Ironheart Eps. 4-6 Review
It seems that if Disney had taken the time to release it on a weekly schedule, then Ironheart might be more popular. This follow-up to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has a lot going for it, yet its short lifespan hampers it. And now that it is over, it feels like the story of Riri Williams will end up being forgotten rather quickly. It should not be forgotten, though. Riri has been set up to be the one to take the place of the late Tony Stark, to the point where her story has its own Stane. More importantly, though, the ending to her story introduces a character that many Marvel fans have been dying to see in the MCU. They’re a real…devil.
Rock, Meet Bottom
In the fallout of the failed Heirlum heist, Riri Williams spends the next two episodes in one place: rock bottom. She burns nearly all of her bridges with everyone. Parker wants her dead for her role in getting John killed. Zeke turns on her after he gets arrested as the suspect behind the heist. And to add insult to injury, people are saying his late dad would be disappointed in him, when fans know what Obadiah was really like. To top it off, she nearly alienates herself from her mom, NATALIE, and Xavier. The latter of which learns that Riri inadvertently made an AI of his late sister.
I didn’t have time to pay attention to any debate about NATALIE in Ironheart, but I knew that the idea of creating an AI on someone who is deceased was going to be controversial. The MCU has had AI like JARVIS before, but JARVIS was never implied to have the memories of his template like NATALIE might have. In addition, the original Jarvis likely had no objections to having an AI based on him. In contrast, when Xavier learns of NATALIE’s existence, he sees her as a mockery of his sister’s memory. The worst part, though, is that Riri can’t even defend her, making NAT abandon her when she needs her the most as Parker’s gang, now including an angry Zeke outfitted with bionics, tries to kill her. The only reason she survives is that Zeke doesn’t want to wholly stoop to his father’s level.
The experiences of episodes four and five really lay bare just how emotionally fragile Riri really is. When she’s finally forced to tell her mom everything, she’s forced to confront the real reason why she made the Ironheart suit. She hates herself for being unable to save her stepdad and best friend, so she created the armor so she would never go through that again. But like Tony Stark after the events of Avengers, Riri’s obsession with the suit began to consume her and alienate her from her loved ones. It isn’t until she’s forced into this situation that she is able to start to come to terms with her trauma, and start to make amends with her family.
RIP, NAT AI
In any event, Riri needs a new suit, and she needs something that can handle the magic of the Hood. As it turns out, her friend Zelma and her Mom are witches, with her mom being a dropout of Kamar-Taj. The fact that the MCU has gotten to the point where people readily accept the existence of magic shows just how used they’ve become to this new reality they live in. Moreover, Riri’s team manages to convert a car her stepdad worked on into her new suit, while Zelma uses magic to power it. Sadly, this act demands an equivalent exchange, and in this case, that results in the deletion of NATALIE.
This was a pretty heavy moment to watch. Just as Riri was starting to accept NATALIE as more than just a replacement of Natalie, she loses her. What’s worse is that you can audibly hear NATALIE becoming terrified as she’s being deleted, and unlike other Marvel shows, she doesn’t come back before the series ends. NATALIE might be gone for good, and that feels like a huge waste.
Meanwhile, Parker Robbins begins to grow more and more unhinged thanks to the corruption of the Hood. It gets to the point where his gang realizes that Riri might have had a point about him, prompting him to fire them all. Without his support network or John, the Hood slides further into his darker side as his motivations are fully revealed. He came from money, only to be disowned and abandoned by his father for getting in trouble with the law in a bid for attention. Everything he’s done has been an attempt to get what he perceives the world owes him. Yet as his father points out, it will never be enough. Even with his dad’s mansion, food, and Zeke forced to be his bodyguard, he wants more.
Life isn’t always going to be fair, whether we like it or not. There are going to be those who have more power and wealth than we do, and some of them may not truly deserve it. However, Parker is the show’s argument that gaining that power won’t make people’s lives better. All it can do is make people want more, until that greed brings about their ruin. And as the person who gave Parker his Hood points out, it’s pathetic to see how unsatisfied he is.
IT WAS HIM…
Things eventually come to a head as Riri confronts Parker in their final battle. Inevitably, Riri is able to come out on top and take away the Hood. However, this leads to her coming face-to-face with the person who gave Parker his power. That leads us to the biggest bombshell of the entire series, with potentially long-lasting effects on the MCU.
At one point, Zelma speculated that the origin of the Hood’s Hood was Dormammu and the Dark Dimension. However, in Dr. Strange, Strange made Dormammu agree to leave Earth alone and never threaten it again. To the best of our knowledge, Dormmamu has kept his word. As the finale reveals, it wasn’t Dormammu who was pulling Hood’s strings. It was someone worse: Mephisto.
For those who don’t know, Mephisto is a very, very powerful demon. He rules over a pocket dimension connected to many other dimensions that are, for all intents and purposes, Hell. He’s responsible for the misery of many prominent characters in Marvel, but many know him as the one who retconned Spider-Man and MJ’s marriage out of existence. And like the Devil, he enjoys making deals with mortals that will inevitably screw them over by claiming their souls. He was the one who gave Parker his Hood, and when he proved unable to hold onto it, he approaches Riri with his own deal: he can bring back Natalie.
…MEPHISTO
Anyone who knows about Mephisto knows how he’s not to be trusted by anyone, and in the MCU, he is masterfully brought to life by Sacha Baron Cohen. The actor gives Mephisto all the charm and supernatural charisma that the Devil of Marvel deserves. And while he’s only onscreen for a handful of minutes, the man behind King Julien and Borat proves he has what it takes to make Mephisto as menacing as the fans have wanted. And, as the final scenes of the series reveal, not even Riri is immune to his power, as she takes the deal. She only wanted NATALIE back, but, in typical Devil fashion, Mephisto twists her desire by bringing back the actual Natalie.
It’s frustrating that the series ends before we can see Riri realize that she made a mistake. We can see Natalie now has the same dark veins on her that the Hood has gained, showing that Riri has potentially damned herself and her friend to a fate worse than death. And with Marvel now moving headlong towards Secret Wars, we may not get to see the consequences of what Riri has done for some time. It’s a bittersweet ending to Ironheart, especially since Parker is still out there, looking for new sources of power. Not to mention how Zeke continues to grapple with the legacy of his father.
Overall, it feels as though Ironheart was set up to fail by the powers that be. It came out two years after Wakanda Forever and any hype around it died down. It was released when Marvel was focusing more on promoting Fantastic Four: First Steps. And it was released in such a condensed amount of time that any hype around it will quickly be forgotten. Which is a shame, because despite its flaws and being a bit rushed, it’s a decent show. Hopefully, the success of Fantastic Four: First Steps will spark renewed interest in the MCU. Until then, here’s hoping we remember Ironheart.
