1-1-1: Ironheart

 I've fallen way behind on my KsMIRTs (Kent's Month In Reviewing Television) so I'm going to catch up by 1-1-1-ing shows as single posts. Like Toasty does. Which probably makes more sense anyway from all sorts of algorithmic angles. But whatever. I do this for me.

Also, SPOILERS AHOY for Ironheart

The What 100: Riri Williams is expelled from her Stark Grant at MIT and returns home to Chicago to pursue her work of replicating an Iron Man suit outside of the rigid confines (and access to resources) of academia. She's spotted and tapped by Parker Robbins, a small-time gangster who's making big strides thanks to a demonic hood that grants him special powers. Riri is tempted into joining his squad because she needs money to build her Iron Man-esque prototypes. Her dream is to commercialize her warsuits for first responders, motivated by the loss of her beloved stepdad and best friend as a result of a drive-by 5 years earlier. However, in trying to achieve her goals, she seems to make the wrong decisions time and again and the weight of the toll is greater and greater.

(1 Great) I was very impressed by Ironheart, a superhero show that refused to fall into the usual superhero tropes, especially where its main character is concerned. Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) is a genius, but she's not infallible and she doesn't have Tony Stark's generational wealth, corporate legacy or public notoriety (nor his old white man exterior) to come out of a myriad of bad decisions relatively unscathed. So when we first meet Riri and she's selling her old school work to lesser-than students to pass off as their own, and gets caught, she's rightfully expelled. She owns it, but not really. Returning home, she feels like a failure, and despite her smarts, she's unable to achieve her goals without capital. Alternatives are limited. Even without explicitly showing us, the show is aware that systemic racism will not consider a young black woman for any high profile tech internships or whatever (all you need to do is look at the most toxic of comments about this show's very existence to see that mentality is so alive and thriving in our current societal hellscape). So yeah, when Anthony Ramos' The Hood presents her with an offer of so much riches, it is undeniably tempting. A conventional superhero would resist temptation, because that's what makes them heroic, but that's boring and basic. The choice Riri makes is a selfish one... selfish with good intentions, but still selfish. She quickly realizes that she's in over her head and working with The Hood doesn't sit right. But throughout the show, she makes one not-great decision after another which just sinks her further and further into situations not easily escapable and certainly not rectified by anything a flying personalized mech suit can do. We see this in so many origin stories for young superheroes... making bad decisions then having to spend the rest of their career atoning for them. Usually by the end of the movie or the origin arc, they have become a hero, but that is decidedly not the case in Ironheart.  Riri is not a villain, by any stretch, but a character so traumatized and driven by that trauma that it misguides her, and makes her more susceptible to manipulation.  The people she hurts, the trust she breaks, the damage she does, these are things not easily undone (some are outright irreparable) and these are all lessons she kind of learns, but she never gets to the root of why she made these decisions in the first place. It makes her both a frustrating and fascinating and very human lead character. When she's got one final decision to make, the traditional hero's journey tells us which decision she *should* make, but the show stays true to her character, and what has motivated her all this time, and, yeah, it goes there, leading to a finale that melted my brain.

(1 Good) It's been rumoured and hinted and suggested for years now that Marvel's devil himself, Mephisto, would be appearing in the MCU, and many were speculating that, because Parker Robbins' hood is made of dark magic, that Mephisto would finally be appearing in the MCU via Ironheart.  But in the comics, The Hood's hood was actually created by Dormammu, who appeared in the MCU in Doctor Strange way back in 2016, and was basically dealt with in that film. But Mephisto hopes became dashed in episode 4 of Ironheart when Riri consults with a magic wielder who confirms the Dormammu connection...with a 50% accuracy.  It was a fake-out, but a beautiful fake out that seemed to imply Robbins was indeed a manipulated tool of Dormammu to aide in his return to earth or some such. But no, it's episode six where we finally see Mephisto in the flesh for the first time in a flashback to The Hood's origin...and it's none other than Sasha Baron Cohen who, immediately, screams the absolute right choice for the role. Cohen is chameleonic and able to move in an out of different characters and even somehow warp reality around him when he's in a character like Borat or Ali G. From the second he steps on screen you know exactly who he is, and by the time the episode is over I wanted nothing more than an anthology series of Cohen's Mephisto making offers to Marvel characters.  Mephisto was subtly and brilliantly seeded into Riri's story and I don't mean through the Hood.  His fingerprints were there early on and I clocked it pretty quickly.  The finale of the season (and probably the series, which makes it an even bigger whopper) feels explosive. 

(1 Bad) The weakest part of Ironheart is its opening episode, having to deal with what was set up for Riri in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In hindsight, the "synergy" of introducing Riri in that film did both that film and this series a disservice.  For the most part, Ironheart has to spend its first episode disconnecting Riri from the MCU at large, shrinking it down to her small world within the world. The first episode wasn't great, but setting the table is a dull task especially when you have to clear it first. But once all the players are introduced, the show really cooks, starting with the final beat of episode one leading directly into the emotional fallout in episode two.

META: It's not unheard of but pretty rare for me to watch a comics-to-film/tv show that I don't already have some familiarly or knowledge of the character and the world they inhabit. In the case of Ironheart, beyond having an action figure of her for some reason and playing her in Marvel Puzzle Quest, I'm unfamiliar. I don't think I have read a single comic with her (or at least not with her in any meaningful role in the comic). As well, the Hood is a great damn mystery to me (again, outside of Marvel Puzzle Quest - a match 3 game without much story or characterization). Hell, I don't even have that much familiarity with Mephisto. So this was all discovery for me, and I had no preconceived notions of who these characters were, what motivates them, what their backstory is or where they wind up. 

Riri's hero's journey is, by the end of the season, still really incomplete, and I loved that the show runners made the choice to end it that way. Riri is a flawed character, and that's not something easily rectified. The Hood seemed pretty boilerplate, but, just as with Riri, it sets up who he is and seeds in visual info in the background to provide more context that comes to light in the final couple of episodes where it really puts his journey into focus. Both Thorne and Ramos are very, very good...not explosive, but really good. 

The supporting cast in general, especially Lyric Ross as N.A.T.A.L.I.E., the AI who is borne from Riri's memories of her dead best friend, is the standout (she's widely cited as a standout performer from This Is Us as well). In this world where we're really struggling with accepting AI as anything other than a portent of doom, and another tool for the capitalists to manipulate and corrupt, making an AI character that is charming, loveable and, at times, heartbreaking is a real challenge, but Ross definitely accomplishes it.

The show also features Alden Ehrenreich as Joe McGillicuddy, a collector and dealer of black market technology that Riri blackmails/befriends. Ehrenreich is such a charming performer, and it's so disappointing that his very, very enjoyable, very brief stint as Han Solo not only didn't turn him into a big star, but in fact had a detrimental effects on his promising career. He hasn't been out of work, but his profile has been quite low. Here, he's like, 7th banana in the series, but he definitely stands out, just like he did in Solo and Hail Cesar! We need more of him.

One final great casting note, Regan Alyah as Zelma, the young witch(??) who helps Riri out with her magical dilemma, is so damn charismatic and delightful. It's an even smaller role than Ehrenreichs, but she absolutely pops.

I get that there are a lot of people burned out on Marvel and superhero content. I get that this is a character most people, even comic book nerds, don't care a lot about and weren't clamoring to see on screen, and I get that this isn't the hero's journey most expect to see, but that to me is what makes it so exciting. It's not without action, but it's also not action-packed. It's a character-centric story about the choices one makes in life, the trauma that leads us to those choices, and having to deal with the ramifications. If you just want to see iron suits bashing into each other, that's been done.