There are 10 excellent minutes in the center of Disney+’s new Marvel series, Ironheart, a show that has some other highs but mostly cannot bring together the action, heart, and themes it’s trying to deliver over six episodes (note: all six episodes were provided for critics, though only three are streaming now). In those 10 thrilling minutes, Riri Williams (Dominque Thorne) finally pays off the promise she showed in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, way back in 2022, thinking her way out of a messy situation filled with high-octane fights, real stakes, and even a few fantastic visual jokes. It’s unfortunate that we ended up with the wobbly mess in the other 279 minutes, because both Riri and Thorne deserve better.
The series, which was mostly filmed back in 2022 and has sat on a shelf since then (they reportedly came back to film more in 2024), spins directly off the character’s appearance in the Black Panther sequel, finding Riri fiddling with her armor at MIT while trying to create “something undeniable.” Unfortunately, Riri is funding her armor by selling her other inventions and academic papers to other students, something that gets her kicked out of school and sent back to Chicago. There, she’s forced to deal with two traumatic deaths in her past, some burgeoning romance, and most importantly (to the plot) a spiraling life of crime thanks to the magically powered Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), aka The Hood.
There are a lot of interesting elements on the table in the series for which poet and screenwriter Chinaka Hodge is credited as head writer, not least of which is the idea of a Marvel hero getting sucked into a life of crime. In fact, despite headlining the series, the show spends a fair amount of time fleshing out The Hood’s backstory, often to the expense of Riri. And despite the two characters having a lot in common, there’s not a lot of connection drawn there; Riri and Parker are two trains running who occasionally intersect.
Among the many balls juggled by Ironheart are fleshing out (sort of) The Hood’s crew with a plot of their own, a tech nerd friend Riri makes named Joe McGillicuddy (Alden Ehrenreich) who may not be all he seems, plus family drama focusing on the death of Riri’s best friend Natalie (Lyric Ross) and father, which does lead to some emotionally charged scenes. And the show doesn’t stop there, piling on more and more surprise characters and plot points, particularly in the second set of three episodes that will stream next week (July 1).
Like Riri herself, the show is bursting with ideas. But unlike the genius inventor, it can’t quite execute them at equal levels. Hodge seems most comfortable with the family drama, particularly some quieter scenes between Riri and her mom (Anji White), or a sweet, nerdy romance with Natalie’s brother, Xavier (Matthew Elam). Those moments let Thorne in particular flex her prodigious acting muscles, and can make one wish the show would have excised all the Marvel superhero elements and just delivered a drama about a down-on-her-luck student getting sucked into the crime world in Chicago, no magical cloaks necessary.
But then you’d miss out on those 10 minutes mentioned above. And like in the Iron Man films that inspired the character, when Riri does strap on the suit, it’s pretty fun… Watching her blast off and fly is probably one of the best effects in the MCU, likely because they figured out how to make it work 17 years ago. There, Ironheart doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel; it just gives Riri’s spin on it.
As for the Hood, like the rest of the cast, Ramos is an engaging actor. But the magical Hood doesn’t really work as a foil for the tech-based Ironheart, and unfortunately, the show leans more into magic than those tech elements as it goes on. And Ramos lacks an air of menace – there’s a reason he’s been cast as the earnest good guy in multiple movies, as well as in his breakout dual roles in Hamilton. He’s got a baby face that doesn’t exude the darkness necessary – something that again could have worked well if it paralleled Riri also feeling out of her depth. But in the case of Parker, it is mostly executed by increasingly ominous black veins growing on his skin while he shouts at an unseen benefactor about his powers and having made a deal.
Overall, Ironheart is very much a product of its time. That sounds a little crazy to say since it’s only been a few years, but a lot has changed for Marvel in the intervening half-decade. The show was announced in 2020, filmed in 2022, and isn’t coming out until 2025. Unlike the superlative Daredevil: Born Again, which accidentally or otherwise is the first product of Marvel Television’s more, well, television-forward approach, Ironheart is a movie stretched into six episodes. Like Ms. Marvel, which also raced past the episodic format that would have better served the concept, there’s a version of Ironheart that takes more time to flesh out its individual parts, with a heist a week, or Ironheart solving a new problem while falling further into a life of crime.
But that isn’t what we get here, down to the show’s plot ultimately not even feeling finished by the time it ends… It likely was teeing up a movie and TV series we won’t spoil here, but suffice to say neither is likely to happen.
Look, Marvel’s casting department (mostly) remains undefeated, and if they memory hole this series and have Thorne show up again as Ironheart in Avengers: Doomsday or Secret Wars? Great. There’s nothing particularly tarnished about the character in Ironheart. But there isn’t anything added to her that’s worth fixating on, either, and that’s unfortunate for 279 minutes you won’t be able to get back. At least 10 minutes of it, though, are excellent.
The first three episodes of Ironheart are streaming now on Disney+. The final three episodes will stream next week, on July 1, 2025.
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