showcasing a prowess for all things robotics as part of her Tony Stark Fellowship at MIT – complete with a high-powered Iron Suit that wouldn't look out of place in the bowels of her forebear's cliffside Malibu mansion.

After being busted for a cheating operation (there's no ChatGPT for students to 'rely' on in the MCU, apparently), Riri is soon kicked out of the prestigious institution and makes tracks for her hometown of Chicago.

With relentless ambition and a desire to do good and be "bigger than Stark", Riri wants to spread her wings – and burn her thrusters – a little further afield than Navy Pier, but soon falls in with the wrong crowd in the hopes of quick cash to fund her suit repairs.

After passing a death trap with flying colors, Riri is recruited by Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), AKA The Hood, a mysterious figure with scales on his body and an ominous hood that was rumored to have been "wrestled off a demon." There, Riri is tasked with joining in the fun as they act as Chicago's answer to Robin Hood, stealing from ultra-rich CEOs and taking the spoils for themselves.

Joined by a motley crew consisting of Slug (Shea Couleé), a hacker from Madripoor, Blood Siblings and "down on their luck athletes" Roz (Shakira Barrera) and Jeri (Zoe Terakes), Clown (Sonia Denis), a pyrotechnic specialist, and The Hood's cousin John (Manny Montana), it's at this point where Ironheart fails at its first narrative crossroads.

Would Tony Stark have been as successful if he didn't possess as much money, privilege, and power to go alongside his intellect? It's a question Ironheart poses but never quite dares to answer. After all, Riri must make her own way in the world without so much as a rocket boost to help smash the glass ceiling. It's a bitter disappointment, then, that Ironheart never threatens to fully explore the skewed power dynamics of the haves and have-nots – its competent action scenes only ever window dressing for light character work and even lighter punchy drama.

AI-OU

Where Ironheart finds greater success is in its emotional, beating heart. Much like how Tony Stark's Arc Reactor powers his suit, Riri's traumatic past, where she had to watch her best friend Natalie (Lyric Ross) and stepdad Gary (LaRoyce Hawkins) gunned down, tempers much of Ironheart's strongest moments.

Riri deals with that trauma in her own inimitable way, creating AI companion N.A.T.A.L.I.E. (Neuro Autonomous Technical Assistant and Laboratory Intelligence Entity, in case you were wondering) as part-sounding board, part-memento mori.

Even when Ironheart trudges through its by-the-numbers plot, Riri and N.A.T.A.L.I.E.’s fun, authentic dynamic is warm and heartfelt. It's to creator Chinaka Hodge and producer Ryan Coogler's credit that, alongside such a well-realized, gritty Chicago, Riri feels even more of a magnetic, easy-to-root-for figure in an MCU now packed with a swelling roster of younger heroes such as Echo, Ms. Marvel, and Hawkeye's Kate Bishop.

Thorne, too, proves as capable in scenes fraught with drama as she does delivering an Avengers-esque mid-battle quip or two. As an actor, she's a steady, Swiss Army Knife of a presence, but perhaps one, sadly, that won't be deployed anytime soon in Marvel's near future.

Unfortunately, some of the supporting players land with more of an echoing thud, with characterisation clunkier than Tony Stark's early handiwork in an Afghan cave.

Parker's Hood antics quickly wear thin, culminating in a predictable, uninspired vendetta after a handful of episodes spent glowering and barking out orders. Marvel's band of conspiracy theorists and roving Redditors, though, might be intrigued enough on the basis that the origins of his hood leads somewhere – and to someone – that has long been theorized about.

Riri, though, quickly brushes off suspicions about Parker because, as she rightly points out, the MCU has seen its fair share of aliens and wizards on a regular basis. Therein lies the problem: when multiverses come calling, nothing feels novel anymore – for either the characters or its audience.

It's this lack of inspiration that courses through the well-meaning veins of Ironheart's (admittedly breezy) six-episode run.

That extends to the woefully underutilised Alden Ehrenreich as Joe McGillicuddy, a sad sack tech ethicist who makes up for what he lacks in backbone with a knack for tinkering in the black market and a "wholesome bunker" filled with live, laugh, love accoutrements.

His extra dimension, much like Parker, comes from harboring a dark secret that proves to be one of Ironheart's more meaningful ties to the MCU-at-large. Again, Ironheart doesn't dare do anything with it.

Whether there was a hesitance to tread on any past entries, or because the writers didn't have the stomach to forge ahead with something that would properly feed into Iron Man's story, characters such as Joe are good pitches on paper who never quite bear fruit in execution.

Toil and trouble

Yet, some magic does creep in from time to time. Sometimes quite literally. In Ironheart's second half, talk of sorcerers and darker forces comes into play, though any thematic tension between Riri's scientific mind crashing into a world of hand-waving tricksters is quickly downplayed.

Then, out of nowhere, the screw turns and Ironheart tiptoes into some seriously compelling territory. Frustratingly, this darker detour (we're bewitched by the powers of spoiler embargoes, so can't say more) ends before it gets going. All we're left with is setup for a brilliant second season that makes you wish they had just told that story first instead.

Despite its best intentions, Ironheart is a relic of Marvel's content-at-all-costs era that has punctuated Disney Plus in the past few years. Too often safe and frequently bland, the Riri Williams-fronted series shows plenty of potential but falls into familiar MCU traps and – perhaps its biggest cardinal sin – saves its best story for a second season that will probably be consigned to the scrapheap.

The first three episodes of Ironheart are out now on Disney Plus. For more, check out our guide to the Marvel movies in order or all the upcoming Marvel movies and shows.