“A sensible person sees danger and takes cover, but the inexperienced keep going and are punished.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever wanted something really badly, but couldn’t seem to get there for some reason? Maybe you didn’t have the resources to achieve it. Perhaps there was something physical holding you back. It could be that culture simply wasn’t allowing for it. Whatever the reason, you were feeling denied something you really wanted or even felt like should be yours by right. What did you do then? Did you give up and go in another direction, or did you keep right on going, pressing on until you got it no matter what the cost happened to be? The newest Marvel offering from Disney+ is about just such a character. She couldn’t get what she wanted on her own, so she just kept pushing until she got it. And that’s the problem. Let’s talk today about Ironheart.

Since the inception of the MCU with the release of Iron Man in 2008, I think the only Marvel release I’ve missed has been the Echo series released this past December. Rather than being released episodically like most of their series, they released the whole thing all at once. They had pretty much given up on it, but since it was already made, they went ahead and released it anyway. It was a story about a minor character that was more of a service to diversity than because there was a large audience clamoring to hear more of Echo’s story. Maybe I’ll yet watch it someday, but it’s not high on my list.

Ironheart falls in somewhat of the same category as Echo. Riri Williams is basically a young, black, female version of Tony Stark. The character was created a few years ago when Marvel went through a spell of remaking pretty much all of their classic characters but this time as diversity projects rather than a bunch of white males (excluding Black Panther, although even he got replaced by his younger sister in the MCU). Having a more diverse set of characters was always fine. There is a more diverse audience reading comics these days, and every social or ethnic group deserves to have some heroes who look like them. The problem was that they didn’t really introduce any new characters. They were all just retreads of old ones but with new, more diverse skins.

Everything about Ironheart was set up to be a second-tier diversity project from the start. Riri was a supporting character from Black Panther 2. The Hood, the main villain played by Anthony Ramos from Hamilton, is a fairly minor Marvel villain. There were references to Dr. Strange and Dormammu (the rather forgettable villain from the first Dr. Strange movie), but that was about it. The series did introduce the villain, Mephisto, wonderfully played by Sacha Baron Cohen, which was fun. Fans have been speculating when he would finally show up for years. It’s really too bad it was such an understated entry for him into the MCU. Hopefully we’ll see him again, and this wasn’t a one-off appearance. In short, nothing about the series was set up to draw an audience. They released the series in two batches rather than giving it the full Echo treatment, but that’s about it.

The basic storyline is that Riri Williams, a super tech genius on the level of Tony Stark, has been kicked out of MIT where she was a student during Black Panther 2 because she refuses to take classes that will move her toward graduation, she keeps helping other students cheat for money, and because her lab misfires are causing injuries and costing the school money. Essentially, she deserved to be expelled. Adding insult to injury for the school, on her way out the door, she steals the suit she designed but which technically belongs to the school, and upon arriving back in her native Chicago, promptly destroys it because she runs it out of power and crashes before she gets all the way home.

From here, she gets recruited by The Hood’s gang to be their tech person. She isn’t interested in a life of crime at all, but she wants to make the money she needs to build another suit, and The Hood’s promise of easy money holds more sway than whatever moral center she might once have had. Riri helps the gang extort several local tech CEOs into giving them control of their companies, making them all very wealthy. Along the way, though, her ineptitude results in The Hood’s killing an otherwise innocent security guard, she almost kills the entire team and then manages to actually kill one of them, and she sells out a fellow tech genius resulting in his being arrested and turning one of the very few likable characters in the series into a super villain.

Basically, even though Riri is technically the protagonist of the story, she’s also the cause of pretty much all the problems in the story. In addition to that, and try as I might otherwise, her character is just supremely unlikable. She’s both arrogant and insecure. She cares more about herself and what she wants than she does anyone else. She’s reckless without thought of how her actions will affect anyone else around her, including the people she loves. She largely refuses to ask for help, and then is never grateful when that help is given anyway. And she ultimate puts ambition ahead of any kind of grounded morality. The series ends with her literally making a deal with the devil (Mephisto), setting her on the exact same path as The Hood.

In spite of all that, I really did enjoy the story. I kept watching because I wanted to see how it would end. I was thoroughly disappointed by it. It really needs a sequel to finish telling it. But Marvel has already announced that a sequel will not be coming. The likeliest outcome of the series is that short Cohen’s Mephisto (at least fans hope), we probably won’t ever see any of those characters again in the MCU unless Ironheart makes a cameo appearance in one of the next two Avengers movies. And honestly, I so dislike the character, and they would have so much of her story arc to resolve and redeem, I wouldn’t want to see her again anyway.

One of the things that was actually pretty interesting about the story was that both the hero and the villain were formed from the same basic substance. They both had father issues. In fact, the secondary villain did too. They weren’t all the same father issues, but father issues were at the heart of all of them all the same.

Riri’s step-father was killed in a drive-by shooting (along with her best friend). Her drive to create an Iron Man-like suit comes from her need to protect herself and those she loves from anything else bad happening to them. Sort of. She also says several times that she wants to make something “iconic.” The arrogance of that attitude severely undercuts any moral rightness to her aims. Essentially, her refusal or inability or both to process her grief in healthy ways led her to the path she is on.

For The Hood, his father was a super wealthy jerk who rejected him as a son after his mom had died because he got in the way of his advancing his business. His whole motivation throughout the series (which we finally learn in the last couple of episodes) is to get revenge against his father for rejecting and abandoning him rather than loving and providing for him.

The other character, Ezekiel Stane, the son of Obadiah Stane, the villain Ironmonger from the first Iron Man movie, hates his father for his vile ambition and amorality. He is committed to being nothing like him. Except he has millions of dollars’ worth of black-market technology in a secret bunker he built into a farm he owns somewhere on the outskirts of Chicago. After Riri gets him arrested and compared negatively with his father’s glowing public persona, he allows for all his tech to be incorporated into his body making him super powerful, and more than capable of taking down Riri’s suit. Rather than killing her, though, he forgives her and walks away. In the end, he’s the only character with any kind of a true moral compass in the cast.

Solomon said that a sensible person who sees danger coming takes cover and hides from it. It is the fool who just keeps marching right on forward and gets punished for his folly. This strikes me as a perfect proverb for the Ironheart series. Riri sees that The Hood is evil. She figures out what has led him to his villainy. She realizes that he has literally made a deal with the devil, and by the end of the series is begging him to stop for his own sake because of the damage the deal is doing to his very soul. And then, with only a little bit of convincing from Mephisto, she strikes the same basic deal and starts herself off on the same basic path so that, like The Hood, she could get her heart’s desire. She saw the danger, ignored it, and set herself up for some pretty terrible punishment. What a fool!

Still, as depressing as the series was in that regard, I couldn’t help but wonder how often we do the same basic thing. We know the danger that lies before us. We’ve seen other people we know and don’t fall prey to the eventual consequences of whatever it is. But in spite of all that, we push forward anyway. Why? Because we want what we want, consequences be damned.

Jesus said that if we want to be His followers we have to be prepared to deny ourselves and shoulder our crosses. He made such a demand because half-hearted followers aren’t actually going to move in His direction when the going gets tough (and when following Him, the going does eventually get tough). He also made such a demand because we don’t know what’s best for ourselves, and even when we do, we still show a remarkable ability to go in the wrong direction anyway. As Paul made clear, without His help, we are stuck on sin. Without His help, we always wind up going the way of Ironheart. There’s no life to be found there as the final scene of the series makes clear.

If you are a Marvel fan, you’ve probably already watched the series, so I don’t need to tell you to do so. If you’re not, this one isn’t really worth your time. But the lesson to be learned is. Submit to Christ, tell yourself no, and walk the path of God’s righteousness with His help. That’s the only way that leads to life.