The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is under new management. As 2025's Phase 5 slate draws to a close, Marvel has relinquished control of their signature franchises to new blood, including a fresh, hotshot Captain America and the assemblage of a *New, foolhardy team of Avengers. However, wherein Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Yelena Belova's (Florence Pugh) Thunderbolts* (2025) are gifted the benefit of government, military and corporate advocacy, the teenage lead of Ironheart (2025), Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), is introduced as being backed by only herself and the metallic, Downey-Juniored pictograph of the shared universes inception.
Following the interspecies conflict inaugurated by her errant super-genius foibles that took place in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) – Riri's return to Chicago in Ironheart re-establishes the heroine as a protagonist with a capacity to break bad. Head writer Chinaka Hodge carefully levy's the freedom of the miniseries runtime as a vessel to softly explore this interiority as Riri, still grieving the death of her best friend Natalie (Lyric Ross) and stepdad Gary (LaRoyce Hawkins), joins a Robin-Hood type street gang in order to make enough money to continue development on her suit of armour.
It is through this gang, and the subsequent mistakes Riri makes, that Ironheart's most pertinent themes of grief, community and the lack of funding towards black innovators are underscored. The gang's leader, Parker “The Hood” Robbins (Anthony Ramos), shares the opposite side of this coin as his deals-with-the-devil (or inability to let go of his best thrift) illustrates a mirror-image of Riri if she chose to be defined by her shortcomings. Hodge considers this parallel with a careful affection for both characters, which, under Thorne and Ramos' fierce command, enables this pairing to be the series backbone. Meanwhile, directors Sam Bailey and Angela Barnes architect the surrounding Chicago brimming with character, colour and sanctuary that characterise this dissonance, revealing a corner of the Universe that has previously been second priority to spectacle.
That isn't to say, however, that Ironheart is without a gulf of thrills. Each of its six episodes are built around individual set-pieces. The first three – a series of heists – are shot with a punchy, back-and-forth stamina that may leave audiences insatiable for more. Despite being a focal point of Ironheart's advertising campaign, it is only towards the series' denouement that the series begins to communicate the conflict as being between ‘magic' and ‘tech', as opposed to the steal-from-the-rich-give-to-the-poor moral riff-raff each punch, kick and blast is actually motivated by. Nonetheless, this ideology hews closer towards being a whisper of what a second season, although unlikely to be released under Disney's current pedagogy, might be about.
“I want to create something iconic,” Riri expresses, as Thorne effortlessly balances feelings of careful confidence and quiet fear that she may not be able to do so. Iconism, Ironheart details, is more than the desire to be greater than; it must be earned through mistakes, of which Riri makes many. This includes a late series gear shift that franchise obsessives will drool at despite its friction with the remainder of the series storytelling prose. With the series receiving a batched release schedule, this sort of totemic reception feels unlikely, prompting a reminder of the diminishing efforts Marvel has put into marketing their Black stories. One can hope they reinstall, reboot and rebuild their capacity to consider these stories as iconic.
Ironheart is now available to stream on Disney+
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