The latest Marvel tv spin off focuses on Riri Williams, teenage super scientist from Wakanda whom we last saw joining MIT to further her undoubted technical skills. The six part series follows her progress and located tonally somewhere between Ms Marvel and Agent Carter proves to be an enjoyable show. Nether too self-consciously urban yet retaining a natural feel its episodes are an easy watch with just enough rug pulling to keep the veteran Marvel viewers entertained.
Spoilers beyond this point
We join the story four
years after the events of Wakanda Forever and Riri’s time at MIT appears
to have teetered on the chaotic. Clearly too brilliant for much of the program
her experiments have caused issues exacerbated by her selling ideas to students
of other schools so she can gain more money to work on her metal suit. Riri’s admiration
of Tony Stark seems to run not just to technical achievements but behavioural
issues and she is expelled from the faculty and sent packing. In a fun scene
she does retain her suit though once the institute cuts her access it starts to
fall apart.
Looking for opportunities
to fund the repair of her creation she comes upon a gang who carry out heists requiring
complex infiltrations which they think she will be adept at helping with. If you’ve
seen Mission Impossible or even Now You See It, the heists here
are less involving and its sometimes hard to see why they need so many participants
though that’s not really the point. The idea of a criminal `family` is not new
and struggles to convince in this context though they are a characterful enough
group. Riri’s initiation via a gas filed elevator should be a trigger warning
for her but her financial needs lead her to join the gang.
However she soon becomes
suspicious of its leader Parker Robbins even if nobody else seems to bat an eyelid
when he wields his powers. Also known as The Hood, the titular clothing allows
him the ability to appear and vanish at will as well as control bullets. In
grand sci-fi tradition the first three episodes hint of a higher power behind the cloak. Yes, he
really does keep it in a room in front of a screen behind which some sort of
strange power thrums while a growing tattoo hides scales on his body. This all seems a
little out of the realm of an otherwise more grounded serial but perhaps the
second half will link it together.
So, on the surface, Ironheart’s
constituent parts are familiar yet in execution they seem fresh enough thanks to
Sam Bailey’s interesting direction and some great performances. Dominique
Thorne is excellent; a lively yet not too peppy performance as Riri whose a likeable
heroine with conflicting problems and a pragmatic (or devil may care) approach to
life. Yet the series really comes to life when her late best friend Natalie becomes
the image of her artificial in suit (and soon enough out of suit) intelligence assistant. The combination of the two having been best friends and now reconnecting
in this odd way gives the show a real heart as opposed to just an iron one.
Lyric Ross is terrific as Natalie and there’s a strong turn from Anji White as
Riri’s tough but fair mother. The interplay between the trio is great to watch.
The most unexpected character
is a black-market arms dealer Joe (not his real name as it turns out) played
with comedic nerdiness by Alden Ehrenreich. As The Hood, Anthony Ramos makes
the character more human and relatable to some extent working particularly well
with Thorne or with Manny Montana’s coiled sidekick John who sometimes seems
the more dangerous of the two.
There are some well staged
set pieces in these first three episodes as the writers try to show us locales we’ve
not seen before. A sequence in underground freight tunnels works well but even
better is episode three’s infiltration of a biotech company which provides the
show’s first believable jeopardy and some unexpected shocks.
Ironheart is not without contrivances,
one in particular when Riri is trying to cut off a piece of the hood to analyse
its material requires Parker to stand in one place just by the edge of a
balcony so she can make the cut and he unwillingly obliges! There’s also a naiveite
in some of the characters- it’s the acting rather than the script that convinces
us Riri really would fall in with such a gang of reprobates. Clearly tailored
for a younger audience there is no swearing (somewhat unbelievable considering the
company we’re keeping) and more importantly no violence that looks as if people
are in any real danger. When the music and some of the cut-up graphics suggest a
darker series, the narrative doesn’t want to go there.
Yet the overall mystery
of the origins of the hood and Riri's bold attempts to stay ahead of the game and deal with the return of Natalie are well played and there is certainly a lot to look forward to in the other
half of the series, to be released on Tuesday.
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