The Fantasy Review’s review of Ironheart season 1.
Ironheart season 1 had so much promise, but ultimately failed to deliver on much of its potential. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon for Marvel shows and movies these days. Just watch anything since Endgame and you’ll probably be at least a bit disappointed.
The main issue with Ironheart is that the show doesn’t know what it wants to be. We have a few episodes of heists, and then it morphs into a bad impersonation of the last half of any generic superhero movie.
If the full show had embraced either the superhero schtick or the heist plots, at least it would have been more thematically cohesive.
I just didn’t know what I was watching. Is Ironheart season 1 a story about a genius engineer getting involved with the wrong people to make some cash for their honourable project, or is it a show about tech vs magic with epic fights?
The two together don’t mix well.
Riri Williams was a decent main character. You could tell Dominique Thorne was doing everything she could with the material given to her to make you root for the character. And you did, for the most part, even if she was totally illogical and insufferable at points.
Character growth is important and can make for interesting storytelling, but the writers didn’t structure this redemption arc – or learning curve – in a way that was enjoyable for viewers. Instead what we got was a mishmash of ideas – all stolen from earlier Marvel movies – with no coherent direction.
By the end of the show, we are supposed to be rooting hard for a group of people working together to defeat the bad guy, but instead I was left wondering who these people are. Why are they important to Riri, and should I care if they die?
The only side character given any time in this is the AI in Riri’s suit. Her relationship with Riri plays a central role in the narrative, and was the only aspect of the story that kept me interested in the show. Even that ended in absolute confusion.
I would talk about the side characters, but friends, villains, and the inbetweens were all shallow cardboard cutouts with nothing to add to the story itself. It’s especially disappointing to see so much diversity in a show that decided just having diversity is enough.
The hacker might go by they/them pronouns, but making that the character’s only defining personality trait is a waste. I don’t even remember their name, nor do I know why they were working for the Hood guy and what they wanted out of it.
In the end, Ironheart season 1 was a disappointing mess of a show that deserved better. The cast deserved better. The audience was promised something better.
Marvel needs to start crafting cohesive, well-structured stories soon, or they will continue to spiral into obscurity.
