Attention
: this article contains
spoilers
complete with Iron Heart.
Iron Heart
It came to an end after the release of the three final episodes of its first season on Disney+. The conclusion of Riri Williams’ (Dominique Thorne) adventure places her in the middle of a trap created by Marvel’s own demon of the multiverse: Mefisto. However, the show’s biggest attraction also turns out to be its greatest flaw.
Yes, a
the presence of Mephisto was more than expected
since Marvel arrived on Disney+ in
Wandavision
In Heart of Iron, Sacha Baron Cohen delivers a very convincing live-action version of the character, but the whole problem is that he ends up leaving the series without a conclusion—and not in the sense of an open ending for the season; literally, the series ends without making clear what the outcome of the conversation we watched is, by the end of the episode.
To make matters worse, we still have a post-credits scene featuring magical side characters — something the MCU has already shown it does, only to never return and develop that story. After all, why doesn’t Marvel know what to do with the magical characters in the MCU?
A problem that is not new
In a way, magic didn’t take long to appear in the MCU. In fact, it showed up even before Captain America. In Thor (2011), Chris Hemsworth’s character explains to Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) that what we call magic here is actually technology from other planets, like Asgard. Right. Anyway, that’s how magic was treated in the MCU until the arrival of Doctor Strange in 2016.
The film starring Benedict Cumberbatch portrayed magic as actual magic, with a rich and hidden universe within our world. It featured magic schools, disciples, and even extremists like Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen)—who is actually cited by
Zelma
(Regan Aliyah) in Ironheart. That is, all the witches of Earth in the MCU seem to know about the stories that happened with the Sorcerer Supreme.
And it’s precisely at the end of the first Doctor Strange movie that Marvel started to show that it no longer quite knew what to do with all these characters within the MCU. The post-credits scene showed Baron Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) hunting magic users across the planet. Since then, we’ve heard nothing more about the character, but considering we now have so many magic users appearing in TV shows and films, his mission seems to have failed.
In Avengers: Endgame, while Earth’s mightiest heroes face off against Thanos’ forces, the Sorcerer Supreme is busy holding back a waterfall.
After all, even Zelma and her mother manage to practice magic in Chicago without worrying much about hiding what they do. There was also the entire unfolding of Wandavision and
Agatha
, both completely about magic, and no sign of Mordo appearing. Speaking of Wanda, she herself is already another problem for Marvel.
Scarlet Witch is said to be a supremely powerful being in the MCU, although this has never truly been depicted with the character portrayed by Elizabeth Olsen. In the comics, as we know, she does an awful lot, but in the movies and series, this has rarely been shown. When the character was cast as the villain of
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
, we were expecting her to show more of her power, but in the end she ends up being killed(?) in a really uninteresting way.
And that’s how we can describe the post-credits scene of the same movie, which simply ignores a problem the hero had at the film’s end, introduces a new character without any explanation, and takes him to another universe to resolve some sort of multiversal crisis that nobody—not even Marvel—seems to care about. Not that the issues with Doctor Strange are unique to this movie, of course. In
Avengers: Endgame
, while Earth’s greatest heroes face the forces of Thanos and
Ant-Man seems to be in two different places at the same time
, the Supreme Magician is busy holding back a waterfall. Even so
Spider-Man: No Way Home
, Strange is tricked by a teenager and ends up trapped in another dimension for much of the movie.
It’s as if Marvel’s screenwriters and executives don’t quite know what to do with such powerful characters, so they have to make them disappear in order to avoid solving the story’s problem faster than the script requires. These are usually silly solutions for characters who, because of their own magical power, require special attention to deliver more. But the MCU has increasingly valued quantity over quality, not allowing much time for a good story to develop that incorporates all this power. Therefore, it’s better to simply remove them from the game. Just like Doctor Strange himself, who probably won’t appear in
Avengers: Doomsday
.
The magic in Iron Heart
Even before Mephisto’s appearance in Ironheart, magic already existed in the series through the Hood (Anthony Ramos), who uses a magical artifact to gain powers from another dimension. With Zelma’s introduction, we learn that this dimension is something sinister, adding yet another magic-related problem to the MCU’s narrative. In one episode, Zelma manages to transport herself, Riri, and their mothers into a parallel dimension. However, when the heroine is without her armor and in danger, Zelma is unable to do the same, with no explanation given for this limitation (just like there’s no explanation for Riri running straight out in front of a car instead of toward the sidewalk, although at least that results in a badass scene later, right?).
In the end, we find out that the hood (the piece of clothing) was indeed Mefisto’s, who gave it to a completely desperate Parker Robbins who longed for power. In a very interesting fight scene blending elements from the early Iron Man movies—where the CGI looked realistic and had nothing to do with nanobots—with magical aspects reminiscent of Doctor Strange and Wandavision at their best moments, the main character manages to rip the hood off Robbins, leaving him weak without his magical garment. Everything seems to end well, except that the devil is in the details.
In this case, literally. Mefisto appears offering the pizza that the devil kneaded for Riri, who doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about the idea at first, but eventually sits down at the table with him to talk. She leaves her armor charged with magical energy by Zelma, which ultimately caused her AI based on her deceased friend Natalie to disappear completely. This is still on her mind, and it’s there that Mefisto takes advantage to make a proposal.
The moment seems loosely inspired by Spider-Man’s One More Day, the comic saga known here as Um Dia a Mais (One More Day). In it, Peter makes a deal with Marvel’s devil so that his beloved Aunt May returns from the dead. To do so, however, he gives up his love for Mary Jane. In the series, though, we don’t see whether Riri accepted the deal, but we do see flashes that may indicate she did, and that the real Natalie has returned from the dead without fully understanding what was happening.
Neither Thorne nor Baron Cohen are listed to appear in Avengers: Doomsday, the MCU’s next big event film. And honestly, who knows when we’ll see this storyline returning to the MCU, so leaving the series without a conclusion is basically Marvel telling us they still don’t know how they want to use these characters in the future.
Chinaka Hodge, creator of the Iron Heart series, spoke to
Entertainment Weekly
how little of the ending was her idea. “It wasn’t my decision. (…) I don’t know what will happen next with the character or with Sacha in the MCU,” Hodge stated, adding that she was just as surprised by the season finale as the audience itself—and she’s still the show’s head writer.
To further complicate the unresolved magical endings in Marvel, the post-credits scene of Ironheart shows Robbins meeting with Zelma and asking for “Supreme” help. Doctor Strange seems quite busy, as whatever happened after his encounter with Charlize Theron’s character has left him unavailable—not even for the next Avengers movie. Will he still find time to meet two young people from Chicago?
This question will remain unanswered, like so many other unaddressed magical questions in the MCU. If there is a second season of Ironheart, as Hodge seems hopeful about in his conversation with EW, let’s hope that by then Marvel has already decided what to do with this important core element of the MCU.
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