Don’t call her a hero. But don’t call her a villain either.
The first three episodes of Ironheart end on a cliffhanger for the titular young genius Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), as she freaks out not only about causing John’s (Manny Montana) death, but also because she left crucial evidence linking her to the crime. Yeah, we definitely haven’t seen a Marvel story like this before.
While Riri doesn’t outright murder John with her own hands, she leaves him to suffocate after their brutal fight in the greenhouse. After discovering Riri’s betrayal of his cousin/their leader Parker (Anthony Ramos), John tries to take her out. But after Riri bests him in their fight, she makes the conscious decision to leave him as all the oxygen in the room is sucked out. As she flies away, she confirms it via heat scan: John is dead.
Parker and the rest of their crew are devastated to find out that John didn’t make it after their heist, but they don’t know that it’s Riri’s fault he’s dead. However, the synthetic skin she left behind directly links her — and Joe McGillicuddy, a.k.a. Zeke Stane (Alden Ehrenreich) — to John’s death. And Riri knows that once Parker puts the clues together, he’ll come for her to avenge his cousin’s murder.
“Episode 3 is, without a doubt, my favorite episode, because she goes there,” Thorne tells Entertainment Weekly. “How she handles it, how much she takes pride in it, is another thing. But I think the fact that she made the conscious choice says a lot about who [she is and] some of the internal conflict that she is working through.”
Riri first debuted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, in which she had a front row seat to Queen Ramonda’s (Angela Bassett) tragic death. In fact, Thorne says her character is still working through the trauma of Ramonda dying after saving her life during Namor’s (Tenoch Huerta) attack on Wakanda.
“In Wakanda Forever, she was a part of a huge loss and a huge tragedy,” Thorne explains. “And at the same time, she also got to see what it looks like for Shuri [Letitia Wright], someone who is through and through [a hero], who had their own conflict, as we saw, had to also make a choice about if she was going to become overtaken with the need for revenge or would she follow in the steps of her brother and really lead the nation.”
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Thorne adds that watching Shuri choose the path of heroism over personal vengeance made an impact on Riri. But her own journey will be very different in the back half of the season as she contends with what she’s done and faces the consequences of John’s death.
“Watching all of this, Riri got to see what an actual leader and hero looks like — we got to see her make the hero choice and see that through,” Thorne says. “So I think for Riri to be on the heels of seeing something like that up close, being a part of that win for Wakanda, and then back in her own hometown, she is willing to put herself first over the life of another person — it’s telling. And I think it definitely adds to that tension and the vast, vast, vast, vast range of possibilities that exist for who Ironheart is and the actual cost of her dreams.”
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