Ironheart S01E06 Review: The Devil Wears A Suit and Tie

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. 

Ironheart S01E05 Review: Monger 2.0

Ironheart, Season 1, Episode 5: Karma's A Glitch

I'll take what I can get. This episode is probably one of the few all-right or good ones from this show; since it contains the 'grounding moment' I wanted from Riri and the Hood. It just comes a bit too late as it's the penultimate episode and we spend a huge chunk of it with action scenes. 

The episode starts off with Riri talking to Zelma and kind of still showing her cynical attitude about all of the magic... which I thought was rather poor continuity considering the whole point of the previous episode was her panic attack as she realizes how over in her head she is. Zelma gives us the working theory that the Hood draws his powers from Dormammu of Doctor Strange fame, and just using Hood as a way to get summoned to Earth. (Oh, to have Dormammu back! To have a show where we have characters investigate Dormammu instead of this Riri nonsense). 

Unfortunately, action scenes happen! The Hoodlums show up. By the way, without the Hood, who is the character with the biggest bone to pick with Riri. It's never explained. 

The Hoodlums attack one by one, and it's... it's an all right action scene if you've got a CW superhero TV show budget. For the ginormous amounts of money that Marvel pours into these shows, though? It's a bit iffy. In one of the few genuinely 'oh, she's an inventor!' moment, Riri actually uses the forcefield bubble to trap the Twins, and then fights Clown unarmoured kinda similarly to Iron Man 3. And then she dons the Ironheart armour and flips off Slug who drives a truck to run her over. Slug then runs the fuck away and out of the show, which is a genuinely funny scene and probably the only actual chuckle I got from this show. 

The last fighter to show up is Ezekiel Stane, upgraded with his biological implants that makes him a superhuman. It mostly translates to lightning blasts from his fingers and the ability to tank Riri's repulsor blasts. Zeke is here for... revenge for Riri causing him to get arrested and tossing him into prison? Sure. It's not explained super-clearly, but considering how bad the show has been with explaining characters' motivations, I'll take what I can get. 

Zeke rips Riri's suit apart piece by piece, but mid-villain-rant Riri begs for mercy and Zeke has a change of heart. He's not evil like the Hoodlums, and just like Riri, he's just suckered in due to them finding him at a vulnerable state of mind. I like that! That's not a bad interaction! Executed rather poorly, sure, but it's something, at least. 

Riri then spends the rest of the episode in a heart-to-heart with her mother and the rest of her allies. Mama Williams is genuinely likable, which really does help to sell this scene. Mama Williams demands that Riri talk to her, shuts her 'we gotta do this because I say so' attitude, and demands that she sit down and explain her motivations to her mother (and the audience, dangnabit). It's only at this point, at the penultimate stage of the show, that Riri breaks down that she really wants to just protect her family. 

(The show doesn't do a good job showcasing this in the last four episodes, by the way -- you can make a character have a prickly relationship with their family members while still secretly wanting to protect them, but while the characters can hide it from each other the narrative needs to make it clear to the audience for this to matter.)

(Echo, as badly as I reviewed it, at least did a decent job at highlighting that part of the titular character)

NATALIE then plays some video of Riri's dead stepdad, giving a motivational message of how Riri's obsessed with the bad stuff that she forgets the good stuff. Which is fair enough, and in a better show that knows how to tie its themes together, this could've been tied to the AI-NATALIE plot that started off interesting but is now just boring. 

And then we just have a huge, gigantic halt in pacing as all the other supporting characters (Zelma, Xavier, the random kid from the first episode) also show up and give their support to Riri Williams, which feels utterly unearned. Particularly Xavier, who fought with NATALIE and Riri over the AI thing and the resolution is a random letter he found? Huh?  

While all of this is going on, we go back to the Hood's gang. Zeke is an idiot who can't lie (and it's not like he didn't have time to think up of a lie), and the Hood catches on to the fact that they failed in killing Riri Williams. No explanation is given to why Hood didn't join in the lynching. Clown and Slug kind of resolve the 'oh shit, Hood killed Rampage' plotline, and this leads to them and the Blood Twins walking out of the gang and the show. 

If I cared more about them, I would've said more. But they've been such ciphers. I had to look up a cast list to remember their names. And the show is really inconsistent on wanting to portray them as hoodlums, or as somewhat-sympathetic, and we flip-flop so much that all I get out of them walking off is a shrug.

The Hood then hacks into Ezekiel Stane's systems, because of course he put in something to control Zeke. This interrupts some cringe comedy as Zeke harasses his neighbour, and Zeke gets trooped over like a puppet. The Hood and Zeke assault a mansion, which turns out, belongs to the Hood's dad. Oh no, the Hood has a rich, abusive, asshole father! The big revelation with absolutely no foreshadowing is that all the nice companies that the Hood (and our main heroine) has been assaulting are all subsidiaries that belonged to the Hood's father. 

Parker's actor finally gets to act quite a bit here, which I am happy for... but again, just like Riri, this revelation comes way too little, too late in the show. Which just plain doesn't work at this point. It would be something, again, if we had some foreshadowing to Parker having some kind of depth to his character, but all we've seen from him is brooding, recruiting people, and speaking to demonic voices. So this whole scene, I'm afraid, really just falls flat -- which is a shame, because it's a pretty clear low-hanging fruit as far as supervillain motivations go. 

Again, brainstorming for a show that they paid a lot of money to make... there could be something here about the Hood driving away a 'found family' just to gain revenge on a dying old man. We could've had Riri or maybe the Hoodlums discover that the Hood and John King lied to them about the 'evilness' of the rich people they targeted. We could've had actual foreshadowing in Parker's scenes with John about getting revenge for someone, instead of just repeating stuff about the black demon markings that the audience has already seen. But nope. 

The rest of the episode has Riri build up a new red and black Ironheart suit, somewhat similar to the version we saw in Wakanda Forever. Except despite, again, Riri's bluster at the beginning of this show about how she's super-smart, she... doesn't have a good power source for it? Despite making an Ironheart armour work in Wakanda Forever? Despite being a super-genius? Zelma also very randomly, after insisting that magic is not to be abused, ends up going 'fuck it' and does a ritual to power it up. Also very randomly, turns out that the magic has a cost, and this cost is the NATALIE AI fading away screaming in fear and panic. 

Which is actually quite well done, if the buildup wasn't so contrived. NATALIE is a bit of an annoying character, but seeing her essentially get killed through no fault of her own and be powerless to be saved; and with the discussion moments between Riri and other characters about whether the AI is sentient... there could be something bigger than this instead of shock value. But it is just that -- shock value. 

That really is the crux of a lot of the problems of this show. There's no real connective tissue, there's a bunch of big moments without the buildup that it takes to reach there; which ironically is probably true for a lot of AI-written content. I'm really sitting here confused what I'm supposed to take away from this show, something that I didn't really get even out of the other terrible works from Marvel's media. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Dormammu of Doctor Strange fame is brought up and discussed. In addition to being a nod to the character, the comics version of Hood does actually draw his power from Dormammu.
• Zelma also brings up the events of the Doctor Strange movie, specifically Kaecilius's part in it and his slow corruption via scars as he attempted to summon Dormammu into Earth. Dormammu's realm, the Dark Dimension, is also mentioned. 
• Riri's stepdad's muscle car was prominently featured in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. 

Ironheart S01E04 Review: Magic All Along

Ironheart, Season 1, Episode 4: Bad Magic

We're starting off with the second half of Ironheart, and it's really a massive distraction. Let's start off with the titular 'bad magic'. 

So around half of this episode is devoted to Riri finding out that her mom's friend's daughter Zelma Stanton is actually a Kamar-Taj school dropout, and we spend a chunk of the episode having Riri be a typical 'magic doesn't exist, what do you mean' science hero, before going through a lot of the motions of someone discovering magic for the first time. The problem is... it's not particularly exciting, and feels particularly disingenuous considering that Riri Williams lives in a post-Thanos world, where Doctor Strange and Thor are public heroes. Oh, and the fact that Riri already acknowledged that The Hood's somewhat unexplained by science... it would be something if a huge part of this series or Riri's personality is about her trying to figure out magic through science or something, but this isn't the first time where I brainstormed something far more interesting than what Ironheart is actually trying to tell. 

Another problem, and I recognize that this has lesser budget (but really?) than a movie is that the magic that Zelma shows off essentially is just a simple set change, with a couple of magic circles here and there. The infodump is also painfully shoehorned into the show. Did Riri ever suspect that Zelma is a magician? Zelma most certainly wasn't a character that existed in the earlier episodes; and it would've been really something if she has been introduced to use earlier. Instead, Riri literally stumbles into her store and into the magical solution out of chance. A literal, horribly-written deus ex machina. 

I rag about other recent Marvel shows for their bad editing and writing, like Echo and She-Hulk, but at least those have some kind of internal plot consistency, you know? 

And for all of this terribly-shoehorned exposition that they thought we really needed to have, all it amounts to a vague shrug of 'oh, man, that shit's evil'. Which... yeah, no shit, show writers. 

Again, it's really frustrating that just casually watching this show I could already brainstorm like several different ways where this could be done better. Have Zelma show up earlier. Have the magic user be one of the Hoodlums, maybe someone who sympathizes with Riri and actually make the Hoodlums actual characters instead of a casting checklist. Have the magic discovery be tied to the mystery around Natalie. Have Riri Williams, who is a super-genius in the Marvel superhero universe, figure it out herself. 

The other chunk of the episode has Parker Robbins brood and have flashbacks about how close he is to John King and whatnot, but I don't know... as the audience, I kind of needed to maybe see a bit more of John to really care about him? It's a bit disingenuous to show the sob story flashback after John died like it, and without any really strong present-day scenes other than maybe one or two arguments with Parker in episode 3. The Hood himself just spends most of the episode brooding and scheming, not really saying or doing anything interesting...

...until he breaks Zeke Stane, probably one of the few genuinely interesting characters, out of jail. The Hood and Ezekiel Stane teaming up is cool in theory, I guess, if I wasn't rooting so much at least for Zeke. Who, by the way, did end up in jail because of Riri's colossal cock-up and Riri just leaves him there without so much of an apology. The Hood and Slug do some supervillain power-up procedures for Zeke to upgrade him, which I hope will lead to something interesting. 

And honestly, at this point in time, I really do think that one of the biggest problem is Riri Williams as a protagonist. This is less of a rag on the actress Dominique Thorne, but more on the writers. I've spoken a bit in the previous couple of episode reviews about how unlikable and how messy the writing around Riri is, and how it fails to really give her an understandable motivation.

Not all heroes need to be perfect. No, far from it. Fallible protagonists are great. Fallible protagonists are better! Characters like Punisher, Daredevil, Deadpool, Batman, and the titular Iron Man that Ironheart's trying to be a legacy to... they're all flawed in different ways. But it's the fact that they kept being heroes in spite of their flaws, rising above them, is what makes them so beloved. These stories need to do a good balance of showing the cocky confidence and tempering them with either showing the characters' motivations, struggles, or achievements. I could go into more specific details, but that would belabour the point. 

Riri... doesn't do any of these. And as the audience, when Mama Williams, Xavier and Zeke, in different parts of the episode, confront Riri and bring up how shit she acts towards people, I just nod by head rigorously in agreement. Riri has been shown to be impulsive and selfish without any of the contriteness or remorse that comes with making bad decisions. Again, it's okay for characters to make bad decisions! It's how these characters react to them that makes them likable or not. 

Couple in to the fact that we don't really get a sense of why Riri does what she does, beyond a very vague 'oh no, my stepdad and best friend were killed in a garage' tragedy, really hurts her as a protagonist. You'd think the dead family/friend card is the easiest to morph into a motivation. Spider-Man, Batman, Punisher and many others play with that as an origin story, but as it is, Ironheart as a show removes much of the nuance of these kinds of more complex characters and just, as always, has her pinball around the show and not really do anything. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Zelma Stanton is a supporting character in Doctor Strange comics who was helped by the doctor and later became his librarian. As far as I can find out, Zelma and Ironheart aren't associated in the comics. 
• MCU!Zelma notes that she is associated with Doctor Strange and Kamar-Taj. Zelma's mother 'dropped out' of Kamar-Taj, which is just as well considering it became a war-zone in Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness.
• In the episode, Zelma's lair has 'brain maggots'. The case that introduced the comics version of Zelma to Dr. Strange is connected to the Mind Maggots, which infested her. 
• Riri lists Wakandan, Kree, Stark and Pym as four of the power source types she compared the Hood's energies to. 
• Shuri and Riri's participation in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is brought up during the discussion of what Riri should do. (As an aside, I don't really buy that Shuri wouldn't at least investigate what's going on since she and Riri parted ways in a friendly manner, and the show doesn't make a good argument as to why the impulsive Riri or NATALIE doesn't actually try to contact Shuri). 
• Zelma and her mom briefly brings up 'witchcraft' as a specific breed of magic, referencing all the witch-y magic associated with WandaVision and Agatha All Along.

Ironheart S01E03 Review: First of the Gang to Die

Ironheart, Season 1, Episode 3: We in Danger, Girl

Credit where credit's due, terrible episode title aside, I actually reasonably enjoyed this episode. And that's mostly because of the introduction of Ezekiel Stane. 

But everything around Riri's interactions with the Hoodlums (the show doesn't call them that, but let me call them that) really is by far the worst part of the show. The show couldn't really decide whether they want to make the Hoodlums be explicitly evil to be a bad influence towards Riri, or to make them still look cool... and fail rather spectacularly at both. The Hood aside, all the other members of the Hoodlums don't come off as either likable, charismatic, or being a 'found family' that could so easily proverbially seduce a vulnerable lost soul like Riri Williams into turning a blind eye into their misdeeds.

That would've been a good storyline. Tombstone in Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man went through something similar, but the gang in that show were portrayed to be consistently emotionally manipulative and Tombstone's state of life and mental space were clearly shown to the audience to be vulnerable to manipulation.

Riri? The show wants to both have its cake and eat it, and fails spectacularly at both. Riri needs to find the Hoodlums likable because that's the crux of the show, but she also needs to be smart so she has to be suspicious, and so Riri just comes off as inept and selfish, hanging out with the Hoodlums for money. It would be one thing if she's sticking around with them to try and bring down the criminals from the inside, but the show never makes that obvious as Riri's motivations are murky. 

It's also really hard to take Riri's super-intelligence seriously when the show praises her for noticing 'oh, the Hood might have superpowers' but also she gets so horrified that these Ocean's Eleven heists... result in good security guards being hurt and killed? Yeah, no, Riri just comes off as being dumb. The show does so little buildup at establishing the Hoodlums as 'a family', or the dynamics of why Riri is considering other members of the Hoodlums as her new BFFs. Just like Riri's credibility as a superhero or a 'super-genius', you can't just... tell us that without the buildup! And there's no excuse, this is episode 3 and each of these episodes are like an hour long.

So the Hoodlum gang stuff didn't work for me at all. 

(Oh yeah, Rampage died, and Riri is horrified to find out about that... again, after multiple scenes of being suspicious about the Hood. Rampage also had near-zero interactions with Riri, so I'm not sure why she, or the audience, is supposed to care beyond the vague surprised-Pikachu-reaction of 'oh no, the criminals kill people, what a surprise). 

There are some nice scenes; but they're just slow. The exploration of AI Natalie versus Real Natalie, leading to a trip down memory lane and a panic attack by Riri when she finds the garage where her stepdad and the real Natalie died long ago, is reasonably well done. 

'Joe' (or Zeke, rather) from last episode returns and in probably the best and unintentionally hilarious scenes of the episode, starts using Riri's own asshole-assertive tactics against her. In a better show this might make Riri actually self-reflect or dissect this, but the show seems to equate 'being an assertive asshole' as being a positive character trait if it's being done by the designated protagonist. I just like that every single one of Zeke's criticisms towards Riri is actually quite true. 

After some blackmail back-and-forth, Riri gets Zeke to create a bio-mesh skin gizmo that will allow her to sneak a weapon and steal a piece of Parker's Hood. Which... cool, Zeke's her science partner, but wasn't the whole crux of this show to showcase that Riri Williams is as good of a scrappy inventor as Tony Stark, and that she can do it without money? Yeah, not doing a good job of showing that, show...

Oh yeah, Joe is actually Ezekiel 'Zeke' Stane, son of Obadiah 'Iron Monger' Stane. This, by the way, was given to us in a horrible exposition shoehorned unnaturally into a conversation that actually took me out of the episode. Zeke's backstory and motivation are delivered much more competently -- it makes sense that he's so obsessed with technology, having a stain in his legacy and reputation that he has a feeling of responsibility towards. But that guilt seems to have also influenced his lack of a backbone. This could've been the nice start of an interesting backstory... certainly a much more palatable one than Riri's vaguely-defined "I want an Iron Suit because other people said I can't have it" rhetoric. Alas, it's her name on the show title. 

Again, credit where credit's due, Ironheart does try to give a little bit of her motivations. Her dead stepdad is a fixer who is super-interested in Iron Man. Which makes it a bit less selfish... but still so utterly vapid and shallow. It's at least something that actually gives her a vaguely superhero-y motivation, coming in almost halfway through a show where she's been hanging out with criminals. 

Anyway, the final part of this episode has the heist be against an organization called Heirloom that operates a greenhouse island facility. Which... again, the show doesn't do any job trying to justify Heirloom as being assholes beyond them being rich. Which, fair enough, Parker and his Hoodlums are asshole criminals, but at least justify it to Riri? 

Anyway, Hood and John King have an argument about whether to go ahead with the heist. John King points out some good points, but the Hood is hyperfocused on getting his way and as predicted, the CEO refuses to back down. Riri lets NATALIE control the Ironheart suit while she sneaks around and tries to cut off a piece of the Hood's cloak. Riri is also as hyperfocused and impulsive as the Hood, and her laser knife ends up setting off alarms that puts the entire facility into lockdown. 

The Hood goes on a rampage, using his superpowers to kill the CEO and a bunch of security guards. Riri gets away... but gets confronted by John King, who puts two and two together. The scuffle leads to Riri escaping in the Ironheart suit and does the very heroic thing of leaving John King behind to suffocate to death in the CO2-trapped room. Oh, and she leaves the bio-mesh behind. Again, there are many ways to frame the Riri/John King confrontation that could make Riri heroic. She just feels confused, and sure, while John was a criminal, her reaction to leaving him to die feels so blasé. I don't mind the idea necessarily that some heroes need to kill their enemies, or killing in self-defense can be justified, or whatnot, but I have zero confidence that this show could pull off any of the depth or nuance that any of these topics would bring. 

Riri hides her involvement in John's death; the Hoodlums are fucked up; and Parker's demonic voices show him a vision of what happened later on which is a bit of a contrivance. 

And... that really is the crux of what makes this show so frustrating. The characters' motivations are so confused and what the audience is meant to take away from the scenes just feels so arbitrary.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Ezekiel Stane or Zeke Stane in the comics is the son of Obadiah Stane who was introduced as an Iron Man villain who was pulling the strings of other supervillains that he pitted against Tony Stark's allies to avenge his father's death, eventually becoming the second Iron Monger. He would eventually also upgrade his own biology, something that this MCU Zeke Stane is trying to do. 
• This is the very first time that 'Iron Monger', Obadiah's supervillain sobriquet, is ever mentioned in the MCU -- he's not called that in Iron Man, and he doesn't really get referenced all that much outside of that movie. 

Ironheart S01E02 Review: The Ethics of AI Impersonation

Ironheart, Season 1, Episode 2: Will the Real Natalie Please Stand Up?

In a different world, Ironheart might have focused on its more interesting storyline and premise -- Riri accidentally recreating an AI ghost-copy of her dead best friend Natalie (or N.A.T.A.L.I.E.), who is snarky and is fully convinced that she is alive. Riri is split between being ecstatic at this, and also horrified. 

A better-written, better-edited show that might actually be trying to tie in to what little we established in the first episode, and maybe "NATALIE" is the big fancy thing that Riri manages to invent in her whole desire to be 'iconic' and 'remembered'. And indeed, the idea of an AI copy of a person was definitely topical, and one that fit Ironheart's stated mission of being a tech-based superhero. 

Unfortunately, we don't really get any of those. NATALIE is explored somewhat, yes, but other than some vague discussion about the ethics of AI impersonation, a lot of the scenes are tiresome unfunny bickering. Maybe I'm just old, but none of the comedy in their banter landed on me. I did like that this episode, at least, tries to attempt to ground Riri's character by giving her some focus after tossing her around and making her super-unlikable in her debut episode, but it's also not particularly interesting to watch. I felt like Ironheart is simultaneously not doing enough with Riri/Natalie but also keeps showing it. 

Natalie acts like a bratty teenager as well even as an AI, and accidentally reveals herself to Riri's mother and bonds with her -- who accepts on face value that Riri is just that smart to create a fully-functional AI. 

Which, by the way... Riri's smartness and resourcefulness? Other than the vague handwave of her creating the Ironheart armour offscreen (which is broken, and also she stole, and also she can't fix), it's another example of Riri's super-engineer intelligence being told, not shown. Sure, her mom believes that Riri is someone who could program a hyper-realistic AI... in the same episode that Riri essentially tries to browbeat "Joe McGillicuddy" into giving her spare parts for free, so that she can fix her armour and do the heist that the Hood's crew hired her for. 

Joe is a weird, jumpy black-market arms dealer who Riri kind of... befriends? Sort of? He ends up showing off his "wholesome bunker" filled with weapons and tech, and this should really be setting off alarm bells. Admittedly, though, Riri barely reacted to the far more criminal-looking Hood's gang, and Joe gives off the vibes of a total pushover, so I guess she's all right? Riri kind of bonds with Joe a bit, teaching him to grab his own fate and be less of a pussy or something, before... taking advantage of him being a pussy and getting the tech devices. (Joe gets a final scene growing a backbone... vandalizing the flowers of a neighbour who lets her dog pee on his garden. Okay?)

Speaking of a 'proper' buildup, the Hood's crew actually gets a person-by-person introduction. They're all ciphers and will remain ciphers until the end of the show, but this works a lot better and should have been included in their first appearance instead of a vague name-vomit. 

We finally get a proper heist at the end of the episode, and... a good heist makes us root for criminals usually by making the characters super-duper charismatic that we root for them; make it clear that the good guys are being forced by other criminals or other circumstances that need the money fast; or make it clear that whoever they are robbing are assholes that deserve it. Ironheart... does none of these. The Hood is clearly set up as a simple criminal, Riri's just full of dull surprise, and the rest of the crew are cackling assholes. 

Meanwhile, the CEO they're robbing... is of a high-tech tunnel system, which the Hood crew handwaves by saying that 'she's unethical'. ...because she's rich? Because she's doing some high-tech innovations? It would be something if the show tries and attempts to make a point of doing tech-innovation causing gentrification or something along those lines. There would've been a point. But no, we get scenes showing Ironheart flying through the tunnels enjoying herself like a superhero, intercut with the Hoodlum gang happily brutalizing guards like the supervillains they are. Set to peppy music. And, again, in a better-written show, in a show that's a bit more self-aware, this would've been workable. We could've had the point of this scene be really focused on the mood of Riri being oblivious to the criminal activities of her supposed allies; the juxtaposition of a naive idealist who gets suckered into a bad crowd. 

Instead, the scene ends up coming off as "hey, look at how cool these guys are" when... when they're not. It's not even particularly cool or stylish. The episode's climax ends when Riri's armour and AI glitches, and Supergenius Riri Williams just panics and can't do anything if she can't interact with her AI. A security guard holds her at gunpoint because she is doing crimes, but then the Hood comes up and shoots the guard to make her escape. 

And this starts causing Riri to ask questions... but only about the Hood's morality. Which makes her both feel stupid (really, you don't realize the criminals are going to do violent crimes?) and selfish (she doesn't feel guilty about the crime, only that the Hood shot someone).  

Oh, and all of this is around the mystery of Parker Robbins' Hood being weirdly magical. It can teleport, it can bend his bullets, and the audience (and his main goon John King) seeing him converse with demonic voices and having vein-like markings extend around his body. It's kind of an obvious trope as far as supervillain gimmicks go, a neat one that would've been more interesting in a better show. 

That said, this episode is a bit better than the previous one, not that it's a particularly high bar to clear. Some themes are at least being brought up. It's just so messy and on the back of a rather unlikable protagonist whose motives and personality remain an indiscernible blur.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• MCU's Slug is established to originate from Madripoor, a fictional island-state that primarily features in Wolverine comics. Madripoor first appeared in the MCU in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, around the time that the X-Men movie rights reverted back to Disney-Marvel. 
• When Riri questions Clown about how Parker got his hood, one of her theories mentions that he wrestled it off a demon, which is his comic-book counterpart's origin story. 
• 'Joe' mentions a biometric retinal scanner and snarks about wanting to keep both of his eyes. During the opening of The Avengers, Loki tears out the eyeball of some unfortunate person to break into a vault with such a security device.

Ironheart S01E01 Review: Gangs and Ghosts

Marvel's Ironheart, Season 1, Episode 1: Take Me Home

I didn't have time to watch this show when it came out last year,  and when I did, I just... never gotten the time to review it. But here it is, now, finally taken out of the mothballs to cover the blog while I'm off traveling. I do intend to get through the MCU catalogue at some point, so better late than never, right? 

And this show itself was within Marvel/Disney's own mothballed storage box, being delayed since forever. Debuting in the MCU in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever as a bit of a 'plot device character' that Shuri and Namor are hunting, Riri Williams didn't make the best impression as far as the audience goes. And she is framed -- just like her comics counterpart -- to being the Iron Man successor. The problem, of course, is how unnatural the connection between Iron Man and Ironheart all feels. (Not counting that Marvel's already positioned Spider-Man and to a lesser extent War Machine as Tony's successors). It's something that a lot of other critics and reviewers have used far stronger language towards, but it definitely rings true.

Throw in the massive delays this show received, and general audience fatigue at announcing and giving spinoffs to brand-new characters instead of those that are waiting for a show... and Ironheart really felt doomed before it began. Further bits of confusion were thrown in when the villain of the piece was announced to be the Hood, a magic-themed supervillain, against the technologically-inclined Ironheart... especially in her debut series.

And the first episode... it was competently shot, no doubt, but it doesn't do the lead character any favours. A lot of new characters and situations are thrown at us without really taking the time to tell us who Riri is. Even in the weaker MCU projects, at least they do a decent job at trying to make us emphatize and like the lead character. 

Ironheart... starts off having Riri talk big about her plans to be better than geniuses like Tony Stark and Hank Pym. Fair enough, some superheroes and characters have a charmingly arrogant streak to them. Tony Stark being one of them. But then we get a very rushed introduction to Riri's situation, where since Wakanda Forever, she's employed in a scholarship program in the very prestigious university of MIT... and just bitches about how she doesn't have enough money to make a 'better' Iron Man armour. Instead, she spends most of this highly privileged situation going around helping other students cheat. This leads her into a very reasonable confrontation and expulsion by the teachers, to which Riri just acts entirely indignant towards. 

Riri's solution to expulsion is to steal the Ironheart armour that technically and financially beonged to the institute due to the grant money being theirs; having said armour get deactivated because she stole it, and she returns to her neighbourhood.

And... I don't know. All this really feels jumpy and awkward as they don't go too far in either direction. If the idea of these scenes is to highlight 'the System takes away the accomplishments of underprivileged geniuses' (which would be a valid storyline), it certainly doesn't do a good job as all the school staff make very reasonable arguments and Riri ends up loking petulant in the show. Riri spends all her screentime saying that "I could make an Iron Man armour if I had money", and money drives all her decisions. 

It's a bit of a problematic stance, because all this really does make Riri unlikeable. Superhero shows and origin stories has had a record of being able to make unfortunate situations seem reasonable and get us to root for the underdog. But the entitlement that Riri gives off really does run contrary to the entire origin story of Iron Man himself ("he built it in a cave with a box of scraps", as the memed scene often goes) and the fact that Riri never gives a proper reason other than wanting to be noticed... yeah. We've got a lot of heroes, even in the MCU, who aren't traditionally heroic and have a lot of ego and do crimes. But they usually are tempered by establishing very early on that beneath all the bluster is a good heart. 

Coupled to that is that Riri's whole thing is that she's supposed to be a super-genius on the par of Tony Stark, Hank Pym and Shuri. This was demonstrated by her status as the only person able to create the vibranium detector in Wakanda Forever, and being able to create the Ironheart suit here... but also gets her suit hacked without any real intelligent response but to scream and curse. Later on in the episode, her 'big moment' of showing off her skills to the criminal gang is to... smash some glass and hotwire an elevator, which seems ineptly mundane for, again, a 'techy' smart character. 

Anyway, after falling out of the sky, we spend a lot of time having Riri go 'woe is me' as she gets harnagued by her mother's friends. Perhaps the only interesting aspect of this is the hints of Riri's dead best friend Natalie, which kind of humanizes Riri a bit. Maybe if Riri's weird obsession with making an Iron suit was tied somehow to Natalie's death, it would've come off a bit better? Anyway, Riri scans her own brain to create an AI for her Ironheart suit and it somehow manifests in the image of Natalie, leading to some strange AI-ghost shenanigans in the upcoming episodes. That's the cliffhanger, though.

For the second half of the episode, we get introduced to a motley crew of obscure Marvel villains, all recasted beyond recognition even by the MCU's standards. The only one that remotely resembles his comic-book counterpart in looks and lore is The Hood, Parker Williams. The Hood is... all right. He's a competent enough 'gang leader' villain. They recruit Riri when they recognize her vulnerability, and put her through the aforementioned 'trial-by-fire' deathtrap interview. 

Despite being clearly recruited by a gang of criminals who are clearly up to no good, Riri makes a token effort at resisting their recruitment -- and the show makes it feel more like she did it because of the deathtrap thing, less so for the criminal thing. The promises of money makes Riri agree to join the gang. 

The show seems to want to position the Hood's gang as being something similar to like, the Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant-Man's heist team or something, but they are straight up, well, criminals. Ain't nothing wrong with that, but the episode seems to treat them as being super-cool becuase they... stick it to the man! Yeah! That justifies throwing people into deathtraps! They are like a much, much less interesting and less nuanced version of Vulture from Spider-Man: Homecoming. 

And again, the lack of motive really hurts Riri's likability and credibility as a protagonist. There is maybe one line early on when she's defending the Iron suits to the MIT professors about using it to help firemen; and another line to her neighbourhood friend Xavier about how the suit wil get her 'noticed'... but comparing her to practically any other superhero from Marvel and DC, there really isn't anything here that is urgent for her to get the suit now now now NOW that justifies her both stealing the suit from MIT and later joining the gang of hooligans. 

This really is a clunky start to the series. It's a bit unfortunate -- the protagonist just feels so reactive without having anything particularly likable or interesting about her. And other than the mind-synchronizing thing, Riri's supposed 'superpower' of intelligence doesn't really get displayed much, if at all, other than the lazy shortcuts of other people praising her. 

The show is really just confusing all around as well, I'm not sure what they're trying to do here. They're not doing an Iron Man legacy story, they're not tying this to the Black Panther movie, they're doing a rather poor job at introducing Riri and her supporting cast... other MCU shows that have the burden of introducing a new character (Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, even She-Hulk) tend to do a decent to good job at introducing who their core character is in the first episode. This one... doesn't. Not really. And that's probably the biggest failing of one of the weakest shows to come out of the MCU. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Riri Williams and her little sojourn in Wakanda happened during Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. 
• In the opening sequence, Riri name-drops Hank Pym and Tony Stark. Thor is also mentioned by Natalie. 
• Riri uses a copy of Scott Lang/Ant-Man's book, 'Look Out For The Little Guy', seen in Quantumania, to smuggle USBs and money in the opening sequence. 
• Wilkes, the male MIT faculty member, previously appeared in Civil War trying to get grant money from Tony Stark. 
• One of the random people in the streets is yelling about Thanos. 
• The Hood (Parker Robbins) is a supervillain that originated as a Daredevil enemy, but would menace various superheroes based in New York. Originally a petty criminal, the Hood managed to chance upon a demon summoned to the real world, killed him, and robbed him of his magical hood and boots, allowing him to gain an edge over other criminals in the New York underworld. 
• The robber gang in the comics, most of whom don't have much in common with their live-action counterparts. Clown, Slug and one of the Blood Brothers are gender-flipped. 
• Rampage (Stuart Clarke) is a minor supervillain who created an exo-skeleton suit, and upon reforming eventually became an ally of the Punisher. 
• Clown (Eliot Franklin) is a member of the supervillain team called the Circus of Crime, normally associated with Hawkeye and the Avengers. Not to be confused with a different Hawkeye villain called Clown (Kazi Kazimierczak), who had appeared in the Hawkeye show.
• Slug (Ulysses Lugman) is a mutant whose ability allowed him to have immense weight more than a human body should physically handle. He works as a drug boss, and has faced various superheroes like Captain America and Spider-Man. 
• The Blood Brothers are a pair of ape-like alien twins in the comics working for Thanos that menaced the Avengers. This incarnation turns them to a brother-sister duo, renaming them as the Blood Siblings. 
• John King was the Hood's cousin and loyal lieutenant in the comics, having discovered the demon that Parker would kill to gain the Hood. 
• In the comics, Riri had a friend called Natalie who passed away thanks to some drive-by shooting. Natalie would serve as the inspiration of Riri's suit AI, N.A.T.A.L.I.E.