Fresh off the continued success of Andor's second season, which just concluded its run with the release of its final three episodes, Disney+ has turned its attention its next big sci-fi TV release, and it's returning to the world of Marvel. Since Tony Stark snapped his fingers and sacrificed himself at the end of Avengers: Endgame, there's been a void in the Marvel universe that roughly looks like a character in a big suit of jet-powered armour.
Now that hole is going to be filled by none other than Ironheart, which stars Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, a teen so smart that she's capable of building her own very familiar suit. It's much like that of Iron Man, but with a chunkier aesthetic and some tricks all of its own, as the show's first trailer demonstrates.
We'll see Riri as she blossoms from a side character in the world of Wakanda, from the Black Panther movies, to her own full-scale protagonist. That'll mean teaming up with some new allies, ranging from the obviously nice to others who seem to be a little more menacing.
The show will arrive on Disney+ on 27 June, so it's still over a month away, and its premier will be a little different, dropping three of its six episodes all at once. That means that Ironheart's run won't actually last for very long, given that six episodes is atypically short in the first place. Still, if Marvel's prioritising quality over quantity that's no bad thing, based on some of its other TV efforts' shortcomings.
How the show fares will be really interesting to see – Marvel is in an interesting place at the moment, with Thunderbolts* doing okay but not outstanding work in cinemas and a relative lack of momentum behind its TV work as it stands. If Ironheart can move the needle even a little it'll look like a success.
That said, the fact that we only really started getting teasers in the last week has set some people to doubting, with the assumption being that a bigger-name superhero might get a longer lead-in before a solo series. Do people actually know who Ironheart even is, for example? We'll find out more when the show arrives in late June, either way.
