Ironheart Series: Marvel’s Missed Opportunity in a Suit of Potential

After three years gathering dust in Marvel’s vault, Ironheart Series has finally landed on Disney+, and honestly? I can see why they were hesitant to release it.

What should have been a triumphant introduction of Riri Williams instead feels like a frustrating case of “what could have been.”

TMJ Rating: 🍿🍿/5

What You Need to Know

Riri Williams is a MIT genius who gets the boot for running a cheating ring. Instead of, I don’t know, selling her Iron Man tech for billions like a normal person, she decides the best move is joining a criminal crew in Chicago.

Even better? It’s led by this Parker guy who might as well be wearing a neon sign that says “I’m definitely the villain.”

What follows is a six-episode journey that tries to balance character development with superhero action, but stumbles more often than it soars. The series attempts to explore themes of legacy, morality, and what it means to be a hero.

These are all ambitious goals that the execution doesn’t quite match.

What Actually Works

I’ll give credit where it’s due—this show looks pretty damn good.

Riri’s suit is easily the best Iron Man design we’ve gotten since the first movie. No more of that nanotech bullshit that made every suit look like CGI soup. This thing has weight, personality, and actual mechanical parts that make sense.

The flying sequences genuinely impressed me. You can tell they put real money into making Chicago feel authentic, and Ryan Coogler’s fingerprints are all over the visual style.

If nothing else, this doesn’t look like cheap Disney+ filler.

Acting and Cast Performance

Dominique Thorne isn’t the problem here. She’s working with dialogue that sounds like it was written by someone who learned human conversation from TikTok comments, but she finds moments of genuine emotion when the script lets her breathe.

Everyone else, though? It’s like they’re all competing in the “most annoying supporting character” Olympics.

The criminal crew feels less like real people and more like walking stereotypes who exist to dump exposition and crack jokes that land with the impact of a wet napkin. Although it was good to see Manny Montana after his role in Good Girls, and Shakira Barrera after her role in GLOW.

I kept waiting for someone—anyone—to talk like an actual human being. Didn’t happen.

Writing, Story, and Pacing

This is where things get messy. The dialogue is painfully modern in that “how do you do, fellow kids” way that immediately dates the material.

Every character gets their moment to trauma-dump their backstory through clunky monologues instead of letting things develop naturally through action and subtext.

But here’s the weird thing—buried underneath all that garbage is actually a decent character arc. Riri starts as an arrogant, entitled genius who thinks she deserves the world, and the show consistently calls her out on it.

She faces real consequences for her actions, gets knocked down repeatedly, and has to earn her growth. That’s… actually pretty refreshing for modern Marvel?

The pacing suffers from Disney+ bloat. Cut out the unnecessary conversations and forced humor, and you’d have about 15 minutes of actual substance per episode.

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Action and Direction

The action sequences are a mixed bag.

While the suit looks great, the choreography often feels clunky and poorly staged. Fight scenes lack the fluid energy of the best MCU moments, falling into that Disney+ trap of looking cheaper than they should.

There are sparks of creativity here and there, but nothing that really elevates the material beyond competent superhero television.

The Mephisto Problem

Without spoiling too much, the series builds toward what should be Riri’s defining moment—a test of character that would cement her growth from selfish genius to genuine hero. Instead, it makes a choice that completely undermines everything the show spent six episodes building toward.

It’s like watching someone carefully construct a house of cards for hours, then deliberately knocking it over in the final seconds.

Frustrating doesn’t begin to cover it.

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My Honest Take on the Ironheart Marvel Series

This might be the most frustrated I’ve ever been with a Marvel project.

Ironheart tricks you into thinking it might actually be good before pulling the rug out from under you.

There’s a version of this show—same basic plot, better dialogue, more confident in its character work — that could have been Marvel’s best Disney+ series. But in the end, we got six episodes of wasted potential wrapped in corporate-mandated “relatability.”

Should you watch it? Honestly? Probably not.

If you’re curious about Riri Williams as a character, you might find some interesting moments scattered throughout, but you’ll have to dig through a lot of mediocrity to find them.

This feels less like the confident introduction of Marvel’s next big hero and more like an expensive rough draft that needed several more passes before seeing daylight.

What did you think of Ironheart? Did you find the character development as frustrating as I did? Let me know in the comments below, and don’t forget to subscribe to The Movie Junkie for more honest takes on the latest releases. 

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