Ironheart, Season 1, Episode 6: The Past is the Past
And so, Ironheart ends.
The internet was abuzz with the guest star that shows up in the final episode, with many highlighting that he's the only good part of the show. I wouldn't go as far to say that (I enjoyed Zeke, and at least Mama Williams and The Hood had all right acting) but Sascha Baron Cohen playing Mephisto is absolutely the highlight of the episode and the show. By a huge, huge margin.
And could I just emphasize again what I said in episode 4, how it is so weird that a show about Ironheart -- the alleged successor to Iron Man -- has so much magic nonsense tacked in to her show? I had to double check the comics if this was the case, but nope.
The episode starts off with playing the flashback of Parker's origin story in full. Which I thought was great, because we actually get a competently-directed sequence between a pre-Hood Parker and Mephisto. (I'm not going to sugarcoat the big revelation, it's him, he's here) Parker and John fails to rob his dad's mansion, and a strange hooded man appears. He magically manifests a trippy doorway to pizzeria. This strange man talks about potential and does the devil thing of "what is it do you really desire"... and then demonstrates his power by freezing everyone around him in time. The strange man plays up Parker's potential, then does the gaslighting thing by suddenly being in a rush to leave. Parker accepts the deal, shaking the figure's hand and gives up something he 'wouldn't miss', and his strange sponsor gives him his hood, which is the tools for Parker to get whatever he desires -- to be filthy rich.
A great deal-with-the-devil sequence, and excellently done.
A superior show would've maybe played this up more in the previous episodes, by having the Hood actually do his own charismatic deal-with-the-devil to recruit Riri, Zeke, and the rest of his Hoodlums. It's sitting right there, and would actually foreshadow Mephisto's appearance thematically beyond just 'whisper whisper demon whispers'.
Instead, we cut back to Parker eating a super-lavish meal with only the mind-controlled Zeke sitting next to him. If the show actually cared to make this feel tragic or whatever (oh no, Parker lost his 'found family'!) it would've been poignant, but Parker never felt like he cared for any of his Hoodlums except for John King, so this whole scene kind of falls flat.
Riri, or rather Ironheart I guess, gets consumed by the desire to bring back AI-NATALIE, but of course it's impossible. She ends up charging into the Hood's base to steal the Hood and analyze it, and we get a two-parter boss fight. The mind-controlled Ezekiel is first, and this fight is... not super exciting. I guess we do know where the special effects budget for this show went to. It ends with Riri kicking Zeke in the balls, which apparently is the only way to hard-reset him.
If this was a more comedic show, like Deadpool or something, it would've made sense. As it is, it just feels eye-rolling and a horrible exit for the interesting-before-the-random-mind-control Zeke. Zeke doesn't even get to help out in the final fight, and just disappears from the plot. Zeke brings up how Riri fucked up his entire life, but Riri doesn't really acknowledge it all that much.
Parker, meanwhile, yells at the Hood and finally summons the strange devil-man Mephisto. He 'breaks character', which I thought was fantastic, speaking with a different accent and eventually a deep, dark, demonic one. Mephisto tells Parker that he kept to the letter of the deal, and tells Parker what a disappointment he's been... but promises that he might give him more power if he could hold on to the Hood and make something out of it. Again, great gaslighting tactics! Again, the show would've been better if this was a running theme, and actually highlights a bit more on how both Riri and Parker does this to people, but alas, we don't get that kind of nuance.
Anyway, we go to the Big Action Scene (tm). Ironheart versus the Hood. It's an... all right CGI battle. I still find it silly that for all her inventiveness, Ironheart is fighting with a magicked-out armour with magical rune explosions and whatnot. Maybe if the show explained a bit more how Riri is intelligent enough to combine magic and tech? If you're going to make her a Mary Sue, at least commit to it? I dunno. The Hood uses magical bullets, then transforms into a quasi-demonic feral form. Riri self-destructs her armour and somehow survives unharmed...
...and turns out that it's a hologram. That's actually quite neat, I suppose. The real Ironheart suit is still intact, and bursts out of the smoke and rips the Hood off of Parker, and leaves him mewling and crying on the ground, ranting about how much it hurts without the Hood.
...exit Parker Robbins, with, uh, no real resolution to his character arc beyond the fact that this episode really humbled him and made him realize that he ain't shit without Mephisto or the Hood.
And Riri walks down the stairs, and is confronted by Mephisto. Which, of course, Riri absolutely has no context for and she mistakes him for Dormammu. Which, I thought, was the second time this show has been genuinely funny. The episode goes on for a bit, but essentially Mephisto gives Riri what she wants as the episode flip-flops between the moment of this deal and the past scenes and the future... and it's revealed that Mephisto did get a deal from someone he finds interesting.
Did Riri Williams, Ironheart, learn anything about her impulsiveness and pigheadedness throughout this whole journey? Did seeing Zeke get his life destroyed because of her; did seeing Parker writhe in pain because of his seeking power; did killing John King; did her inadvertent cause of NATALIE's death; did all the critique from her family... did any of them stick in her head?
It would've been a boring ending for Riri to avoid the Mephisto devil-handshake and be the expected ending. But it would've been a nice closing of the character development. A rocky one, and one that still makes Riri Williams feel like the worst superhero to be written into the MCU, but at least she would still have a somewhat heroic story.
Instead, she accepts the deal, Natalie is back to life, and the episode closes at the shot of Riri being corrupted by demonic scars.
(Let's not even get into the horrible narrative decision that at no point during the magical exposition in episode 4 that Mephisto or even the idea of a 'devil' making deals was brought up, which would've contextualized Riri's decisions, maybe)
It's, uh... it's weird, isn't it? In a way, if the show was a lot more cynical, if it tried to take a stance about a protagonist whose actions we're not supposed to like (in the vein of Billy Butcher in The Boys or Rick in the good seasons of Rick and Morty) then this show might've had a point by showcasing just how horrible of a decision-maker and a selfish person Riri Williams is. But instead, the show is just so vapid and jumps from one scene to the next filled with a lot of uninteresting characters. There might've been a point where Riri's own obsessions with making the Iron Suit or with NATALIE could've been juxtaposed to Parker's obsession and dependence on the magical Hood, but no such luck.
Instead, once again, just like when she stole the iron suit from MIT, Riri ends up taking the easy way out, and to damn the consequences. Which I'm not sure, again, was the intended reaction from the showrunners but that's definitely how it feels like. She started off as an entitled brat of a criminal, and ends... with maybe some extra tragedy but not much in terms of maturing as a hero.
It's an unintentionally appropriate ending, I suppose. The way it's framed by the narrative is for it to be exciting and perhaps even tragic... but I just shrug and felt like it is absolutely something that the selfishly unrepentant Riri would do. Not the audience reaction they're going for, perhaps, but it is an appropriate end to Ironheart. With the horrible reception to this show and Ironheart not being part of any future Young Avengers announcement yet, it would be a depressing conclusion to the character's MCU career, if an unintentionally hilarious one. Ironheart's conclusion of a character is unintentionally similar to that of the Hood -- where it's appropriate for him because Parker collapsing in agony and pain when removed from his addictive source of power is appropriate for what we've seen from him.
Again, though... Mephisto is excellent and I fully expect to see him return in some capacity in another MCU project. Sasha Baron Cohen of Borat fame plays an absolutely perfect Mephisto, alternating between disarming to a greasy scammy salesman to a terrifying demon when the script demands him to be! But other than that, that's it for this, and with how Marvel has been tidying up their portfolio and how Ironheart's release went, it's kind of clear that this is one of the projects that they're going to bury.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- Mephisto is the Marvel comics' equivalent of the devil, being named after a real-life mythological demon. Mephisto debuted as an adversary of the Silver Surfer, and later on is extremely associated with the stories of Ghost Rider and Spider-Man, being particularly infamous for the 'One More Day' storyline.
- We don't see it clearly, but we do get a glimpse of Mephisto's true form -- a red-skinned, clean-shaven man with glowing eyes -- reflected in the spoon that he uses to stir his coffee.
- Dormammu is mentioned once more, and Mephisto mocks the ruler of the Dark Dimension. In the comics, the two don't really have much of a relationship as far as I can gather.
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