The new miniseries Ironheart comes at the end of an era for the MCU. It is the final project of Phase 5, a phase that was relatively brief (early 2023 to now), filled with stops and starts that led to a real-time change in philosophy for the megafranchise. Some of those changes came from cultural necessity–i.e. the Jonathan Majors of it all. Others came from a self-assessment by Kevin Feige and Marvel’s brass, a shift in strategy to try and help strengthen a brand that many feel has been diluted. Feige admitted himself that a big part of that dilution came from the mixed response to Disney+ shows, many of which came and went without leaving a dent on the overall big picture. 

In that way, Ironheart has already become a relic of the “old” MCU, though it actually operates inversely when compared to many of the Disney+ shows. Instead of a miniseries that introduces a character from scratch, this six episode series takes an already introduced character and tries to deepen her backstory, hoping to add more context to their next appearance in the main storyline. Unfortunately, Ironheart also makes a lot of the same mistakes as the shows that have come before it, frustratingly dragging out a story that simply does not have enough meat on the bones and adding little that feels essential. By the time it gets interesting and shakes the “been-there, done-that” feeling, it’s too late. 

Ironheart begins a currently indeterminate amount of months after Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the 2022 sequel where Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) made her debut as a key supporting character, aiding Shuri and the rest of the Wakandans in the battle against Namor and the Talokan (Ryan Coogler is an EP on the miniseries). Her “internship abroad” has not yielded the kind of career boost or mechanical inspiration that she may have hoped for, and a number of mishaps earns her an expulsion from MIT. Without many options left, she travels home to Chicago, moving back in with mom (an underused but good Anji White) in a neighborhood she’s been trying to run from since the death of her best friend Natalie (Lyric Ross) and stepfather Gary (LaRoyce Hawkins, seen in orange tinted flashbacks). There’s also a potential boyfriend, Natalie’s brother Xavier (Matthew Elam), but his relevance to the overall story is inconsistent at best. 

Think of this as Iron Man 3 without Iron Man or Iron Man 2. Showrunner Chinaka Hodge, who wrote the first and last episode, wants to strip Riri down to the bare bones of her genius, leave her in a compromised position without the resources of the Wakandans or the Ivy League education system and see how she reacts. That sticks for a bit, but eventually Riri is back behind her armor anyways. Her immense talents attract a ragtag group of criminals who act like the modern version of Robin Hood and his merry men (slash women). Their leader literally wears a hood, the charismatic but intimidating Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), who channels some sort of dark magic while leading them on various heists to rob the financially elite of Chicago. It doesn’t take too many outings for Riri to realize that Parker and his crew are bad news, but by the time she realizes this, she’s in quite deep.

Ironheart truly tries to get us to buy into the idea of Riri Williams the “antihero,” someone whose genius has been stunted by her lack of options and resources who is willing to work on the wrong side of the law. But some of the decisions she makes in this series I found very hard to understand given the context of what we know about her past heroism in Wakanda Forever. The Riri we met in that movie was certainly headstrong and stubborn, but she would never be complicit in some of the crimes that Robbins and his crew commit. This show has started and stopped development for years, and I genuinely believe that it would have benefited from coming out before her Black Panther appearance. There would definitely have had to be tweaks to the current version of the six-episode arc, particularly the latter episodes, but I think this would’ve fixed a fundamental flaw of the storytelling. I just didn’t buy her as greedy. 

There were quite a few times when watching the first few episodes of Ironheart where I genuinely asked myself what exactly Riri was getting out of this situation. The MCU is full of teenage prodigies; in fact, it’s actually overflowing with these kinds of characters. Most of those other characters have less on the heroic resume than Riri, and yet they found ways to retain their core goodness. It feels hard to believe that the leadership of whatever version of the Avengers that exist would see Riri get expelled from MIT and just give up on her. From her perspective, the yearning to be “iconic,” a line she utters multiple times, is simply not a good enough excuse for her decision-making. None of this is the fault of Dominique Thorne, who really works to sell the internal angst inside of Riri, and the character’s tragic backstory does hint at a budding darkness. But it’s not nearly enough to wash away the contradictions of having a character who idolizes Tony Stark become complicit in felony crimes. 

There are a lot of ideas in Ironheart that are cooler in concept than they are in execution. In a plot device that is a bit direct and convenient but also narratively intriguing, Riri’s suit A.I. manifests itself in the form of Natalie. The show tries to wring a lot of emotion out of this set-up, but mostly has the same conversation over and over again. Also intriguing is the presence of the mysterious Joe, a Chicago suburbanite who also happens to own a silo filled with tech for advanced biometric development. He’s played by Alden Ehrenreich, an actor who has tremendous talent yet often finds himself on the sidelines of the action (Han Solo notwithstanding). Each new bit of information we learn about Joe got my attention for a beat, but then the show does little to nothing of note with these reveals. 

The show’s action is simply OK. There’s some decent armored suit action that does dazzle a bit when it’s not hampered by the clear restrictions of a television budget. But all these setpieces prove is that there is little reason that Ironheart couldn’t have been a movie, as it would’ve helped provide a chance to build out these action scenes and forced the writers to tighten the pacing a bit. That would’ve helped the story get to the good stuff a little faster, as the best ideas, scenes and surprises come in the last episode and a half of the six episode run. For those who stick with the slog of the first handful of episodes, there is a bit of a reward at the end of the tunnel, particularly as Ramos is given more and more to chew on as Robbins. Not everything is given a satisfying conclusion, though, and this has quite an open-ended finale for a miniseries starring a character whose future is a bit uncertain. 

Like Riri’s suit of armor, there are moments that shine in Ironheart, but it is a show that is constantly tinkering and taking the focus off of its coolest ideas. Among the ideas underexplored: technology versus magic, gentrification in Chicago, gang violence, the burden of legacy, the list goes on and on. That Ironheart chooses to be a boilerplate superhero story is frustrating, particularly because Thorne has a presence that deserves a better platform. Riri is a character that I would like to see again, but I hope that appearance comes in a project with a more high-powered arc reactor core than this series can provide.

Ironheart’s first three episodes are available now on Disney+. The final three episodes will drop next week.