Well, it was something of a precarious climb up the mountain, but the steady rise of Ironheart from it’s OK start to its finale has been somewhat facinating. With the entirety of the show now out for everyone to see, it’s apparent that everyone involved really has trying to turn confident upstart Riri Williams into the new Tony Stark, but not quite in the way you’d think. Yeah, she’s created an Iron Man suit from scraps (not exactly from a cave – but close) and utilised a game changing power source that’ll eventually open up a whole can of worms; but the ways that Williams most resembles her inspiration us that due to her confidence that she can contain and control all the elements she’s set in motion, it leads her to do foolhardy and selfish acts in the name of the greater good. Stark did renounce his more irresponsible past, but that didn’t stop him from creating Ultron – so what accidental disaster will Riri manage to inflict on herself and the world? Well, they do say the devil’s in the details, don’t they..
Riri may have managed to power up her new suit with an influx of magic mojo, but the warning that it’ll come with a hefty cost has occured almost instantly when the supernatural upgrade inadvertently deletes the N.A.T.A L.I.E AI completely. Horrified that she’s technically lost her friend twice now (the first was via a drive by), Riri now becomes adamant that she somehow get her back and when more conventional, technological means fail, she reasons that she just needs more magic to figure things out. Of course, the only other example of such a thing that she knows of is currently draped around the shoulders of her mortal enemy, Parker Robbins, so she makes a beeline to her nemesis to take the man’s demonic hood for herself.
However, despite the fact that Robbins has seemingly achieved his goals of becoming filthy rich and sticking it to his estranged father thanks to some, success isn’t hitting quite how it should and some handy flashbacks reveal why. It seems that the night Parker first tried to rob his father’s house, he only managed to escape because a demonic entity that calls itself Mephisto brokered a faustian deal with him for wealth and power and bequeathed him that funky hood and cape. However, it seems that Parker’s dissatisfaction at the emptiness at finally having all that he thought he wanted isn’t something that Mephisto is particularly interested in, but when Riri shows up looking for a fight it sets thing in motion that may not be so easily undone.
You see, even if she successfully manages to face both the Hood and his unwilling flunky, Ezekiel Stane, do you really think that Mephisto is going to let a catch like Riri Williams slip by without offering her some sort of deal? Ironheart may be quite the gung-ho personality at times, but is she really that gung-ho that she’d make a deal with the devil?
So the main headline here is that after being teased and theorised about since as far back as Wandavision in 2021, we finally get to see the MCU bow of the devilish malevolence that is Mephisto and it’s quite surprising that the cinematic universe has come so far and is only just introducing a threat this major. Of course, the Marvel universe’s stand in for Satan has appeared before – namely as the primary antagonist of both Nic Cage Ghost Rider movies – but it’s still pretty sweet that he’s finally here as he plays a sizable, if subtle, role in Ironheart’s finale. To be fair, Marvel TV has something of a spotty track record with endings and having a guy that looks suspiciously like Robert De Niro in Angel Heart suddenly turn up and hijack most of the episode may sound like a recipe for disaster, but to its credit, The Past Is The Past knows when to shut off the noise and just dig into what is actually important.
As a result, the finale skims nimbly through a lot of the supporting cast as it solely zeroes in on the main players of the show and what they actually wants to achieve. The Hood’s ex-gang, Riri’s family, Zelma Stanton, even Ezekiel Stane to some effect is all cleared to make way for the deals and conflict that exists between Riri, Parker Robbins and Mephisto, and the result is Ironheart’s best episode of all. If you’d told me that Borat was lined up to play Marvel’s crimson-skinned Prince of evil that’s had comics beef with everyone from Loki, to Spider-Man, to the Silver Surfer, to Daredevil, I’d have tried to get a faustian pact going myself to try and find an alternative, but as it stands, Sacha Baron Cohen does a magnificent job, putting across the implied menace of a creature that gets it’s kicks from getting people to willingly sell their souls with a distinct lack of fire and brimstone. In fact, aside from the odd growled word and a rather alarming, comic accurate reflection in a tea spoon, Cohen manages to do it all with a slightly predatory grin or a random change of accent to get the point across. While the future of the MCU is looking fairly convoluted what with the increasingly crowed Doomsday/Secret Wars looming on the horizon, I do really hope the series will do something more with the fiendish character and soon as Cohen’s Mephisto isn’t really a character that should be slept on like the MCU has with Charlize Theron’s Clea and Brett Goldstein’s Hercules.
Anyway, enough of the fortunes of demonic tempters – let’s get back to the main players and thanks to some well placed flashbacks detailing the origin of the Hood, Anthony Robbins finally gets an episode that does him and his character justice. For a character who eventually became an Avengers level threat in the comics, the Hood’s been somewhat small potatoes here, but after seeing him interact with his dastardly benefactor, and resorting to bestial like behavior during his fight with Riri, this final episode does the guy right as his superiority complex devolves to that of a panicked junkie after he loses his trademark fashion object.
A post credit sting promises more of our Parker Robbins, but its Riri who has the most intriguing ending as, after everything she’s been through, she sits down an does a deal with Mephisto in order to bring Natalie back to life. While this is an act that essentially undoes her entire arc in one fell swoop, its actually quite cool that the powers that be has her totally follow in the footsteps of Tony Stark by learning a valuable lesson and then torpedoing it by letting her determination and ego write checks that her soul can’t cash. Some will undoubtedly dismiss this as either lazy writing or a distracting twist, but since when does Marvel deliver a character’s entire arc in a single sitting. Just look at the expansive stories given to Wanda Maximoff or even Tony Stark himself as every subsequent appearance added more to their character and then think about where Riri could conceivably show up next now that she has ties to both the tech-based and the supernatural aspects of the universe. Again, some may gripe that she’s taken some of the traits that typify Doctor Doom, but as there’s still so much more to unveil, we can only speculate.
Opting to go with a more compromised ending that usual Disney+ fare, Ironheart manages to cleverly sacrifice a typical hero’s journey for something a little bit more insidious as Riri doesn’t suddenly throw off all her flaws just because the end credits are about to roll. However, while I will admit that I’m far more intrigued to see where Mephisto pops up next over Riri or Robbins, the fact that the show managed to overcome a rather slow first half is nothing short of pure magic…
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