Ironheart: Are TNNL and Heirlum BioTech Real Companies?

Disney+’s ‘Ironheart‘ follows the transformation of Riri Williams from a harmless tech prodigy into the lynchpin of a high-profile heist crew. Her collaborations with the enigmatic Parker Robbins find her targeting industry giants, putting a stop to their acts before they hurt the downtrodden members of society. Two of the companies that she faces in the show are TNNL and Heirlum BioTech, two companies from two entirely different industries united in their greed and dehumanization. While the protagonist and her team successfully take them down, it doesn’t come without its share of challenges, which they endure, surpass, and learn from. Riri walks a fine line between curbing the companies’ reckless ambition and fueling her own. SPOILERS AHEAD.

TNNL is a Tech Venture Partly Inspired by a Popular Company

TNNL is a semi-fictional company brought to life by the writing team behind ‘Ironheart.’ While the organization seems to stand on its own two feet for the most part, vague similarities can be drawn with Elon Musk’s The Boring Company. TNNL’s endeavors become the narrative’s driving force for episode 2, ‘Will the Real Natalie Please Stand Up?’ The company converts freight tunnels into a circuit of private highways in Chicago, ensuring a time-efficient and secure commute. The company’s CEO, Sheila Zarate, is seemingly a figure of renown, procuring funds from multiple high-profile investors while superficially addressing the social value of her company’s innovations. To assert her confidence in the newest project, she decides to personally take part in the demo run, occupying one of the car taxis.

TNNL’s potential real-life counterpart displays similar aesthetics, ideas, and public perception. The Elon Musk-led venture initially began with the intention of bringing the hypothetical mode of transportation called the Hyperloop to life. However, its ambitions shrank over time, with the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop eventually becoming its flagship project. Presently, the loop uses standard Tesla vehicles as a shuttle, transporting passengers over a 1.7-mile stretch. In ‘Ironheart,‘ TNNL’s system carries cars on a high-speed elevated platform using magnetic propulsion, displaying a futuristic departure from the Las Vegas Loop. Furthermore, TNNL merely redesigns existing tunnel networks compared to the Boring Company, which has led significant boring projects in preparation for their underground highways.

Within the narrative, the works of TNNL are suggested to be subject to controversy, with their tunnels overrunning established local communities. This practice seemingly makes them the target of Parker’s crew, which disrupts their demo night by hacking into the system. Following this, Parker negotiates a deal with Sheila Zarate, making his team an anonymous co-owner of the company. In reality, The Boring Company’s work has also received some mixed reception in certain quarters, with some citing false promises, poor working conditions, and a waste of resources. While the two companies’ projects have gone through different trajectories, they nonetheless share the same base concept. To that end, a semblance of reality grounds TNNL as an enterprise, even though it primarily follows an original journey in the Disney+ series.

Heirlum is a Fictional Company That Produces Results Using Bioengineering

Heirlum, the biotechnology company created by the writing team of ‘Ironheart,’ is a fictional organization that subverts the show’s established heist format titled ‘We in Danger, Girl.‘ The company has no direct antecedents in real life but might be loosely inspired by various large-scale farming companies and institutions popular in Chicago, such as McCain Foods and Hazel Technologies. While briefing the team on the operation, Slug describes Heirlum as the concept of old meets new on steroids, as their work involves the application of the latest farming technology to specially preserved antique seeds, resulting in high-quality production of rare plants and crops. Their CEO, Hunter Mason, is described as a Chicago local who has since grown into an agro-industry magnate.

The name Heirlum bears some resemblance to the word Heirloom, which is also the name of two notable companies. The first is Heirloom, a biotech company based in San Francisco that is dedicated to developing Direct Carbon Capture, or DAC technology, to reduce carbon pollution in the atmosphere. While the second company is also called Heirloom, it is an entirely different enterprise, creating data-management software exclusively for farmers, making the process much more efficient. Thus, some of Heirlum’s central business practices and methodology may have been loosely derived from companies such as these, including its similar-sounding name. However, these connections are largely superficial as the company in the show is a fictional enterprise designed to have a specific role in the narrative

In the series, Parker’s crew targets Heirlum because its advanced production methods put local farmers out of business. Corporate hijacking of the agricultural industry is a real-life concern, with many small-scale and family farmers protesting against big companies. The central Heirlum facility has a unique, defensive design, with multiple greenhouses extending out of an atrium in a star-shaped formation. Furthermore, it has a highly advanced security network that prevents foreign metal from entering the premises. This tight-knit presentation clearly identifies its various fictional elements. While Parker breaks and eventually kills the CEO before a deal can be negotiated, real-life activism has yet to cause any significant change in the existing system.