Episode Review: Ironheart Episode 1 - "Take Me Home"

Welcome back to the blog readers. If you know anything about me by now, you would know that I absolutely love Marvel and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). One of the things that I was more lukewarm about was the introduction of Riri Williams / Ironheart in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). Hearing she was getting the Echo treatment gave me some trepidation, but would this episode, titled "Take Me Home," written by Chinaka Hodge, and directed by Sam Bailey, be enough to turn me around? Stick around to find out.

NOTE: I will be using spoilers for my thoughts, so DO NOT read ahead if you have not seen the episode.

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Like I alluded to in the introductory paragraph, I have not been overly excited to watch this show because the character of Riri Williams was not handled the best when she was first introduced. I was still hopeful that we could get a somewhat decent series out of it, plus I love Anthony Ramos. The results that I could gather from this premiere episode are...mixed at best. There are elements of this first episode that I liked, but nothing really gripped me and made me want to watch next week (although I still will).

Only one performance in this episode really endeared to me, and that would be Dominique Thorne's as Riri Williams. Williams' past was never explored in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, but getting to see a new side of this character here tells me all I need to know about the character. And the emotions that Thorne is able to present in this episode really made me root for this character. Based on things that happen in this episode, I have a feeling her emotional psyche will be explored in future episodes and if Thorne can bring the goods like she did here, she could easily turn this whole ship around.

Let's talk about the story of this episode because while I do not think it will have major MCU implications, it may have future implications for this show. We start with a brief overlook of the present that Riri finds herself in. After her "internship abroad" in Wakanda, she has returned to MIT desperate for money and finds herself plagiarizing off other people to gain some. After an incident involving her professor that leaves his arm in a sling, and due to the accident, disciplinary issues, and lack of progress towards graduation, she is being expelled from the school effective immediately. She is told to take her belongings and leave the school, deciding to take her Iron Man-esque suit with her to her hometown of Chicago. Once she gets there, the suit is given the command that she has been expelled and crash-lands on the street.

She returns home to Chicago disgraced but undaunted as she returns to her mother's house (and overhearing her and her friends talk down on her). She reunites with her mother who revealed she knew about the expulsion because she bribed a janitor on her first day to oversee Riri. She is not a fan of this or her nonchalant attitude. The group is interrupted by Xavier, the brother of Riri's late friend Natalie, who takes her out for the rest of the day. He shows her a mural that had been placed up of Natalie and her stepfather Gary and he gives her a mixtape that he made specifically for her. She recalls what happened: she was present at Gary's repair shop when he and Natalie were the victims of a drive-by shooting. She later lashed out at her mother for not keeping the shop in good shape.

Meanwhile, a group of criminals perform a heist on an unnamed and unseen person in their house, and the robbery pretty much goes off without a hitch. They return to their leader, known as the "Hood," real name Parker Robbins. He is looking to get rid of member Stuart Clarke (also known as Rampage) and enlists his cousin John, another member of the gang, in finding Clarke's replacement before booting him. He begins to stake out Riri to join this gang. The next day while visiting her old friend Jim, Riri is confronted by John and presents her with an offer to work for his "boss." He gives her the address of their base telling her to go the next day. When she gets there, the gang begins her initiation by trapping her in an elevator that spits out poison gas and instructing her to defuse the device. She instead gets the elevator fully up to their base and brute-forces the door to escape.

She meets Robbins and his gang that consists of him, John, Clarke, Clown, brother and sister Roz and Jeri, and Slug. She is outraged at the thought of potentially getting killed in the elevator, but is intrigued at the concept of petty and nonviolent crimes. She is still hesitant though, but the concept of financial compensation (a lot of it) is enough for her to accept the offer. He tells her that they will need her suit for the next day. She goes home that night and gets to work rebuilding her suit from the scraps she could recover and decides to listen to Xavier's mixtape, in which he has included a voice recording of Natalie, and breaks down. Later that night, while mapping out her artificial intelligence, she falls asleep and wakes up to it being a perfect replica of Natalie as she abruptly passes out.

Ironheart begins the makings of a promising show but is definitely missing some of the real memorable content that makes it worth the watch. Thank you all for reading, and who else would it be, bitch?