Ironheart - Take Me Home (2025)

 

Take Me Home is the first episode of Ironheart, the MCU's most recent streaming series, streaming only TV shows that tie into the Marvel movies. In this first episode Riri, a teenage inventor who has created her own Iron Man inspired suit, gets expelled from MIT for selling her inventions to college students, so those students can turn them in as assignments. Going back home Chicago, Riri is still dealing with the premature deaths of her best friend, Natalie Washington and her stepfather Gary. Meanwhile her cousin Parker Robbins tries to recruit Riri to join his gang. 

This is a rather weak start to the series. I hope this series improves as so far this might be the weakest of the MCU streaming series. The main character is quite unlikable. Nowhere in these 45 minutes does the episode give us a single reason to like her. She is completely self-entitled and treats those that set out to help her rather terribly. It is true that she is going through a hard time but there are people giving her a chance that many people in her position could only dream of and she is completely ungrateful for it. It is true that teenagers can be self-absorbed, but the previous Marvel series Ms. Marvel understood this, while still making the character likable. Meanwhile, this episode seems to continue the unfortunate trend of these Marvel streaming shows having much weaker and blander villains than the Marvel movies. I hope who this episode sets up as the villain doesn't turn out to be the villain of the series as he is simply a bland everyday hoodlum and weak antagonist for a superhero series. The story is as basic and unsurprising as they come. Often it just seems to be going through the motions. Even as an MCU fan, I admit this is not very good. 

This episode was directed by Sam Bailey who has previously directed episodes of such TV series as Grown-ish and Dear White People as well as co-producing the web series Brown Girls. This is her first time working on an MCU project. It was written by Chinaka Hodge, the series creator. In a career that began in the 1980's she has worked as a poet, playwright and screenwriter. This is also her first MCU project.