Entertainment of iron is Marvel’s bet on a smaller MCU hero. It’s not worth the latest Disney+series, centered on the genius of Dominique Thorne’s mecha, it looks like a relic of a past era of the MCU where everything was thrown against the wall

RIRI WILLIAMSwhich wears the armor as the heroine holder of the new series of Marvel Cinematographic Universe (MCU), Iron Heartinsists that their plans are much more grandiose than just fly around with an armor inspired by Iron -man. Its technology, it guarantees, will transform the world and will be, as it repeats several times, “iconic”.

Iron Heartunfortunately, it seems intended to look good below the status “iconic”. It is one of the last traces of a version of the MCU That no longer exists, with one of the least captivating protagonists of all these series or movies. Despite presenting some interesting ideas and promising supporting characters, the execution is irregular. And the season ends with a note that is only satisfactory if there are many other adventures of Iron Heart Ahead – which seems unlikely, as the character is more for Limbo or, at most, for a smaller supporting in the story of some more famous hero.

Let’s go back in time. Iron Heart was introduced in the comics of Marvel in 2016. at a time when Tony Stark He was temporarily “dead” (it’s complicated, even for comic book patterns), two different characters took their place. One of them was Doctor Destination – What today sounds funny, since we know that Robert Downey Jr. will return to MCU like one’s own Destination. The other was Riria prodigy of adolescent engineering and MIT scholarship, who built his own armor with stolen pieces from college. For a while, the armor of Riri included an operating system of Ia based on Tony Starkwhich essentially allowed her to talk to her inspiration while fighting villains.

At the end of 2020, Marvel announced the series Iron Heartwith Dominique Thorne in the role of Riri. Because of the pandemic, of several strikes in Hollywood and the tumult behind the scenes of Marvel Studiosthe series took four and a half years to materialize – though Thorne has already played the character in the confusing Black Panther: Wakanda Forever2022.

Now, the series arrives at a time when corporate management has adopted a “less is more” approach, trying to reduce the amount of releases to recover the quality control it made MCU A dominant force in pop culture for over a decade. Iron Heart was commissioned at a time when the president of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feigeand his team were trying to produce as much content as possible, regardless of the hero’s obscurity. She only survived here because – just like Magnumwith Yahya Abdul-Mateen IIexpected to debut in 2025 – the series was already in production before the change of philosophy, and presumably because Feige Don’t want to do as David Zaslav And simply cancel everything at once.

As Wakanda forever It was released for a long time, and as the movie was so full of subtrams that Riri ended up getting lost in it, the creator of Iron Heart, Chinaka Hodgeacts as if this were the character’s first real exhibition to the public. This means that the first episode is an avalanche of exhibition, especially with regard to the tragic history of Ririin which your best friend Natalie (Lyric Ross) and your stepfather Gary were murdered. Your friends and family refers to repeatedly Gary As “your stepfather,” instead of calling it by name, just for the public to understand who died.

Expelled from MIT for causing a series of expensive disasters, Riri Back home in Chicago to stay with your mother, Ronnie (Anji White), and fix the broken armor that stole from school when leaving. Desperate for money, she ends up getting involved with a group of thieves led by Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), known in the comics as the Hood. He convinces her that they are just charismatic cheats that steal from the types of people who help maintain a status quo that prevents the advancement of poor, non -white people, as Riri.

During one or two episodes, it looks like a smaller version of the Killmonger First movie Black panther: A villain whose point of view often sounds more reasonable than heroin. (At one point, Riri asks if the group is more Eleven Men and a Secret or Sopranic family.) But as history advances, it becomes much more evil and unidimensional. And its mystical cover and hood are one of those elements that work much better on a comic book page than in live-action.

There are several narrative stumbles along the way. A character is abruptly killed out of the scene before the series really manages to take advantage of the lineup of the actor who plays him. Alden Ehrenreich It’s very fun as Joean instinctively apologetic nerd that, briefly, becomes assistant to Riri “But he enters and leaves the plot, then changes his personality out of nowhere, and then kind of returns to normal?” Action scenes usually work better when they are on a reduced scale – especially one in which Ririwithout the armor, you need to improvise weapons with what you have at hand in a White Castle – But the sequences with the maximum power armor are visually much more irregular. Perhaps not coincidentally, the armor lives being destroyed and needs to be rebuilt.

Overall, however, the problem is Riri – and Thorne. It is not impossible to tell an engaging story about a character consumed by mourning – see Wandavisionthe best series of MCU To this day. But the way Riri It was written, and as is interpreted by Thorneshe is so frowning and monotonous that Iron Heart Practically stuffs whenever a scene revolves around the protagonist. It is a rare escalation error of a company that is usually excellent in this, even in projects that do not work (see Oscar Isaac in Moon Knight). Almost every other characters are more interesting when the narrative focuses on them, especially Natalie (Lyric Ross), that “returns to life” virtually as the new AI of the armor. Ross shines on the scene in a way that, unfortunately, Thorne can’t.

The season moves to a big decision to Ririwhich has only dramatic impact if there is the intention of more seasons of Iron Heart – or at least if it is intended to play a significant role in the MCU from now on. Perhaps, in another time, she would join Ms. Marvel, Kate Bishop, Billy Maximoff and other young heroes introduced in the series of Disney+ in a possible series or movie of Young Avengers. But unless Iron Heart – that a Marvel seems to be trying to erase from memory even before his debut – Be an absolutely unlikely success, the maximum that Riri

You can wait is to appear in a great battle scene in one of the next Avengers films.

It is especially strange that Marvel has decided that this, from all series, would be responsible for introducing the MCU version of an important comic character – unless there are no future plan for this character. Just as we will probably never see Brett Goldstein as Hercules, Harry Styles such as Starfox, Kit Harington as black knight, or other heroes suggested in the last six years of Marvel projects and then abandoned when corporate priorities have changed. The saddest part of all this is that Kevin Feigemade a real and admirable effort, after Avengers: Ultimatum to make the MCUmore inclusive in relation to the characters that prominently – after years listening to his then boss, Ike Perlmutter to say that he should focus only on white men heroes because “are the ones who sell toys.” Feige only tried this in the midst of two difficult circumstances: 1) Ultimatum It was viewed as a perfect conclusion of the franchise by much of the casual audience, which made many move away; and 2) Disney started to demand more projects of the MCU than Feige It could supervise personally, and the consistency – which has always been a trademark of the franchise – began to disappear quickly. With some exceptions, as Black panther original, the movies of

MCUThey had a relatively low ceiling, but a very high floor; Now the floor is much lower – and unpredictable.The result is that many projects centered on non -white heroes, or that highlighted them, were creatively irregular and had poor performance in theaters or streaming – which only serves to reinforce the beliefs of the “Ike Perlmutters“From the world, when, in fact, it is a correlation, not the cause. Thunderbolts a great movie from MCU With a mostly white cast, he also had difficulty attracting the audience earlier this year.) Iron Heart and Magnum (for which I hope, as a longtime fan of this revenge clearly in the third line) will not be the last projects of the MCU With non -white characters prominent – Avengers: Doomsdaywill Shang-Chi , Shuriand Dating between others. But they seem to mark the end of an era in which Marvel He believed he could bet on any property and win.

Iron Heart It was a bet that gave no return. The first three episodes of Iron Heartare now available in

Disney+