Watched ironheart. Got a few questions.

The series was decent. Some scenes were really cool. Loved the characters of natalie, joe, zelma and the hood. So this is what i got. Correct me if I'm wrong

1. She was kicked out of MIT for not focusing on her academics. Because she was busy making money to build an ironsuit. Didn't she have a grant from stark foundation or something? Where did that money go?
2. The moment she was kicked out, she was able to fly out with her iron suit. So what was actually wrong with it?
3. Fast forward, she got some illegal items from joe and now has upgraded(?) the suit but now she uses it to do crimes. She blackmailed joe to let her use those and didn't pay him right? Then why does she need the crime money anyways?

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EnigmaFrug08172025-10-12 19:54

1. Grants don’t last forever and she likely used that money to build the suit. She wasn’t busy making money to build the suit, she was busy tinkering with it rather than actually going to school.

2. The suit literally broke as she was flying out.

3. At that point she was A) in too deep and B) wanted more. Ezekiel didn’t have everything she needed and she is REALLY ambitious and wants to just keep adding and adding to the suit.

Unlikely-Accident-672025-10-12 20:25

Didn't suit break because she lost access to the AI that was helping her control the suit because she was kicked out of MIT ??

Lumpy-Firefighter-342025-10-12 20:29

2. Didn't the suit break because she was expelled and the school ai stopped working and she couldn't control the suit anymore?
3. She could've gone global with her suit and do something good to make that money though. I get your point of being in too deep though.

EnigmaFrug08172025-10-12 21:13

You’re right

She didn’t have the resources to fix the suit. The money was to get the resources.

DoubleStrength2025-10-13 07:13

>She could've gone global with her suit and do something good to make that money though.

She explicitly makes a comment, either in the intro voiceover, or to Xavier or Cousin John, that she doesn't want to hand over her research to the government because then she'll lose control of it.

This is a direct result of what happened in *Wakanda Forever* where the CIA co-opted her technology to make the Vibraniun sensor without her knowledge, which ended up with *Riri marked for death by Talokan*.

Calligrapher_Antique2025-10-12 19:55

How does she get away with so many crimes when she's famous for building an iron man suit? It's not like the suit is stealth or her identity secret.

And there would have been a ton of rich people willing to invest in her.

Lumpy-Firefighter-342025-10-12 20:26

Yh I did think of that but I feel like that's just a plot hole to be honest. Nothing more to be said about it i guess. I mean she's literally doing what tony stark did and no one's batting an eye?

LordDusty2025-10-12 21:29

Unlike Riri, Tony never turned to crime with his suit and anyway as soon after he reveals that he is Iron Man he gets put in front of an official committee to debate him owning the suit.

SeekerVash2025-10-13 14:32

Yeah, that's one of the *many* problems with the show.

Episode 2 really should've been "and then Warmachine arrives and blows her out of the sky".

RavenProject-2025-10-12 19:59

1) She also got kicked out for cheating... not cheating on her own classes, but helping other students cheat by doing their work.

Lumpy-Firefighter-342025-10-12 20:23

Oh that's right. She did mention plagiarism.

Ok-disaster20222025-10-12 20:00

Honestly the character interactions were great, but the motivation of Riri made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Technologically she flew her power armor like 800 miles from New York to Chicago and she can recharge it using wind and solar. Like that technology by itself is revolutionary. Imagine for a moment renewable vehicles that don't need to even be plugged in. Most people drive less than 100 miles per day. She could have licenced the technology to all the car companies and the US military, made millions weaning everyone off of fossil fuels. Like sure MIT gets a cut because I'm sure they have those kinds of agreements produced in the lab, but NBD.Thars not even touching all the revolutionary technologies she made for other students to turn in for homework. Which by the way, those were thesis level devices. Youre not going to turn that in for a weekly assignment.

MIT could have forced her to write a report and turn in anything to complete her degree. Degrees arent some magical incantation. They're paperwork, and in university a president/deans signature overwrites any other requirements.

Also she's still making petty cash in constrast to what she could be making at any kind of lab or tech company.

Ultimate the most umbelievable thing was that recruiters from Stark, Hammer, and other companies weren't knocking on her door within a week of her leaving MIT, especially with her connections to literally Wakanda.

Also I don't like this show and the Acolyte because they final have black women as protagonists in a series with a newer character and they make both of them bad guys. Like she's a black woman, who's a survivor of gun violence dealing with grief with a community who's proud of her achievements. And in the first episode she's robbing people. Like what kind of message is that? It's stupid regressive bullshit.

I couldn't finish the series because I fucking hate breaking bad and stories of bad guys getting worse. I watch superhero stuff you know for people being heroic. And she wasn't. Fuck that shit.

Lumpy-Firefighter-342025-10-12 20:34

Maybe they rushed the writing. There are so many plot holes and what ifs that are more practical than whatever this was. It's no way a bad one but it could've been a much better show.

Terrible-Group-96022025-10-12 23:47

Maybe you rushed your watch.

DoubleStrength2025-10-13 07:10

Half the questions OP has are answered just by watching the show.

Tipop2025-10-14 00:24

A lot of the plot holes are due to it being a comic-book universe. Some things (like the option to sell her tech to car companies or energy companies) just can’t be done without changing the world, and comic book publishers want the comic book world to remain as close to our own as possible. So you have to accept comic book logic.

Steel_Serpent_Davos2025-10-12 20:36

Wah wah if my superhero shows aren’t all goody two shoes captain americas I REFUSE TO WATCH! NUANCE BE DAMNED!!!

wandrin_star2025-10-12 22:27

I think I mostly agree with your take yet I can’t help bristling at the degree to which you’re flattening the perspective of the person you’re replying to and removing all nuance.

Can we at least acknowledge that making Riri get kicked out of MIT and take up crime to finance her suit building obsession is both far-fetched (logically) and yet also tired and predictable in a way that plays into racist tropes?

That said, I loved the exploration of the ethics of Riri’s AI, her relationship with Joebediah, and Sasha Baron-Cohen’s character.

Steel_Serpent_Davos2025-10-12 22:33

Sure I mostly also agree with what they said it wasn’t until their absurd statement about needing all shows to be the same that I disregarded it

wandrin_star2025-10-12 22:42

That seemed to be about what they personally like to watch so I read that as “for my tastes, if you’re gonna phone in a part of the script / plot, at least follow tropes that are comforting and not crappy”, but maybe just me.

Tipop2025-10-14 00:22

I think the rationale was that Riri *WASN’T* unique here. Sure, Stark made the first Iron Man suit, but we’ve seen several others just in the Iron Man movies. We can extrapolate that there are likely dozens of engineers designing powered armor now, maybe hundreds. Riri may be the youngest to make a semi-working one, but she’s hardly unique, and her design clearly needed work. To make a name for herself she needed a suit that was BETTER.

Also, if you start picking apart comic book logic then the whole thing falls apart. Comic book writers need the world to remain mostly like it is in reality, to make the setting grounded. That means Riri can’t sell her tech to car companies or energy companies because that would drastically change how stuff works in her world, and that’s not good for storytelling.

aestheticdisasterr2025-10-12 20:04

1. I hope the information, or at least what I understood, wasn’t wrong, but if it was, someone please correct me, it’s fine. From what I gathered, this isn’t her first year at university, nor is it the first opportunity the institution has given her. So I understand that she had already lost her scholarship before, probably when she failed to meet the requirements in her first year or something like that.

2. The issue is that the entire suit was made using university materials. Even using university resources for personal projects outside the institution can sometimes cause trouble, even if you’re a student in good standing, so it’s an even bigger problem if you’ve been expelled and still intend to take those materials with you. The way I understood it, it’s similar to how some universities lend laptops to their students: you can use them as you wish within legal limits, but by the end of the year you must return them. The same applies to the materials she used for her suit during the course, she could use them freely within the rules, but by the end of the year or once expelled, she should have returned them.

3. I suppose she needs the money to buy her own materials and cover other expenses, right? Maybe I didn’t quite get your question 😅

Lumpy-Firefighter-342025-10-12 20:44

2. Nah she made that suit with her own money(that she got selling her inventions) they do mention that when she was taking it out of the building if i am not mistaken. With the initial selling inventions scene and the expelling scenes i thought she was nowhere close to making an iron suit without an arc reactor but there she was flying out with it in the next shot. Was a bit confusing for me. Then what was she struggling for? I didn't get it.

3. the whole point of Riri wanting to build an iron suit was to protect and help people. But when she has one she's committing crimes to make more money? And money for what? She already has a working suit. Even if she wants more she could've done good things to get it. Why stick with criminals? That also didn't make sense to me.

amb3rjan32025-10-12 21:20

3. was that her whole point of building it? if so, i missed that entirely. im fairly certain the only reason she wanted to build it was "because she could." as in a testament of her intelligence and capabilities that even without money, she is on par or greater than stark.

UnbindA112025-10-12 23:04

It’s a bit of half-and-half. While she’s open about wanting to get ahead of the curve and developing technology that surpasses Stark’s, it’s revealed later on that this came from the trauma of her stepdad and Natalie getting killed.

Basically her end goal is to “have the biggest gun,” so to speak, but only using it to protect her loved ones.

PJL802025-10-12 21:40

1. She was kicked out of MIT for not focusing on her academics. Because she was busy making money to build an ironsuit. Didn't she have a grant from stark foundation or something? Where did that money go?

She was expelled for selling other students the answers to their own projects. She's fixing their work, changing for it, so it's plagiarism and a sure fire breach of academic ethic policies. The Stark Foundation was funding projects for MIT students (see: the opening of Civil War), so that money goes to the school to fund the student projects. To the best of available knowledge, it wasn't answered directly to the students, so once she's expelled from MIT, she has no funding

2. The moment she was kicked out, she was able to fly out with her iron suit. So what was actually wrong with it?

Well, let's hone in on "what's wrong with it?". The controls were integrated with an A.I belonging to the school, and once they turned off her access, that's when it started to fail her into the crash landing. It's not simultaneous with the conversation in the Dean's office, someone has to notify the system administrators and then someone with control has to revoke her access. So unless they had it all lined up for immediate action, that can take hour(s).

3. Fast forward, she got some illegal items from joe and now has upgraded(?) the suit but now she uses it to do crimes. She blackmailed joe to let her use those and didn't pay him right? Then why does she need the crime money anyways?

Cause she's doesn't have money. She's back home in Chicago, doesn't have Stark level funds to rebuild the suit, she was about to barter for even basic parts from a junkyard. That's when John shows up, pays, and offers the criminal opportunity. He can softball it with stealing from the rich, but it's really just about pressing onto Riri's blindspots. She has this brilliance, this ambition to make something, and be recognized. She has no other prospects in her life at the moment, so she takes the "unethical shortcut". It's a character flaw, she shows that with the cheating at MIT, and then she takes up Mephisto's offer at the end. She could navigate through the pain of losing Natalie (both in reality and A.I.), she could try and replicate her again, but she wants her back so much she makes a self destructive choice.

This is my unpopular MCU opinion, but I think this is actually one of the stronger MCU D+ shows out there.

JyconX2025-10-12 22:36

I consider that exactly how the story of Ironheart series is supposed ro be interpreted ;)

knottyErin2622025-10-13 05:53

It's pretty alright, Riri is just a terribly unlikeable character overall so her as the protagonist just sunk it

TherealDeathy2025-10-13 02:00

1) Tony Stark funded all the MIT projects not just hers specifically so its not like she got unlimited funding from the stark grant.

2) Her suit always worked but she never had the optimal power source. it was solar and wind powered but she never had the same power that an arc reactor had. plus her materials were cheaper so it didn't hold together as well.

3) by the time she met Ezekiel, she was already involved in the gang and couldn't get out. Plus Ezekiel didn't have everything she needed, she was still sorting the suit out.

HereWeFuckingGooo2025-10-13 04:32

>The moment she was kicked out, she was able to fly out with her iron suit. So what was actually wrong with it?

Iron Man's Mark II suit did everything an iron suit needed to do. So why did Tony Stark spend all that time and money making more and more suits? Riri is a perfectionist but she's also obsessive. The perfect iron suit is her white whale, it's her entire personality and purpose. It doesn't matter how good a suit is, she'll never stop because it's not about the suit. It's about her. And it all stems from a place of trauma and the need to protect, much like Tony Stark, so it's never going to be logical or rational.

yuei22025-10-13 08:36

All your questions basically tie into not understanding her goals.

Riri is trying to create Ironman tech that can be mass produced and handed out to first responders. In addition to figuring out how to make the tech affordable enough to do so, she has to solve issues like power source as the average joe doesn’t have an arc reactor tech, she’s needs to create an A.I. system to run it, and it will need considerable testing long term.

At the time of the show she has managed to build a suit but not remotely one that is afordable, she has solved the power issue using a combination of solar and wind power, and she has made no headway yet on A.I instead she has been making use of the school’s to act as a placeholder system. She has been at this for a long time and her grant money has long since run its course so she started doing and selling kids homework to make more more cash.

Lumpy-Firefighter-342025-10-13 11:52

That makes a lot of sense. I missed that point in the show. Thank you for pointing it out.