Marvel's Bold Ironheart Finale Is Going To Get Lost Thanks To Avengers: Doomsday
by Aaron Perine · /FilmThis article contains spoilers for Marvel's "Ironheart."
One of my favorite Marvel quotes ever is "Good is not a thing you are. It's a thing you do," said by Kamala Khan early in her run as Jersey City, New Jersey's premier superhero. Much of that sentiment comes down to the choices we make. Every day, when we roll out of bed, we make an active decision to be an active participant in a day spent on this little spinning rock we all inhabit. The studio that birthed the on-screen adaptation of Ms. Marvel has made a lot of exciting choices over the last five years, and the fanbase has accepted some with open arms or let noisey portions of the audience wrestle the controls away from them, but each decision is just that — an active choice to tell a particular story. And with the conclusion of "Ironheart," Marvel Studios might have just proved that The Multiverse Saga was going to be just fine all along.
The "Ironheart" finale offers a glimpse at what the proposed plans for these early steps of The Multiverse Saga's "endgame" would be — Riri Williams has been offered a dastardly choice by the literal devil (Mephisto in Marvel Comics canon here), and it has calamitous repercussions for the greater MCU. Ironheart has the opportunity to resurrect anyone she wants from the dead, yes, essentially a choice between her dead step-father and best friend, and the young woman makes the impossible decision to revive her buddy Natalie, who we have all grown a bit attached to over six episodes. A crushing personal moment, but just as important, yet another Incursion to add to the overflowing list headed into "Avengers: Doomsday."
These Incusions have been peppered throughout Phases 4-5, but most fans have spent years yelling that "nothing makes sense." It's pump-faking yourself into oblivion, and it's hurt the viewers along with the franchise as a whole; however, things have turned a corner as of late. "Thunderbolts*" is the best-reviewed Marvel movie in ages and "Ironheart's" initial reception has been a bit warmer than expected (give up on Rotten Tomatoes for these projects as they serve as a proxy battlefield against imaginary enemies social media told them to hate), and "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" waits in the wings with the kind of stylized approach that has longtime fans intrigued.
Laughably, it's all coming together after a major pivot with "Doomsday" was announced to quell performative online discontent.
Ironheart's finale reveal builds even more momentum towards Avengers: Doomsday
"Ironheart" centers on young adult genius Riri Williams, an inventor who goes about designing her own suit of armor in the vein of Tony Stark. But, the series is not just some "Iron Man" reboot as some erroneous reporting is quick to argue, it's a personal story about a young woman in Chicago trying to make her way in the world amidst some real headwinds trying to dictate her future at every turn. The core conflict in the "Ironheart" series is between magic and technology, a line that proves a bit thorny for a "rational sort" like Ms. Williams in the early going as she battles Anthony Ramos' antagonistic Parker Robbins, aka "The Hood."
By the end of the six episodes, it becomes clear that Riri Williams' only way out of a burgeoning conflict is to pick a side, and she makes that choice, one that is probably going to result in yet another Incursion-style development for the Avengers' would-be roster. For giggles, let's run through all these moments; we have Spider-Man and Doctor Strange's spell going wrong in "Spider-Man: No Way Home," Peter Parker unwittingly letting Venom into their universe in the same movie, Stephen Strange screwing up again and Dreamwalking to defeat Scarlet Witch in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau, and poor Ms. Marvel having to try and repair an incursion during the climax of "The Marvels," and *spoiler alert* the post-credits scene of "Thunderbolts*" featuring a ship that sure does look like The Fantastic Four making their MCU debut. That's a lot of screwing around with timelines, time travel, universes, and the like to deal with.
It seems quaint to think back to how "Loki" season 1 teased a "Multiversal War," but if Ant-Man's defeat of Kang the Conqueror in his last movie got the attention of other universes, there should be a blinking red light going off somewhere about the Avengers we've been following, making a mockery of the time-space continuum. All of this was leading there, but the fanbase refused it on principle because they were upset about ... other things, and we're all worse off for it.
Luckily, Ironheart's big finale reveal might carve a way for the character to appear in Avengers: Doomsday
All the plans that Marvel Studios might have been cooking up were thrown into a metaphorical blender when Jonathan Majors was fired by Marvel Studios, a move that some corners of the Internet celebrated and left others pondering the direction of the franchise (both sides ignoring the very serious matters at play beyond a comic book villain in a green tunic). Enter Robert Downey Jr., back to "rescue" the Multiverse Saga from all the negative headwind, as he'll play Doctor Doom in "Avengers: Doomsday," to a similar mixed response online. One would have to assume that Marvel took the opportunity to toss what they felt like fans didn't want from the previous "Avengers: Kang Dynasty" script and lean into the crowd-pleasing stuff. But that decision wrestles the spotlight away from the admittedly more diverse fans of the Phase 4-5 titles and back to the previous incarnation of the fandom that existed before the TV shows appeared in 2021.
Seeing all the different seeds come to fruition would have been a blast; however, some of those seeds have been scattered to the winds by real-life events, and others by corporate edict that said slow down on the number of titles produced and on TV shows in general. It's a shame, because "Ironheart" is probably in the upper half of the Marvel Television offerings, but it won't feel like that because it's come so late in the game. Heck, this show following "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" directly would have been amazing on social media for the Mephisto reveal alone. Now, the fans that held it down during the ensuing five years are being pushed towards more "street-level" stories, which "Ironheart" is unquestionably positioned as, so the big-budget blockbuster films can focus on more "mainstream" appeal characters.
Simply put, interesting, creative swings are being deprioritized in favor of once again catering to the status quo.
Ironheart's finale deserves to impact the greater MCU
The death of possibility in front of us is like so many sad little branches of little Loki's tree at the center of the multiverse, but that's life in this case, as we're dealing with a large corporation here, and they're not trying to lose money or market share in any way. Fans of the post-2020 titles should take heart in the stories told here and in "Agatha All Along," as these two shows kind of illustrate that the new characters absolutely deserve a spot at the table as well; in fact, they help raise the tide for everyone.
It's a small comfort to see the dots connecting for viewers in fun and surprising ways, thanks to this series, even if their contribution to the greater MCU is probably not going to be as fleshed out as they would have been almost three years ago. But seeing "Ironheart" and "Echo" get their day in the sun is a fun prospect for fans of this current era of superhero storytelling, even if the loudest (and worst) people online allow their feelings about those different from them, dominate the discussions about these shows and movies. Choosing not to abandon ideas because they're "unpopular" is how we got the reminder that Kathryn Hahn's delightful witch was no "WandaVision" fluke, and a worthy focus of the MCU. Moving forward, fans will be tracking both casting announcements and the actions of the studio as it navigates the future, which remains murky and frightening for a lot of people making those decisions. But the finale of "Ironheart" was the right choice to push things forward to a satisfying conclusion, even if "Avengers: Doomsday" abandons any of that momentum.
Now, the only question is the same one we always have after a big Marvel release, "What are they going to do next with these characters?" Well, whatever it is, let's hope that it's good.