There’s a scene in Ironheart where someone asks Riri Williams why she built a suit of armor, and her answer is, “Because I could.” That line haunts the whole show, not as character development, but as commentary on how the series got made. Ironheart exists not because someone had a vision, but because someone at Marvel said, “We could.” And then they did — without the script, performances, or storytelling to justify it.
This is a show that feels like an algorithm tried to write natural dialogue for a group of contemporary Chicagoans using Twitter from 2015 as its only source. The pop culture references are off. The tone is inconsistent. The dialogue sounds like a pitch deck pretending to be a person. And the result is a show that’s trying so hard to speak to a young, diverse audience that it forgets how people — actual people — talk. It’s The Marvels’ “Black Girl Magic!” line stretched across three hours. It’s well-meaning. But it’s also pandering.
The Letdown of Riri Williams
This wouldn’t sting as much if we hadn’t already seen how Riri Williams could work on screen. Her debut in Wakanda Forever was one of the few breezy, charismatic notes in an otherwise heavy film. Dominique Thorne brought wit, warmth, and a hint of mischief to the role — she felt like a real teen genius with a worldview. That appearance made you root for her.
But in Ironheart, she’s flattened. Stripped of the humor and charm that made her a standout, Riri spends most of the first three episodes reacting to trauma, recounting tragedy, or being shuffled around by the plot. The show tells us she’s brilliant — expelled from MIT, building advanced tech in her garage — but never lets us experience her brilliance. There’s no clever workaround, no scrappy invention. Just heavy-handed exposition and emotional flatness. She’s defined by setbacks rather than agency.
It’s not impossible to build a compelling show around grief (see WandaVision), but it takes intentionality. Here, it just feels like weight without substance.
And to be fair, Marvel has always struggled with tone, even with its original headliners. The first two Thor movies couldn’t decide if the character was Shakespearean or slapstick. Captain America didn’t fully click until The Winter Soldier leaned into political thriller mode. These are characters with decades of comic history and multiple chances to find their cinematic footing.
Riri, by comparison, is brand new. Introduced in 2016 by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Deodato, she’s a teenage genius from Chicago who reverse-engineers her own Iron Man-style suit at MIT. In the comics, she’s bold, awkward, driven, and for a time, mentored by an AI version of Tony Stark himself. That dynamic helped define her: legacy plus innovation, grief plus guidance. There’s richness to her story. But the show doesn’t just miss that, it never even looks for it.
The Crew That Couldn’t
The show wastes too much time trying to be Ocean’s Eleven meets The Sopranos, landing somewhere closer to Spy Kids. Shea Couleé, of Drag Race fame, has star quality but not the acting chops to overcome clunky dialogue. Anthony Ramos is doing his theater kid schtick in a Spirit Halloween cloak, but the vibe is more “street magician with a traumatic backstory” than “threatening villain.” Tattoos do not make a compelling character.
And then there’s Alden Ehrenreich, whose performance feels airlifted in from another show entirely. One minute he’s sobbing in the car, the next he’s a terrorist gardener. He wavers between grief-stricken man-child and aloof tech bro, but never becomes either. He’s not funny, not tragic, not grounded. He's just… odd. And not in a charming, Solo kind of way.
It doesn’t help that The Hood — Parker Robbins — actually could be an interesting villain. In the comics, he’s a low-level criminal who stumbles onto a pair of magical boots and a cloak, giving him demonic powers and a false sense of grandeur. He’s messy, arrogant, and in way over his head, a perfect foil for a logic-first hero like Riri. But here, he’s just a vague menace in streetwear. The magic is visually bland. His motives are a shrug. If you’re adapting a character like The Hood, you need to go fully weird or totally grounded. This does neither.
The heists they're pulling are convoluted and under-explained — I genuinely lost track of what was being stolen, from whom, and why. Every object has an acronym. Every plan is a blur. It’s hard to care when the stakes are incomprehensible. “I know y’all killed Rampage.” Sorry, who? I think Eric Andre was here before…
There’s a version of this show where Riri meets the heist crew in a way that makes more sense. Imagine if, instead of being awkwardly dragged into the criminal underworld, she had been chasing down the same tech CEOs on the to-rob list, trying to secure funding, internships, anything to get her projects off the ground, and crossed paths with the crew in the process. Maybe she disrupts one of their jobs, only to realize their targets are the same people who turned her away. That’s a story. That’s a choice. Instead, the show gives us a shrug of a setup and expects the chemistry to fill in the gaps.
The AI and the Show That Could've Been
Buried under the clutter is one genuinely compelling idea: the AI modeled on Riri’s late friend Natalie. It hints at a much deeper story about memory, loss, and digital ghosts. When Riri’s mom asks her to build an AI of her dead stepfather, and she refuses? That’s a real moment. That’s the kind of narrative core you can build a show around.
The idea isn’t pulled directly from the comics, but it riffs on a core dynamic: in early Ironheart arcs, Riri is mentored by an AI version of Tony Stark, who coaches her through early battles and personal doubts. In the show, making that voice Natalie — a best friend killed in a senseless shooting — adds emotional complexity (and we don't need Tony here). Lyric Ross lights up the screen as Natalie, but their best scenes are brief interludes, not anchors. You glimpse a better show, then it vanishes under another subplot.
The Soundtrack of Someone Else's Show
Like many Marvel entries lately, Ironheart has a killer soundtrack — on paper. Nina Simone, Gil Scott-Heron, Alanis Morissette. Big swings. Big licensing budget. But the needle drops feel disconnected from the material. “You Oughta Know” scoring a scene of Ehrenreich doing flower-in-mouth The 'Burbs cosplay feels less like a statement and more like someone accidentally hit shuffle on a “Strong Female Vibes” playlist. A song can only hit if the scene earns it. These don’t.
Although they're still not as bad as the unforgivable "I'm Just a Girl" drop in Captain Marvel.
The Diversity Trap
After Endgame, Kevin Feige made a clear and admirable push to feature more nonwhite heroes. But Ironheart is proof that representation alone isn’t enough. When diversity becomes the headline but not the heart, you get flat characters whose identities do all the heavy lifting. The shame of it is, when these shows underperform, the racists who never gave them a chance in the first place feel vindicated.
Let’s be clear: the review-bombing of Ironheart is despicable. Just like The Acolyte, Ms. Marvel, and anything else that dares center women of color, it’s being attacked online by people who never intended to engage in good faith. That’s racism, not criticism.
But the show also doesn’t make it easy to defend. Not because it centers Black women. Because it doesn’t do right by them. It’s not a failure of casting. It’s a failure of execution.
Final Verdict
Ironheart feels like bad YA: a promising premise buried in confused tone, thin writing, and studio mandates. Dominique Thorne has real screen presence — she can act, she can emote, she can do this — but the show never gives her the space to shine. Her co-stars, especially Lyric Ross as Natalie, are having more fun. And when your hologram best friend is more compelling than your lead, something’s broken in the code.
Three episodes in, I still can’t tell you what this show is about. Not thematically. Not narratively. And that might be the biggest problem of all.
But Riri Williams isn’t the problem. Not even close. She deserves better — and honestly, so do we. The future of the MCU may still have space for new kinds of heroes, told in new kinds of ways. But it’s going to take more than IP and good intentions.
This marks the end of a disappointing Phase 5 — a stretch where too many shows felt like filler or obligation. But Phase 6 looks tighter, more focused, and less reactive. Marvel can course correct. They’ve done it before. And maybe next time we see Riri — whether it’s Young Avengers, Guardians 3.5, or something entirely new — she’ll get the story she deserves. One that inspires, surprises, and finally lets her shine.
Here’s hoping they get it right.