She’s not really living up to Tony Stark’s standards.
The new MCU Disney+ series “Ironheart” explores the young whizkid Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), who was introduced in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” This show explores her backgrounds regarding her family and her dreams of developing her own iron suit that rivals one of the late Tony Stark’s suits of armor. But unfortunately, this series doesn’t give her the kind of style and excitement that Robert Downey, Jr. specialized in 2008 and years later. In fact, it ends up becoming boring and derivative of what “Iron Man” served.
The show begins with Riri being expelled from M.I.T. during her attempts to build her iron suit. She’s ridiculed by her former teachers, her family, and practically the people around her. She’s the kind of person who would hustle just to fund her suit experiment. At least her dead best friend’s brother Xavier (Matthew Elam) doesn’t laugh at her, although he does think she could work on herself a lot better, regarding her personality.
She’s given an escape room test by Parker Robbins A.K.A. The Hood (Anthony Ramos), a criminal who possess dark magic with a hood. He agrees to give her the money and tools for her suit, if she joins his team for a major job. His team consists of the drag queen hacker Slug (Shea Coulee). the back alley fighting siblings Ros (Shakira Barrera) and Jerry Blood (Zoe Terakes), the pyrotechnics specialist Clown (Sonia Denis), the getaway driver “H.R”. John (Manny Montana), and the ex-tech specialist Stuart Clarke (Eric Andre). “Ex,” because he got fired after a bad job, and Riri is his replacement.
This series marks Ramos’ first time portraying a villain, and he does a great job in developing his personality and emotions inside a character who is so poisoned by society that he would turn to dark magic.
Then, there’s an A.I. entity named N.A.T.A.L.I.E. (Neuro Autonomous Technical Assistant and Laboratory Intelligence Entity), who is a reflection of Riri’s dead best friend named Natalie (Lyric Ross). That’s the dead best friend I was talking about. She’s the kind of A.I. that Riri thinks she doesn’t need or want right now. The kind whom she would tether to her laptop, unless N.A.T.A.L.I.E. can text, but soon the girl comes around and enlists her help.
Ross, whose credits also include the series “This is Us” and the stop motion animate feature “Wendell & Wild,” has the kind of energy that Natalie Morales had in “My Dead Friend Zoe.” And she also has a good side to herself, but she has to be part of the same formula in which the serious character is annoyed by the comic relief. Bob Hoskins and Roger Rabbit have specialized it before.
And there’s the shady and weak bionics guy Joe McGillicuddy (Alden Ehrenrich), who has a lot of illegal gear in his bunker. She needs his stuff for her iron suit for The Hood’s project. And the internet also reveals that he changed his name, because he is the son of Obadiah Stane, the villain in the first “Iron Man” movie, whom most people were told by S.H.I.E.L.D. that he died in a plane crash. This is his son whose real name is Ezekiah.
“Ironheart” wants to continue where Iron Man left off, and I did enjoy Ramos and Ross in their respective scenes, but the show doesn’t distinguish itself. The main heroine Riri has the same issues regarding loss and obsession with her work, and the scenes with her mother (Anji White) are basically repetitive as her old lady tries to find the source of her problems while being introduced to her new A.I. friend. And it all leads to a rather boring and familiar conclusion regarding science and magic.
Maybe Riri’s story will be better explained in Season 2 or at least in another MCU movie, but I didn’t really care about Season 1. Thorne does what she can, and I liked “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (and Ryan Coogler is an executive producer on this show), but her character didn’t really work for me here.
First 3 Episodes Now on Disney+
Last 3 Episodes Premieres on July 2nd