Ironheart (2025) Review

After Black Panther: Wakanda Forever it was pretty clear that Marvel Studios had big plans for the character of Riri Williams. After a few years of development and waiting we finally have the Ironheart series and I have watched all the episodes, here is my review. The premise of the show sees Riri return to Chicago where she has to make money in order to become the hero that she believes she can be. 

Main Character

Dominique Thorne reprises her role as Williams and she is clearly a talented actor and I actually think she shows some real promise for the future of her career. The show does give her some good dramatic scenes and shows her charm. But the writing for the character is all over the place and Riri actually comes across as quite annoying and rude to everyone else on the show. They try and make her flawed and relatable but it fails for the most part. 

Supporting Characters

Alden Ehenreich is a really talented actor that just hasn't quite made it huge in Hollywood and he is probably my favourite character on this show. There is a real intrigue to his character and I did have some real sympathy for him. Though the show does rush through his story arc and it feels tacked on compared to the rest of the show. 

Anthony Ramos plays The Hood and is basically the villain here. He had real potential to be a great villain here, unfortunately it just fell flat for me. His motivations aren't explored enough and are incredibly basic and Ramos can't rise above this lacklustre writing.  

Lyric Ross plays Natalie who is an AI based on Riri's now deceased best friend and I found her really annoying. First, the fact that this is the first AI we have seen have a body and real personality with Iron tech feels like it doesn't work. What is worse though was that I didn't buy their chemistry and there wasn't a big enough reason given for me to care about their relationship. 

The rest of her support system and the other bad guys in the crew are all written poorly and not given enough time to really care about their characters and their performances. 

Though there is a character who debuts in the final episode played by a big actor who was highly entertaining and a really crucial part of this series and future MCU shenanigans. 

Story

The Story has some good concepts to it. It portrays Riri as a complex person and it is nice to see her dealing with human issues and not dealing with them well. But as a whole this story feels really rushed and doesn't give the characters real depth or development with an ending that feels underwhelming and kind of goes against the character of Riri. 

Script

As mentioned above, I have criticised the writing for the show. But, I will say there are some genuinely good moments which are both heartfelt and funny. Though, these are few and far between with the majority of the writing feeling incredibly weak and that they don't care about the story they are telling. 

Style

The show has a big budget and has some great action sequences. It is a genuine joy to see an Iron suit that isn't nanotech and feels old school. It is a shame that this show has terrible pacing, it only has 6 episodes and tries to cram everything in which causes nothing to get the time required to really hit the levels it needs. 

Overall

Overall, Ironheart is an Average Show. There has been highs and lows in Marvel Television and unfortunately, Ironheart is the latter. There are some good ideas here but they just weren't executed particularly well and this is one MCU Property you don't need to watch. 

Rating - 5/10