With every episode of Ironheart we get, the show gets every closer and closer to becoming something genuinely special, however, it still feels like the show is either afraid or unable to fully gun its engine to propell itself into becoming truly special. Maybe it’s the show still trying to shake off some rumoured torturous production woes or maybe it’s trying to save it’s budget in order to stretch to a big finish (hefty CGI armour isn’t cheap to render, you know), but there’s still a feeling that the adventures of Riri Williams is holding back some sizable surprises.
Still, the show is certainly delivering on the kind of tech/espionage plots that befit someone in the Marvel universe who flies around the city in powerful metal suit and it’s also done a decent job or transferring the original Iron Man style of a high tech, sci-fi/thriller to the world of down town Chigago. And yet, despite a plot that features post traumatic stress, supernatural crime bosses, illegal tech deals and slick heists, it still feels like Ironheart is missing a certain something in order to get some grit inbetween her gears.
While Riri Williams and the rest of the Hood’s gang celebrate after an overwhelmingly successful heist by spraying their money in the air, the vibe in the room suddenly drops below freezing when Clown suddenly thinks it’s a good idea to put on Parker Robbins’ patented item of clothing and immediately falls prey to the overprotective anger of Parker’s cousin, John. While Robbins steps in and calms the whole situation down, Riri’s curiosity about that strange garment only increases and, determined to disprove any claims of magic, cooks up a plan with AI N.A.T.A.L.I.E to somehow devise a way to discover how the Hood can do what he does. However, adding to her already busy in-tray is the fact that Parker has already got their next job all lined up which will see them infiltrate biotech firm Heirlum, whose innovations into farming are, like TNNL, harming local communities and small businesses.
Of course, all this would be stressful enough if Riri hadn’t stumbled upon the fact that Stuart (aka. Rampage), the tech guy she was drafted in to replace, has turned up dead due to foul play, but this, if anything, only strengthens her resolve to find out what Robbins truly is. In an effort to upgrade her tech for the enhanced security she and the gang are going to have to circumvent, she pays another trip to Joe McGillicuddy for more upgrades, but during another heart to heart with the guy, she discovers that he’s actually Ezekial Stane, the son of the former head of Stark Enterprises who died after hopping into a giant metal suit and going toe to toe with Iron Man.
With this weighing on her mind, she heads out for her next heist, but after deviating from the plan in order to slice off a piece of the Hood’s cape, she inadvertently sets off a chain of events that leads to a spot of disaster and a sprinkling of death. Is the reluctant criminal now technically a murderer?
Still frustratingly a stone’s throw away from being a great MCU entry, Ironheart’s third episode edges ever closer thanks to a sizable phase one connection that we’d all guessed, but was still pretty cool all the same. If anyone out there actually thought they were going to bring Alden Ehrenreich in to play some rando called Joe McGillicuddy, then you must be fairly new to the world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and his connection to Jeff Bridges’ bearded Obadiah Stane proves to be the latest of many recent callbacks to the first stage of Marvel’s climb to total brand saturation. First it was all the references to The Incredible Hulk that showed up in the likes of She-Hulk, Shang-Chi and Captain America: Brave New World and now the son of the Iron Monger has turned up – but rather than being a cackling stealth villain, he’s a timid man trying to make amends while still inexorably drawn to the same business of weapons sales that his father was. In fact, old Obie even technically gets a cameo insofar that his son keeps his ashes in a baggie in his kitchen – but callbacks aside, the growing relationship between Riri and Zeke still continues to be one of the more entertaining relationships of the show and it’s interesting that the son of Marvel’s first arch villain is the one having to explain ethics to the young woman hoping to follow in Tony Stark’s repulsor boots. In fact, I find myself wondering what it would take to get Stane and the other surviving MCU arms dealers/tech suppliers (Justin Hammer and Sonny Birch by my count) in the same room with each other.
Elsewhere, the time spent between Riri and N.A.T.A.L.I.E continues to prove to be that other lynchpin that’s keeping the season ticking and seeing them hang out like friends of old (despite one of them being an AI hologram of a deceased person) helps to humanise all the tech stuff and sci-fi criminal escapades. In fact, the moment when N.A.T.A.L.I.E manages to calm Riri after one of her panic attacks, proves to be a vital moment that Williams finally starts truly believing that her AI is actually sentient that goes hand in hand with the PTSD she experienced an episode ago when watching a security guard point a gun at her triggered a memory of he death in a drive by.
However, as meaty as all this stuff is and as flashy as this episode’s heist is, there’s still a couple of major issues that’s holding Ironheart back and unsurprisingly, it’s that same old problem that Marvel has had with its bad guys. Continuing the mystery surrounding Robbins’ cape means that Ramos can’t really cut loose and the fact that the show is trying to replay the Killmonger card (a murderous villain with a legitimate social gripe) also feels a little hollow. Yes, the Hood’s been targeting huge corporations that are crushing the little guy on the street with their supposedly beneficial inventions, but Parker suddenly turning murderous when things don’t go his way (that includes the murder of Eric André) was hardly a big shock.
I’ve also figured out the issue that’s been bugging me about his gang too and it involves how they all go about their jobs. Hiring a wide range of diverse personalities is obviously beneficial for a number of reasons, but when you look past the extravagant make up and expansive fashions, none of the members actually are anything but standard archetypes. Sonia Dennis’ fire loving pyromaniac is a trope that’s existed as long as there’s been explosions in movies, Zoe Terakes and Shakira Barrera’s Blood Siblings are the usual, stern faced, no nonsense nose breakers you’ve seen a thousand times before and Shea Couleé’s Slug may look fabulous, but in actuality is just you’re basic hacker with much better nails. Maybe if they’d switched the characters around, it would have been way cooler (a drag queen as the gang’s muscle – that would have been a sight to see), and it’s a shame that the diversity isn’t that much more than just surface level.
However, the oddest moment in the show is where a made Riri is confronted by an enraged John as the Heirlum facility goes on high alert and start pumping the place full of suffocating gas, leaving our hero to climb in her suit and leave John to die. We’ll have to see what transpires next episode to see how it plays out, but it actually leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth to have a new face in the MCU do something so overtly callous. Ironheart is one thing, but a heart of stone may be a bit much for the show to come back from…
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