SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the final three episodes of Marvel‘s Ironheart.
Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) has gotten herself into quite the predicament.
Marvel’s six-episode series Ironheart concluded Tuesday with an action-packed second half that saw Riri strike a deal with the devil himself. That’s right. Mephisto has officially entered the MCU, played by none other than Sacha Baron Cohen (which Deadline predicted nearly three years ago).
In the finale, viewers learn that Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos) aka The Hood was being corrupted by his red cape, imbued with destructive magic from Mephisto. The demon visits Parker and, ultimately, has a run-in with Riri where he strikes a deal with the young tech wiz, recruiting her genius for his own nefarious cause. In return? Well, the finale leads us to believe that Riri asked Mephisto to resurrect her best friend Natalie (Lyric Ross), who had been killed along with her father in a drive-by shooting.
“She’s been making all these choices that she thinks other people will approve of,” Dominique Thorne tells Deadline of the ending. “We finally get to the end, and she’s like, ‘I’m going to do what I think is correct and see what happens then,’ because clearly her trying to play both sides hasn’t been working for her.”
The writing is sort of on the wall here. For starters, resurrections in myth and in media tend to bring about some pretty horrible and mostly unintended consequences, and there’s no indication this time around will be any different. Despite her genius IQ, Riri is still a 19-year-old human teenager from Chicago. Mephisto, on the other hand, is an ancient and all-powerful demon who rules over his own dimension.
But, Thorne argues, the teenage mastermind first introduced in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever isn’t really thinking about that when she agrees to work with Mephisto. In reality, she just wants her best friend back.
“What I really appreciate about this character is the fact that we are learning and evolving with her in real time. For as smart as she is and as much intellect and know how she might contain, the intuitive, emotional knowing is not as advanced as her technological know how,” Thorne mused. “I think it takes a lot more energy than Riri cares to expend to really figure out what the best thing to do is beyond, ‘Well, I can make this much money, and the money would allow me to buy this for my suit, and the suits would allow me to make these advancements, and then I could finally see what I want to see.’ I think it really is difficult for Riri Williams to think beyond that.”
Whatever the outcome, the end of the series certainly leaves the story open for both Riri and Mephisto to return eventually. And when they do, Thorne urges viewers not to count Riri out just yet.
“My gut is telling me that that is not the last we have seen of him, and I don’t think that is the last that we’ve seen of him in connection with Parker, and obviously, clearly not with Riri,” she said. “I think Mephisto is probably in for a bit more of a headache than he bargained for with Miss Riri Williams. I think regardless of what Mephisto thinks is going to happen, Riri most certainly has other plans in mind.”
All six episodes of Ironheart are now streaming on Disney+.
