Ironheart 💔: Hero or Anti-Hero?

Episodes 4-6

Riri is the epitome of doing something “for someone,” but really, it’s for themselves, which ironically has little to do with the person it's for. It's like giving someone a gift they didn't ask for, but it made you feel good. The gift is really about your ego, and the present is just a means to stroke it. Riri isn't working “with” the community; she’s “doing for” the community, justifying the means to her desired end, and making her feel less like a hero and more like an anti-hero. This isn’t to imply that Riri is apathetic to the feelings of others. Still, it’s to suggest that her self-indulgent preoccupation with “protecting” others often paradoxically endangers them, as there’s no pretext she’s unwilling to forge to justify her means of recklessness. Riri is grieving from her unprocessed experiences of trauma, which, in her attempt to repair, she often destroys through maladaptive adjustments that augment her emotional dysregulation.

Despite these struggles and turmoil, Riri has had a multitude of village members seeking to assist her in her time of need; yet, Riri has chosen to alienate others and isolate herself. Consequently, Riri has a pathology of errant decision-making, which is often manipulative, negligent, destructive, and transgressive for a “good cause”. These shades of gray paint her as an anti-hero who's willing to blur the lines to clear her conscience. As evidenced by asking her loved ones to wear watches to protect them, while ignoring how she's the one who is endangering them. Additionally, she puts her mom and her mother's friend in jeopardy by bringing Red Hood's cloth into her shop and creating a potential threat under the guise of “healing”. Riri’s mendacity is limitless in the face of a goal she wants to achieve, and when questioned with “why”, she smugly replies “because I could”. This hubris doesn’t bode well for her likability as a protagonist, and makes it challenging to “root for her” when what she’s doing is sabotaging the people she professes to love.

Riri justifies her poor decisions by projecting her unprocessed turmoil onto her mother and making her feel bad for being concerned about her well-being. Riri has been running from the inevitable, and like it was destined to do, it has caught up to her.

All bad faith deals have created a wedge between those she loves and burned bridges with those she made promises to. Riri finally has her breakthrough moment with her mother and Natalie, making her feel vulnerable and accessible. Riri reveals the meaning behind her “because I could” to her mom; it’s a defense mechanism cloaking her acute fear of losing those around her again. So, her maniacal obsession with the suit is her way of preventing tragedy from striking again. Riri has a beautiful moment where she revisits a memory with her stepdad from her childhood in the old shop, which is a poignant display of palpable joy and grief. This endearing scene begins to humanize Riri in a way that makes her feel relatable, an example of tenderness rarely seen due to her tough exterior, even outside the suit.

Yet this moment is fleeting, as she seeks to do things her way once she loses Natalie while her suit merges with magic. Ultimately, Riri finds herself making a deal with the devil in Mephisto. Once again, doing things out of a selfish spirit. Riri in the comics is a super genius who is innovative and rambunctious, yet operates with honor. However, the MCU transformed her into a duplicitous felon who’s on the precipice of becoming a monomaniac, her hubris and obsession seemingly interminable.

Riri wasn't a hero; she was an anti-hero. An anti-hero is someone who is defined by acting out of moral ambiguity, which blurs clearly defined lines of right and wrong. Riri far too often flirted with debauchery for a “good cause”, again making it hard to “root for her” because her individualism often came at the expense of those she loved with little foresight.

Ultimately, Riri felt less like a super genius and more like an erratic time bomb waiting to detonate. And she did, despite those who tried to intervene, despite the obvious signs of her ticking; she ignored others' offers to diffuse her inevitable implosion. While Riri is indeed dealing with trauma, grief, and anxiety, her actions are inexcusable when she’s been given a multitude of alternative routes and still chooses to jeopardize others, making her less of a sympathetic figure. Trauma, while an explanation isn’t a justification. Comparatively speaking, this story mirrors much of Franklin Saint's from the Snowfall arc.

Franklin began selling Crack because he felt he could enrich the quality of his family life, but as power tends to do, it began blinding him from the path of destruction it left in his wake. Now, is Riri a drug dealer with an empire? No, but she’s high off the same product as Franklin, ego. Which caused him to lie, manipulate, and deceive for the “right” reason and ultimately blur lines, just as with Riri. This series felt more like a potential villain arc than a hero's backstory. Executive producer of the show, Sev Ohanian, supports this by suggesting that Riri is in the vein of Walter White from Breaking Bad or Tony Soprano.

For a character comparable to Miles Morales, Riri was portrayed as an egocentric, duplicitous felon whose self-centered pursuit led her to put out fires she ultimately created. How does this image reflect a positive role for Black girls to admire?

Riri never redeemed herself; if anything, she doubled down and lost her soul in the process. This series takes what could have been a positive representation of a Black girl as a super genius who endures adversity, makes poor decisions, and redeems herself. Instead, Riri appears to be less Obi-Wan and more Anakin, someone who is widely talented but lacks a shrewd moral compass and prudence in her methods.

While this show was well-written and entertaining, its lasting impression didn’t offer much hope or heroism, but instead served as a cautionary tale.