Marvel’s ‘Ironheart’ Is Not Good So Far

In what perhaps is Marvel’s lowest-profile release to date in the MCU, the first three episodes of Ironheart were released last night, with the final three arriving next week. Now, after watching half the series, all I can give it is a shrug, at best.

Ironheart follows Riri Williams, a young genius trying to follow in Tony Stark’s suit-crafting footsteps, first introduced to us in a somewhat out-of-place supporting role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Now, we’ve practically memory-wiped that appearance to start over, and these first three episodes have been strange, to say the least, and not terribly interesting.

I will say upfront I am very impressed with star Dominique Thorne, and while I didn’t think she made a huge impression in Wakanda Forever, is much more impactful here and a charismatic lead. She also has great chemistry with co-star Alden Ehrenreich, who I am surprised to see here in a small supporting role in a minor MCU show after a hugely high-profile turn in Oppenheimer and leading an entire Star Wars movie. But he does a good job.

The storyline here is all over the place. Riri’s entire motivation appears to be simply getting money for a suit for the purpose of…building a suit. At the beginning she briefly mumbles something about using it to help first responders, seemingly because her stepfather and best friend were gunned down (the flashbacks appear to all imply they were dead at the scene anyway). But from there the goal just seems to be…she really wants a cool suit.

Now, she’s doing criminal jobs for cash to upgrade her suit (because for some reason a genius cannot make money any other way), and it’s a suit which is infinitely worse than the one we already saw her make in Wakanda Forever, as it does almost nothing but fly and scan things. Three episodes in and there are barely any action scenes in this show. There are two fights, both involving nameless security guards and none involving Riri and her suit. How are you making an Iron Man-styled show with no suit fights and a suit that doesn’t even have weapons in the first place?

The criminal team Riri joins is hilarious in the context of the series. There’s a hacker, an explosives girl, a guy who uses knives, two siblings who just…do karate and then a girl in a massive mech suit. It’s very silly.

The foil in the series is gang leader The Hood, who is dressed like a stage magician in one of the worst MCU fits I’ve ever seen. The Hood has apparently made some sort of deal with the devil to have the cloak that allows him to be invisible and manipulate bullets, albeit I did find it hilarious the “bullet powers” shown with wobbling rounds could have just been…normal bullet shots to the same effect.

With a side plot that has Riri accidentally making her dead best friend an AI, there’s supposed to be some sort of message about grief in here, I think, but Riri’s motivations of “get money, make suit” are not compelling, and it’s all steps backward from her first appearance.

Critics seem to say that the next three episodes improve on these first three, but I’m not impressed despite a solid performance from Thorne and a decently cool non-nanotech suit. But that’s it, and I’m not sure what can happen to make this all that compelling from here.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.