Ironheart
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There's a fun new Marvel television show that follows a brilliant young woman whom we first met in Black Panther Wakanda Forever. To fund her inventions, including a suit a lot like the one Iron Man used to wear, she falls in with a gang of criminals who rob from the rich. But when her ambitions place the people she loves in danger, she's forced to reckon with her past and with...

Wait for it. Her grief. Come on, it's Marvel. You knew that was coming. I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about Iron Heart on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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Joining me today is NPR TV critic Eric Deggans. Hey, Eric. Hey, I'm going to apologize in advance for all the comic geekitude that is coming your way because, dude. Bring it. You have a home here, Eric. We are so going to go there on this one. Eric, you have a home.

Let's get to it. In Ironheart, Dominique Thorne reprises her role as Riri Williams, who was introduced to the MCU in Wakanda Forever. She's been kicked out of MIT and returns home to Chicago to plot her next move. In the process, she inadvertently creates an AI that takes the form of her late friend Natalie, played by Lyric Ross. Natalie was killed by a stray bullet a while back. Riri is still grieving that loss.

To fund her very expensive hardware, Riri joins a gang of criminals led by Anthony Ramos' Parker, a.k.a. The Hood, so named for the mysterious mystical cloak he wears that affords him various magical abilities, but at what cost? She also befriends, well, exploits, really, the nerdy Joe, who's got a lot of access to black market tech. He's played by Alden Ehrenreich.

Ironheart is streaming on Disney+, though you might not know that given how little marketing this show has gotten. We'll talk about that.

Eric, you have called yourself a card-carrying blurred Black nerd in the past. This is blurred representation. What'd you make of it? Man, I so wanted to like this show a lot more than I actually did. Okay. You know, I don't know if I was expecting too much from it. That one thing that's been kind of interesting to watch in terms of the Black Panther of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that that first movie was so amazing that

that everything that's connected to it winds up getting compared to it, even when you don't necessarily want to do that. The sequel movie, Wakanda Forever, and this series, which, you know, in some way, I mean, I loved seeing a black and brown centered, you know, show featuring characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but

And I think Riri is a really engaging character. I'm not all that thrilled with what they did with her and where they took the story. And a lot of things about the story just didn't quite make sense to my comic geek brain, which I'm sure we'll talk about as we go forward. But I hope

Other people like it more than me because I would love to see this set of characters continue. And in particular, Riri Williams, I'd love to see her continue in the MCU. Okay. Well, I think you got your wish. I think I like this a little bit more than you did because I enjoyed the lighter tone. It feels like the last few Marvel TV things we've been getting are in that daredevil echo corner of the Marvel Universe, the dark and gritty. It's not my jam. I like the fact that the jokes in this show, and there were plenty of them, were

were kind of based in character dynamics as opposed to just throwing out pop culture references. I think that is a heartening move for the Marvel Universe to take. I dug that. I came down, this is a solid B, B plus effort for me because I like the characters and I like the world. But like you, as soon as the overarching plot kicked in, I felt like I had to start calibrating my expectations. It's no crime, but these characters are not particularly layered. They each get their one characterizing trait. They keep hitting that characterizing trait.

But, you know, that's fine for a hot summer afternoon, you know? But when I started getting frustrated was when the overarching plot, with its very schematic and overdetermined plot,

kind of kicked in because, you know, fiction, they say that plot is character. Wherever your character wants to go, there's your plot. That is not true for the show because again and again, I felt like the plot was fighting what I thought the characters wanted. Like, for example, why does Riri keep hanging out with the Hoods gang... Exactly. ...after she gets a bunch of money because isn't the whole point that she just needs money to fund her inventions? And then she doesn't like anybody in the gang. And then the Hoods' whole gimmick...

He threatens very rich people with signing very coercive contracts. I mean, even in the MCU, Eric, rich people are rich people. They have teams of lawyers who exist to get them out of contracts. That kept kicking me out. You know, if anything will get you out of a contract, it's being forced to sign it by having someone point a gun at your head. Exactly. Which actually happens.

Or a mystical, magical gun in the case as this particular thing is happening. So anyway, I do think the show looks good, right? Do you agree to that much? I mean, like the flying stuff, the suit stuff, it looks good. The flying stuff and the suit stuff looks good. I mean, again, one of the central tensions in a show like this is how much of the suit do you see? Yeah. How much of what we see is...

this person being a superhero and how much of this is the person being an exceptional person outside of the suit. For example, one of the reasons why people really criticize the third Iron Man movie is because so much of it was Tony Stark out of the suit. And at some point, you want to see the suit and you want to see sort of spectacular adventures in the suit.

And I do think that that was also a place where this show kind of fell short for me was I wanted to see more of her actually in the suit and doing, you know, amazing things. I mean, you know, we saw her.

A lot of that in Wakanda forever. So why are we not getting it in this TV show? But I think you hit on the thing that was my biggest problem, which is like, again, as a comic book geek, I often judge these stories by the quality of the villain. And frankly, I just felt like the Hood and his gang were corny villains. And I didn't really sort of buy their menace.

And another thing you've heard me talk about is sort of the hierarchy of powers in a Marvel movie. So it's hard for me to believe that this is a gang of criminals that can attack a facility filled with security guards and take them all out and steal whatever it is they're going to steal. But when they decide to go after Riri...

They have a problem with one person. But here's where I think the show works, because even when I didn't like Riri's choices, which were often dumb, I still like Dominic Thorne, right? Because she is saddled with some pretty boring lone hero stuff where she keeps people out, she refuses help, she doesn't let anybody in, she uses people without their knowledge. These are all pretty familiar early parts of a classic hero's journey, and I was prepared to kind of nod at them as they pass.

But the thing is, Eric, they didn't pass. I can't get into the details of how or why. We think that Riri's arc here is that she's going to learn to deal with her grief and not hang on to the past.

That is not the lesson she learns in this show, Eric. And that is clearly setting something up for the future, which makes, I guess, the show interesting in a way in that it subverts expectations, but it also feels like it's a placeholder, right? You and I have talked about sort of being frustrated when you feel like a series is mostly just setting up something that's going to happen in another season or is going to happen in the future that viewers don't see. That's my concern with this show. You know, I was worried about that. I am worried about that.

And, you know, again, I'm going to sound picky when I say this, but I think it's hard for these Marvel series to explain why some of the bigger structures in the MCU don't get involved with these heroes' lives. She is desperate for funding after she gets kicked out of MIT, and yet she doesn't appeal to the Wakandans. She doesn't go to Stark International. She doesn't

approach these institutions, which you think would be, I mean, even the federal government might be interested in funding what she does. And we don't even get a perfunctory scene showing her considering this and why she doesn't do it. One of her immediate choices is to break the law.

which, you know, is a weird choice for somebody you're positioning as a superhero. Yeah, that's the feature and the bug of the MCU, classically, right? I mean, like, when you have 17 different heroes all existing pretty much in the same six city blocks, you have to kind of figure out all kinds of ways why they don't get involved with each other as well as, you know, you allow them to occasionally. I will just say quickly,

I'm not sure that's what's happening here because you don't have to have Robert Downey Jr. or someone from the Black Panther movies show up to deal with the idea that there were places for her to get money that did not involve stealing from people. And having a situation here where that's the first thing she goes to...

especially given that the story is moving to a Black neighborhood in Chicago. She's hanging out with her family and Black folks turning to crime. I don't want to overly belabor that, but that was something that sort of bothered me, that they didn't come up with a better reason for why she decided to join this gang that is clearly ripping off people and could easily kill somebody if they were pushed into a corner. This is like a serious...

I guess you could explain that she's so, you know, distorted by grief and disappointment that she's not thinking clearly. But we needed something to illustrate that. And I don't think we get it. Yeah, they do try to hand wave some of that away with like, well, these are very rich people. This eat the rich ethos. But yeah, I get you. That also hit me.

So the head writer of the show is Shanaka Hodge. She has previously written for shows like The Midnight Club and for the show Snowpiercer, which is based on the movie. Both of those shows, I think we'd agree, are basically straight down the middle genre pieces, right? I don't know, Eric. Maybe as I'm getting older, or maybe it's just the landscape of television is changing.

But we live in a time now when good work can be informed by genre. It doesn't need to be defined by it. Right. I'm thinking of shows like Andor and The Penguin and Last of Us and going back, Justified, Breaking Bad, you know, even Sopranos. Those shows hit their genre beats very dutifully. They satisfy those conventions. Right.

But they do more. They dig deeper. They find nuance and complexity. And this show, it comes out of the gate saying, this is not what we're doing. We're not going to be doing that. But, and it's not fair to compare this little B-plus show to the greatest shows on TV. I get that. But ultimately it comes down to, do you want a full meal or do you want a bowl of Cheez-Its, right? Yeah.

And that's a great way to put it, man, which is why I love your writing, too. But I will say, too, that we expect that because, again, the Black Panther movies did that. Right. Exactly. That's one I should have mentioned. I mean, they may not be promoting this series as much as you would expect, but in the promotions, they are highly touting that Ryan Coogler, the director of those movies, is an executive producer on this show. Right. Right.

So not only are we feeling those expectations because of the universe it comes from, we're feeling those expectations because of the promotion behind the show. And to show up hoping to get that and to not really get that, I think is also one of the central issues I had with this show, where I was sort of primed to think...

You know, maybe this is going to interrogate issues of society and race and heroism in the way that the Black Panther movies did. And, you know, it doesn't quite get there. Is there anything you wanted to shout out that you particularly liked? I'll start by saying I liked Alden Ehrenreich in this. Here is a guy with a leading actor jawline.

who does best in character actor parts. Like, he's a lot more interesting in the Coen Brothers film Hail Caesar than he was in Solo, the Star Wars story. And here he gets to play into his character actor chops. And, you know, he gets to play emotionally wounded a lot in a very funny way. I really liked seeing him here. He's a great character. He's a great actor. I wish they had used him a little differently and even elevated him more in the story because he's so interesting. When we finally do get the suit, it's awesome. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And there's a character that appears. We can't really talk about this character because it's in episodes that people won't have seen by the time this comes out. But there is a character that surfaces who's played by an actor who I think does a really good job with the role. And I think people will enjoy seeing that. Again, I do love seeing a show from the MCU, from Marvel Television, that is centered in Blackness. I do love that. And I love seeing the family dynamic here.

And I love, you know, little touches in how the characters relate to each other that feel authentic. So all of that is cool. I just wish this story had been a little better. Yeah, I think we're both finding some tension in this.

demanding more from genre stuff, but ultimately like, you know, this should be welcomed when it comes doing what it wants to do, checking its boxes the way it does. I had a good time with this. Well, you know, as somebody who's been sort of clocking superhero TV since the days of the first live action Spider-Man on TV in the seventies, the level of expectations we have for this stuff now is just off the charts. I mean, if I could have seen a series like this, uh,

you know, in 1980, I would have flipped my wig. I would have, you know, this is the kind of show I always dreamed would be on television. You know, I watched the old Batman series and it was funny, but I always thought to myself, why can't they do this more seriously? And now we're at a point where they are. And so I agree with you. I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth and I want to acknowledge how far we have come in this storytelling. Um,

But that also sort of builds my passion for wanting to push it further and say, this is good, not great. You guys can do better. The performers obviously can handle it. Sure. All the actors in major roles are wonderful.

So give them more to work with. Give them better things to work with. And when the traditionalists come for this story, I really hope that Marvel doesn't let itself get intimidated by them. Because I think there have to be those of us speaking out to say, yeah, it's always great to keep an eye on what the fans want. But it's also good to challenge them.

And let them know when some of their objections are rooted in things that frankly don't make sense and aren't fair to the story and keep Marvel from progressing in the ways that it needs to progress. Yeah, I think when people come to the show, if they do, they're going to be insisting on a lot of the classic genre tropes that frankly a show like this is trying to move past. It's trying to take it in a new direction. So yeah, I agree with you there.

But that's what we think anyway. We want to know what you think about Ironheart. That's what matters. Find us at Facebook.com slash PCHH. That brings us to the end of our show. Eric Deggans, my friend, thank you so much for being here. Wow. And we didn't really geek out that much. Well, I mean, okay, I did reference the Spider-Man from the 70s. I can't help that. I was going to say, I'm going to guess when we talk to the producers as soon as we stop taping, they're going to be a little lost. In case you didn't.

And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio. And you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free. So please find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Hafsa Fatima and Mike Katzeff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. And Haloka Min provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.

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