Ironheart

This is literally the only Marvel thing to not have a single positive character going for it. Riri has been a miscast since Wakanda Forever, but now she has a terrible personality and a pile of terrible decisions just forever nuking the character of Ironheart from ever being viable as anything but a mean, angry villain.

With the exception of Natalie, Clown and Sasha Baron Cohen, this show gets nothing right. The Hood Gang are cringe, Hood himself is this pathetic model, Joe is unlikeable and idiotic, but worst of all none of the motives work for any of these people and none of the plotlines are resolved well, things sort of happen. Even with the dry turds that make up the script so much more could have been made, so much could have been said about the nature of people, the yearning of ambition and the seduction of undoing the past, but NONE of that is truly present.

This so bland, it should never have been made. A failure so complete it makes NWO look alright.

I wanted to like Ironheart; I truly did. The idea of a new generation stepping into the world of armored heroes, inspired by the greatest innovator the MCU has ever known, is brimming with potential. Yet, as I watched the series unfold, my initial excitement curdled into a persistent annoyance that lasted until the final credits rolled. For me, the show failed on several fundamental levels, creating a frustrating experience that felt less like an homage and more like a betrayal of the very universe I've been invested in since the beginning. My core issues aren't with a new character taking the spotlight, but with a protagonist I couldn't root for, a shocking disrespect for legacy, and a complete waste of fantastic villains.

My primary struggle was with the main character, Riri Williams. Throughout the entire series, I found myself baffled by her choices. It felt like I was watching a repeating cycle: she would make a reckless, ill-advised decision, and then, when the inevitable negative consequences arrived, the narrative would frame her as the victim. This isn't the complex, flawed heroism I've come to love from Marvel. Think of Peter Parker's constant struggles to balance his life, or Wanda Maximoff's grief-fueled mistakes. Those characters face the weight of their actions and we see them grapple with accountability. With Riri, it felt like the story consistently absolved her, expecting my sympathy without her ever truly earning it through growth. A hero's journey is defined by overcoming their own faults, but I felt Riri's were consistently excused.

However, the moment that turned my annoyance into genuine anger was the show's treatment of Tony Stark's legacy. Have the writers at Marvel forgotten their own story that started it all? The line that essentially dismisses Tony Stark, saying he wouldn't be Iron Man if he wasn't a billionaire, felt like a slap in the face. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the character and the entire point of his arc. We all saw him in a cave with a box of scraps, building his first suit out of desperation and sheer genius. His wealth was a part of his story, but it wasn't the source of his heroism. His intellect, his grit, and his ultimate sacrifice were what made him Iron Man. To reduce his entire journey to his bank account felt like the show was deliberately tearing down a foundational hero just to prop up a new one, and I found it deeply disrespectful.

As if these problems weren't enough, the series completely ruined great villains. I was thrilled at the prospect of seeing a complex antagonist like The Hood brought to life. In the comics, he's a compelling and dangerous figure. In Ironheart, he was rendered almost toothless, a shadow of his potential. But the greatest disappointment for me was Mephisto. After years of fan theories and palpable anticipation for his arrival, his depiction was one of the most anticlimactic events I can recall in the MCU. This powerful, manipulative, and terrifying entity was reduced to a shallow caricature, robbing the story of any real sense of stakes. Great heroes are forged by fighting great villains, and when the antagonists are this poorly handled, the hero's own triumphs feel hollow.

By the end of it all, I was left feeling deflated. My problem isn't change or the introduction of new faces. My problem is watching a show that seems to hold contempt for its own source material. In my eyes, Ironheart took a compelling premise and squandered it by creating an unrelatable protagonist, disrespecting the legacy of a beloved hero, and defanging iconic villains. It's a frustrating watch that, for me, represents a profound misunderstanding of what made so many of us fall in love with this universe in the first place.

As a lifelong Marvel fan and someone who genuinely admired the growth and sacrifice of Tony Stark, watching Ironheart feels like being spat on for caring.

This series doesn't just fall short - it disrespects the legacy of Iron Man to artificially inflate a character who hasn't earned the suit, the tech, or the respect. Instead of honoring Tony Stark - the genius, billionaire, philanthropist who sacrificed everything - the show takes every opportunity to undermine his legacy. There's a line where Riri says Tony was "nothing without his money." Excuse me?

Tony built the Mark 1 in a cave, while dying, with scraps.

He survived PTSD, took responsibility for his past sins, created new elements, mentored Spider-Man like a father, and saved the entire universe in Endgame. He was more than his money - he was his mind, his heart, and his growth.

This show acts like we forgot that. But we didn't.

Instead of showing Riri Williams learning from Tony's legacy, or striving to live up to it, they turned her into a smug, ungrateful replacement. A character who walks in, acts like she knows better, and immediately claims the spotlight with no build-up. That's not inspiring. That's forced.

You want strong new heroes? Great - earn it.

Let Riri grow, make mistakes, struggle, and rise. Let her respect the ones who came before her. That's called storytelling.

But this? This was lazy writing, weak character development, and an insult to everything the MCU built over 10+ years.

You can't just write off legends to make room for new ones. That's how you lose your audience.

This wasn't a tribute to Iron Man. It was a hit job.

And for that, I'm out.

1 star. And that's generous.

This show suffered from writers who don't understand what makes something dramatic and or interesting, so the writing just drones on and on and on with underwhelming scene after underwhelming scene. There are so many opportunities to make this extraordinary but these people would have to understand enough about creating drama to know how to do that, and they simply do not. This is at every turn, in every scene, and on and on. They seem to believe that savvy tech, and concepts alone will make it interesting, but it doesn't.

I hope they get better writers, soon too, because the basic premise perhaps could be interesting, if . . .

I'll start off with 1 positive: visual effects were not too bad. Um, now here we go...the acting was horrendous, the storyline appears to be written by a 5 year old; predictable and basically non interesting to watch. It's frustrating to me that people got paid for putting out this garbage. I can't imagine that this was screened in advance for consumer feedback. If you write garbage, then that is what you will see on the screen. I think that any run of the mill marvel super fan could have put together a way better storyline that what was produced. The acting is terrible, I don't expect this series to continue...