By: Brandon Pope
Riri Williams is not your typical college dropout. As Marvel fans discovered in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” she’s a super genius from the southside of Chicago with the technological know-how capable of sparking an international crisis and a war between hidden nations.
“Little did she know that the things she was tinkering with in her lab would get her into all that trouble or get the Wakandans into all of that trouble,” said Dominique Thorne, who plays Riri Williams with charm in the new Disney+ series, “Ironheart.” “She’s got a lot of reflecting to do when she goes back home, for sure.”
The scale of her sandbox shrinks to Chicago in her starring vehicle, “Ironheart,” but the stakes indeed do not. In the series, Williams is expelled from MIT and the Tony Stark-funded scholarship that helped her make an Iron Man-esque suit. She takes it back home to Chicago, where she meets a crime boss who thrusts her into the mysterious world of magic, challenging her scientific mind—and her morality.
“Between ‘Wakanda Forever’ and this, I have had a whole lot of suits,” said Thorne. “It’s grounding for sure. It wakes you up real quick to miss Riri Williams and the scale of her ambition.”
The Ironheart character takes center stage in the Marvel Cinematic Universe after first debuting on the comic pages in 2016 as a successor to Tony Stark’s Iron Man, created by acclaimed writer Brian Michael Bendis. Her first solo comic was written by Chicago sociologist and poet Eve Ewing, who further emphasized the character’s Windy City roots. The city shines in the Disney+ series, serving as a formative piece to the character’s journey.
“Riri is coming from the South Side of Chicago, and that comes with a very specific type of heart, a type of drive and grit that I think we see a little bit more of than in Wakanda Forever this time around,” said Thorne. “We get to peel that back completely, go into Chicago. And get to meet some of the people and the places that make her who she is.”
Chicago-area native and “This Is Us” star Lyric Ross joins the MCU as a new character, Natalie, Riri’s childhood best friend, who soon becomes a posthumous AI. In the comics, Tony Stark is the A.I guide in Ironheart’s helmet, but with Natalie, the classic “voice in the helmet” dynamic takes on greater narrative depth.
“There are so many colors, just to Natalie alone, to the relationship between her and Riri,” said Ross. “It is exactly what I was looking for at the time that it came. And I was just super excited about starting that journey. They basically gave me somewhat of a blank canvas when the audition came through, and that was the start of my freedom when it came to just doing whatever came through.”
For Ross, being a part of the MCU is a lifelong dream.
“When I was little, I was a huge fan of Marvel,” said Ross. “I think I was about two-years-old when …my dad got me into it and said, ‘listen, this is what we’re going to do for every new Marvel release from that point on.’ One of my dreams growing up was just to get some type of local job. This is everything.”
Ross and Thorne stand out for their charisma, charm, and chemistry throughout the series. They also represent Black women in the STEM field. That’s a big a deviation from the typical “tech bros” of the MCU like Bruce Banner and Reed Richards, and something Black girls watching the series could be inspired by.
“The fact that they have somebody like RiRi to look up to, or to look at it as a mirror of some sort is super important because we’ve never had anything like this before,” said Ross. “I’m really excited for what that can do for the next generation and to give more confidence. I know if you have something like that to look up to, sometimes for you the sky is limit.”
The magnitude of the role weighed on Thorne’s mind before taking the job. She views the character of Ironheart as a responsibility that she can’t take lightly.
“I’ve heard a lot of people say, oh, it must have been an easy yes, the easiest yes for you in your life. And that’s not exactly my truth,” said Thorne.
“It definitely required some consideration to think about what it would mean and what it looks like for Dominique Thorne to step into the MCU and to play this character. And as I’m sure you can imagine, the mind goes to a million and one places. But the million and second place that it went to that kind of helped to quiet all the noise was to think about my younger brother and also my now baby niece and other young girls who would be coming up in the era when this is out in the public and to think how it might make them feel . To see something emblematic of what they hope to aspire to. Or something familiar to them, something aspirational and encouraging, and that kind of helped to turn it into the easiest decision. And to say yes.”
Ironheart premieres on Disney+ on June 24 with three episodes. It is rated TV-14.
BIO:
Brandon Pope is an Emmy-winning journalist, TV host, podcaster, film critic, and columnist whose work has appeared on Entertainment Tonight, NPR, BBC, and in the Chicago Sun-Times. He hosts the MAKING podcast from WBEZ and NPR, serves as editor-in-chief of Creative Cypher, and leads the Chicago chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists. Pope also authors the Screening Room Substack, teaches at Columbia College Chicago, and hosts shows on WCIU-TV.