Review: 'Ironheart' is an unwitting victim of Marvel fatigue
It's one thing to have heart, it's another thing to have soul.
A hollowness rings through the six episodes of Disney+'s latest Marvel series "Ironheart" (streaming Tuesdays, 9 ET/ 6 PT, ★★ out of four), though not for lack of trying for depth.
The story of young Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), introduced in her Iron Man-like suit of powered armor in 2022's Marvel feature "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," is full of feeling but starkly lacking in coherence and intrigue. It can't find a plot that works for the character, but for all its narrative meandering and illogical twists, it does have emotion running throughout. Or, as Riri might say, it is distinctly "in its feels," a Gen Z phrase the writers use with excruciating repetition, a tic that so clearly illustrates the series' attempts to be something it's not.
"Ironheart" tries to be a few too many things without realizing at all what it's meant to be. It's a crime drama with multiple heists. It's a revenge fantasy. It's a coming-of-age story. It's a narrative about grief and trauma. Some ambitious and thoughtful TV series can be all of these things at once, but "Ironheart" lacks the gravitas and aptitude for such a feat. There is no satisfactory explanation for why anything happens or why the characters act the way they do. It's a story written for someone else that slots Riri into its protagonist spot.
It's a darn shame because Thorne is a magnetic (pun intended) talent and really gives it her all. But the story built around the character, in which she returns to her Chicago hometown and gets involved with a criminal syndicate to fund her own scientific endeavors, just doesn't make a lot of sense and lacks proper buildup, context and stakes. The action set pieces are flimsily supported by the rest of the series, the characters are all surface-level symbols and the connection to the greater Marvel universe is all too convenient. The writers seemingly wanted to make a more intimate, heist-style crime drama without figuring out why or how Riri would fit into it.
For some reason, even after her Wakandan heroics and perfectly functional super suit in "Panther," Riri finds herself, after that movie, stuck at MIT without enough money to keep working on her suit. So she starts doing other people's work for money, is kicked out of school and returns to her mother's apartment in Chicago, her suit suddenly run down again and her bank account empty.
Her guardian angel swoops in (literally, he's got a magical hooded cape for swooping) in the form of Parker Robbins/The Hood (Anthony Ramos, "In the Heights"), a local gentleman criminal with an elite crew who steals from the rich while feeling morally superior. He recruits Riri, but she still needs to fix up her suit. So she somehow convinces black market tech trader Joe (Alden Ehrenreich, "Solo: A Star Wars Story") to let her raid his stash, seemingly because he's lonely and she's nice. He gives her everything she needs, yet somehow she still follows through on a high-stakes robbery to fund the suit she uses for the crime.
None of it makes sense, no matter how hard the actors try to sell it. Poor Thorne and Ehrenreich are working overtime to make Joe and Riri's relationship seem natural. But you can't help thinking when Riri drives off with him, minutes after they meet, that a woman should never go to a second location with a random guy she just met, let alone an older, sketchy black market dealer. The scripts can't decide if Parker is villainous or righteous (and not in a moral dilemma way, just in a bad writing way), and poor Ramos is left in the middle. And I haven't even mentioned that at some point in all this, Riri – in some kind of fugue state – makes an artificial intelligence clone of her dead best friend.
It's frustrating, even angering, in its harebrained randomness. And it might be just too hard to get over. In a world as fantastical and mythological as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the internal logic has to be tight, or nothing really matters. Perhaps as the umpteenth show after the umpteenth movie, "Ironheart" just doesn't bother trying to follow any kind of rules. It's been 17 years since we kicked all of this off with "Iron Man," so perhaps we have to accept that we can't keep it all straight anymore?
"Ironheart" tries to be a story worthy of Riri's status as a "Panther" breakout, but not hard enough. Marvel's about to go through a hoped-for revitalization with ambitious big-screen projects like this summer's "Fantastic Four: The First Steps." But if the studio wants to produce must-see entertainment again, it needs to stop throwing away characters in shows like "Ironheart."
We can certainly tell when it's not trying very hard.