Abhiroop Das
In Disney+’s ‘Ironheart,’ Riri Williams’ heist adventures, intended to fund the completion of her iron suit, take her through a journey of building bonds and developing a moral greyness. Just when victory seems to be in her grasp, she is forced to suffer a devastating loss, echoing the horrors she has endured in the past. The protagonist’s genius and scientific acumen seem to be no match for the magic-infused narrative, and soon she realizes the true scale of the vicious players involved in the game. Desperate to make her life whole again, Riri seemingly takes a gamble, one that can potentially alter the fate of the world. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Ironheart Plot Recap
Teen prodigy Riri Williams is expelled from MIT after she refuses to comply with their limitations. Deciding to head out in style, she takes off in her iron suit, attracting the attention of a heist crew led by Parker Robbins. Upon returning home, Riri realizes that the funds required to improve her suit cannot be procured legally, and thus, she accepts Parker’s offer to join him in his quest to take down the rich and cruel. While creating an advanced AI model for her suit, Riri accidentally infuses it with the persona of Natalie, her dead best friend. Navigating through the confusion, she takes part in her first heist, disrupting TNNL’s underground demonstration. However, things go awry when she is found by a police officer, whom Parker shoots in the shoulder before escaping, planting seeds of doubt in the protagonist’s mind.
The crew’s successes embolden them to take on the highly secured facility of Heirlum BioTech, which does not allow the entry of any foreign metal within the premises. Instead of abandoning her suit for the plan, Riri doubles down, determined to steal a part of Parker’s Hood, which has the ability to turn him invisible. She seeks help from a timid tech enthusiast named Joe McGillicuddy, who is revealed to have a past he is ashamed of, being the son of Obadiah Stane, Stark’s former business partner turned nemesis. After hiding her laser cutters inside Joe’s untraceable bioskin, she manages to extract a piece, but at the cost of the mission, as the system goes on high alert and begins sealing its rooms and filling them with carbon dioxide.
While Riri and Parker save almost everyone in their crew, the former is attacked by John, Parker’s cousin, who discovers her secret mission. Riri’s suit protects her from suffocation in the last minute, and she flies, leaving John behind to die. A series of surreal visions informs Parker of her involvement in the act and triggers his next course of action, which includes carefully isolating her before launching an all-out attack. Unaware of what is coming, Riri seeks the help of Madeline, and her daughter Zelma, two witches who guide her through a magical plane of reality called the Western Cortex of Neverish. Through this excursion, they manage to pin the source of the Hood’s power to an interdimensional entity called Dormammu.
Right in that moment, however, Riri is attacked by the rest of her crew and barely makes it out alive before facing a new enemy, Ezekiel, who has undergone bionic augmentation and become far stronger than before. Using lightning, he quickly destroys Riri’s suit before letting her go, under the promise that she will never return. He lies to Parker about her death, and is supported by a fellow crew member, Clown, who has also grown disillusioned with Parker. An altercation ensues in the group, which results in Parker firing all of them, as his Hood slowly consumes him. Meanwhile, with the help of Zelma, Natalie, and her mother, the protagonist finishes a new version of the suit, which also runs on Dormammu’s magical energy. However, it interferes with Natalie eventually deleting her. Riri is left heartbroken, but with no time to process her grief, she heads out for the showdown.
Does Riri Make a Deal With Mephisto?
After a roller coaster of action sequences, the most crucial confrontation in ‘Ironheart’ happens in the form of a quiet dinner table conversation between Riri and Mephisto. The latter is a supernatural entity who has been pulling Parker’s strings all along. Embodying the Faustian archetype, he scouts ambitious individuals, such as her, and uses his ability to help them maximise their potential. In Riri’s case, her ambitions and desires coalesce into a singular wish: Natalie’s return. The advanced AI model is a contender for the protagonist’s greatest creation, more so than her iron suit, and is therefore necessary in her pursuit of building something iconic. There is also an emotional dimension to it, as the AI’s perfect recreation of her deceased friend Natalie helps Riri cope through her loss and become a better, more compassionate person.
Mephisto, understanding both of her needs, chooses to target them specifically. By subtly implying his ability to bring her back, he offers her a way out of her suffering. Then he complements it by promising a way into a life of unprecedented greatness. When Riri counters his offer by citing the immutability of the past and the need to move on from it, Mephisto quickly calls out her farce, bringing out into the open a feeling that haunts her continually. According to him, time does not heal all wounds; many of them linger and fester, eating a person inside out. Making his case, he reaches his hand out to her, a symbol of the deal’s completion. When asked about the catch to it all, he merely echoes the words he said to Parker, claiming that it’s nothing that she would notice.
The scene of their negotiation is interspersed with a time jump forward, during which Riri tirelessly scribbles out her research regarding dark magic but is pleasantly surprised by Natalie’s sudden appearance. Following an embrace, she asks Natalie to run diagnostics, as a way of dialing things back to how they were. However, the protagonist is in for another shock, as it is revealed that the person who has returned is not the AI model, but the real Natalie, who died a few years ago. While she displays no recollection of her immediate past, Riri doesn’t seem to care, as she joyously reunites with her best friend. This reveal unlocks a whole new set of possibilities, as powerful beings such as Mephisto can seemingly bring people back from the dead on a whim. However, the cost and consequence of this act remain unknown.
Riri’s Deepest Desires Seemingly Unfold in Front of Her Eyes
While the show’s final scenes maintain a strong sense of ambiguity, a case can be made about the entire sequence playing out in Riri’s head, particularly the flash-forwards where she reunites with her dead friend. The scene displays some similarity to Parker’s visions of the past, which also employ a level of imaginative visualization not bound by reality. Therefore, Riri’s visions of Natalie’s return may be merely inside her head, and there to inform the decision she might take. Mephisto understands that a glimpse into a life of happiness can be enough to change someone’s mind. Conversely, letting the scene play out and weighing its pros and cons is another possibility, which seems to be Riri’s course of action, as she constantly doubts the honesty of the entity’s claims.
As such, the final scene, where marks begin to sprout out of Riri’s arm in a similar fashion as Parker, can either be foreshadowing for Riri’s decision to doom her life and become another victim of darker magical forces, or it can be a cautionary vision, which brings her back to her senses just in time to reject his handshake. Before her conversation with Mephisto, Riri experiences firsthand how magic has untold consequences. Her quest to grow stronger using dark magic leads to Natalie’s erasure, and thus, she should be wise enough not to fall for the same trap, one that has previously corrupted people like Parker or Kamar-Taj’s Kaecilius. Nonetheless, her decision remains up in the air.
How Does Riri Defeat Parker?
Before Riri meets with Mephisto, she proves her worth by defeating one of his foremost clients, Parker. Upon meeting, her former boss remarks how he must be the one to kill her, before turning invisible in preparation for his attack. However, Riri has a surprise planned of her own, as she summons Dormammu’s powers to create a magic circle that covers the entire room, nullifying the Hood’s ability. No longer invisible, Parker finds himself cornered and decides to give in to the Hood completely and tap into an extraordinary amount of power. The duel begins with him taking aim with his twin pistols, which do little damage to the iron suit, which seemingly overpowers him in no time. Before she can finish him off, Parker’s body begins to transform into that of a demonic beast, with sharp claws and mouths that easily bite into the iron suit.
Riri desperately tries to push back, but finds herself to be no match for Parker, who seems to have relinquished his humanity. As a last-ditch measure, she commands her suit to start the emergency protocol, which leads to its explosion, filling the room with smoke and debris. While Riri, who appears to have ejected safely, begins to look for Parker’s remains, she is shocked to find him unhurt, with his guns pointed at her forehead. As the young girl begs for mercy, he unflinchingly declares that he is taking revenge for John, before pulling the trigger. However, the clever protagonist reveals this to be a trap, as the bullets go through what appears to be her holographic projection. Without giving Parker a moment to process what has happened, she sneaks up behind him, crushing his arms and taking his Hood away, defeating him for good.
Detached from the source of all of his powers, Parker winces in pain, begging Riri to give the Hood back. However, she refuses, showing him the evil that the Hood has poisoned his mind and body with, and how he is better off without it. He feebly remarks that she does not understand what it is like to be without it, claiming that it hurts. In a poignant moment, she expresses sympathy by stating that she does understand. While her iron suit might not be malicious like the cape, it is nonetheless her sole means of coping with her trauma, as it fills her with a sense of power. The same holds true for Parker, who clings to the suit in the hopes of becoming someone extremely wealthy and powerful. In a way, both the protagonist’s and antagonist’s lives are guided by their fathers; however, their takeaways are drastically different, with Riri eventually beating Parker’s perspective on life.
What Happens to Ezekiel? Does He Still Retain His Powers?
Riri and Parker’s clashing views find a vessel in the form of Joe McGillicuddy AKA Ezekiel Stane. Throughout the narrative, his father’s legacy bears weight on him in two ways: the ambition to take technology forward and the fear of turning to evil. These anxieties ultimately lead to his transformation into Zeke Stane, who, while easily overpowering Riri, still retains a compassionate heart, letting her be free of the system he now participates in. However, their paths cross yet again, with his former ally fighting to make her way to Parker. Having improved tremendously since their last exchange, Riri gains the upper hand, but soon realizes that Ezekiel is fighting on autopilot. Thinking on her feet, she attacks his groin, the only region unaffected by bionic implants, forcing his body to go into panic and the system to shut down.
While the fight ends in Riri’s victory, she has a hard time perceiving it as such, upon realizing that Ezekiel is in this situation because of her own shortcomings. Over the course of the narrative, he interacts with both the protagonist and the antagonist and finds a common thread: their self-interest. The two meet him primarily for transactional purposes, and his involvement often costs him his agency. This is expressed not just in abstract ways, such as his arrest following the discovery of bionic skin at Heirlum, but also literally, when he is fitted with a host of bionic weaponry and its control is handed to Parker, who essentially uses him as a puppet.
In abusing Ezekiel’s agency, Parker fails to recognize the irony of repeating the suffering he has to endure every day. Mephisto similarly manipulates him by first providing him a potent power source before revealing his role as a cog merely serving the whims of his controller. Unlike the boss of the thieving crew, Riri maintains a more understanding, perceptive relationship with Ezekiel, in part due to her growth as a person following the creation of Natalie. Initially, Riri dehumanizes her by reducing her to code and numbers, refusing to accept any emotional aid. Over time, however, she begins to understand the value of genuine connections and raises a team of people close to her. As such, Ezekiel becomes not an enemy to defeat, but a friend to be rescued.
Following Ezekiel’s defeat, Riri puts him to sleep by planting an automated virus in his implants, triggering a hard reset. As he gradually loses control of his body, she places him in a safe location and wraps a sheet of cloth around him; an act of kindness expressing that she still thinks of him as a friend. However, the answer from his end is slightly more complicated. Drifting away into sleep, he expresses his difficulty accepting his new life with an augmented body, lamenting that he has no outlet for all the rage stored inside him. In the end, he tells Riri that their story is far from over, suggesting that the dynamic will see many more twists and turns. Ezekiel’s story is about attaining the mental strength required to assert oneself in the world. Now that he has enough strength of a different variety, his character will truly be put to the test.
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