Ironheart: Forging a New Hero in the MCU

With the end of Avengers: Endgame leaving a stark (!!), suit-shaped hole in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the question of who — or what — comes next has loomed large. Enter Ironheart, a bold new series set to introduce Riri Williams, a 19-year-old MIT genius who crafts a suit of armour to rival Tony Stark’s.

First appearing in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Riri instantly stood out as a fiercely intelligent and compelling young hero. Crafting her own Iron Man-style suit from scratch in a cramped garage, she proved that you don’t need a billion-dollar inheritance to make a difference. Now, Ironheart puts her front and centre in a solo series that delves deep into her world, her motivations — and her remarkable potential.

The idea to expand Riri’s story was seeded early on, as series producer Zoie Nagelhout explains. “We had had conversations about telling her story, and then when Ryan [Coogler] had the idea to put her in Wakanda Forever, I think it just became that much more obvious that there was a story to tell here,” she says. “That was offering us a great jumping off point, and we really only saw her as a fish out of water in that movie – no pun intended – as she went to Wakanda.”

With her brief MCU debut, the creative team saw an opportunity to explore who Riri really is, outside the shadow of Wakanda or Stark Industries. “It meant that we had an opportunity to tell her story and go home with her and see her world and her characters,” Nagelhout continues. “So while we had been talking about telling her story prior to even the idea that she would be in Wakanda Forever, that made it an obvious thing to move forward with.”

Riri is a compelling figure not just because of her intellect, but because she breaks the Marvel mould in subtle but important ways. For fellow producer, Sev Ohanian, that’s exactly what drew the team to her: “I think it’s the scrappiness for me,” he says when we ask him why Riri is the kind of character audiences would want to spend more time with. “It’s fun to see a character who doesn’t have the advantages that some of the other characters might have of being billionaires or Norse gods or whatever it may be.

“I’m always a big fan of underdog stories, and I think Riri’s is a fairly good one. At the beginning of the show, she doesn’t even have her suit anymore after she crash lands, and we have to see her build it up piece by piece.”

Another appeal for telling Riri’s story is that with such a short introduction and minimal comic book lore behind her, following that character is a bit of a left-field choice, leaving plenty of space for interpretation. “What Marvel has always done so well is lean into the unexpected,” Ohanian continues. “It’s certainly something that Kevin [Feige] would often share in developing the show. What can we do that people won’t see coming? Riri as a character presents a lot of opportunity, mostly because she doesn’t have decades of story in the comics.”

Indeed, unlike many legacy Marvel characters, Riri’s comic history is still in its infancy. She was first seen just nine years ago, back in 2016 in Invincible Iron Man Vol. 3 #7 and she only got her first solo comic book series in 2018 by Eve Ewing and Kevin Libranda. This all helped give the producers room to breathe. “She’s a fairly recent character, and there’s been some great runs on her character,” says Ohanian. “But unlike some of the other MCU standards, we can’t pull from hundreds and hundreds of iconic stories. It just presented an opportunity to tell something that was more unexpected.”

Even with a limited library of comics, the show pulls from several key inspirations from what is out there. “We’ve read all of it, and we definitely pulled tendrils from each and every one, like from Brian Michael Bendis’ original run,” Nagelhout explains. “But really, a backbone for the series was Eve Ewing’s work, and she was also a consultant on the series, and just a fantastically talented storyteller in her own right. So pulling from that, especially the emotional backbone that she built into her run, was a no-brainer. It really offered us so much depth for the character, and also some fun and clever ideas.”

And Riri’s story isn’t told in a vacuum. The team immersed themselves in the broader Marvel universe, drawing from multiple corners of the comic canon to enrich the storytelling. “We also read tonnes of other characters,” Ohanian adds. “We read Doctor Strange comic books, for obvious reasons…” [psst: yes you can certainly expect a healthy dose of magic in the series]. “We read a lot of Parker Robbins when he was in the Avengers runs and his own run. Marvel does a really good job of making sure everyone involved really understands the source material. So it’s always a fun homework assignment.”

That really does sound like a fun homework assignment! Naturally, the spectre of Iron Man looms large in the series, but rather than shy away from it, the show cleverly threads legacy into innovation. “Obviously there is an elephant in the room of Iron Man, and that character is going to live over anything that involves iron suits for the rest of the MCU,” nods Nagelhout. “But we also wanted to make sure Riri had her own path, her own story to tell, and that she wasn’t living in the shadow. It’s really about her approach to iron suits in her own right. That being said, we did feel like there was merit in finding ways to tendril his story in, in an unexpected fashion. So I do think people should keep an eye out for anything that feels drawn from the Iron Man series.”

Speaking of keeping our eyes out, should Marvel fans keep their peepers peeled for any other MCU-shaped surprises? “Man there are some Easter Eggs in the show!” Ohanian laughs. “There are crazy ones, really subtle ones, tiny ones. I’m a big fan of watching all the Easter Egg breakdown videos after any episode of a Marvel thing comes out. So this is partially made for those fans as well.”

The show has debuted its first three episodes on Disney+, and fans can expect a series that’s not only about powered armour and pulse beams, but also about personal choice, identity, and difficult moral decisions — something that Nagelhout hopes will stick with audiences long after the credits roll.

“I loved how we ended the series, because I do think it offers opportunities for people to have discourse around the decisions that the characters make and whether they would make the same choices or they would make a different choice,” she says. “That was not only a conversation we were having as creatives on the project, but was the never-ending debate that we had throughout the course of creating the show.

“So I do hope for fans to have a similar engagement with it.”

Ironheart is out now on Disney+.

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