Ironheart
Created by Chinaka Hodge
Chicago's answer to Tony Stark
Riri Williams, Ironheart, appeared in the Marvel movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, but only briefly, I believe. We get to learn a lot more about Riri in her own Marvel miniseries: Ironheart—six episodes of 45 min each.
When the series starts, Riri is a student at MIT1. She is there to follow in Tony Stark’s footsteps. She is working on an armored suit like Ironman’s.
She soon gets expelled for academic misconduct. And she is guilty—that is made completely clear. In fact, if you were asked, “What is Riri Williams’s most prominent personality trait?” your first answer would not be “strong moral compass.” In this regard, too, she is following in Tony’s footsteps. Tony was always a mess, and Riri is a mess. She is not exactly the same kind of mess as Tony was. But the element of “I am a genius, and therefore I know best,” is prominent in both personalities.
Aside from the cool tech battles, this is really, in my opinion, what the series is about. Will Riri Do The Right Thing? Episode six ends on an ambiguous note. I think we still don’t know if Riri is going to choose the dark or the light (spoiler2).
Riri Willams (Dominique Thorne) is joined by a bunch of other good characters, evil mentor Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos) and his heist team, who are a lot of fun, best friend Natalie (Lyric Ross), and evil genius Ezekiel Stane (Alden Ehrenreich). Lot of talent there, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching them do their stuff.
So, this was fun. I don’t know when we will see Riri again, but I’m looking forward to seeing how she chose.
It’s interesting that Marvel doesn’t invent a fictional university for their genius students to study at. Tony Stark studied there, and Peter Parker applied to go there, and was rejected. In fact, you will see the MIT logo in the film,
They must have gotten permission from MIT to use that trademark. One assumes that MIT is happy to be portrayed as the place where geniuses go. They might be less happy at the implication that MIT is too conventional for breakout students to thrive. But I suspect that MIT is glad to have someone tell Riri, “We have a zero-tolerance policy towards plagiarism.”
She appears to have concluded a verbal contract with Mephisto. However, I noticed that the scene ended without the handshake to close the deal. From this I take it that the writers intended to leave a little doubt.