AI Summary
5 min readMarvel tried to bury this show
The first official trailer for Ironheart dropped with barely a month before release, and the promotional push from Marvel felt reluctant—like a student who has been caught unprepared and is trying to bluff their way through a presentation they wish they could skip. Asmongold draws a direct parallel: Marvel commissioned this show five years ago, during the peak of the "let's swap out beloved legacy characters for diverse new alternatives" craze in the MCU, and has spent the intervening years watching audience patience erode. Now they are stuck releasing something they know is unpopular, with no way to fix it.
A show born in the wrong era
The central problem, as Asmongold presents it, is timing. Ironheart was conceived when Marvel believed they could do no wrong, built around a comic book character from what he calls "arguably the least successful era of Marvel comics ever." The character Riri Williams, in his telling, "did nothing but ride the coattails of her far more popular male predecessor, only with none of his charm, likability, flaws, or character development." By the time the show is actually releasing, the MCU has been "nothing but a slow-moving train wreck" for years, and whatever goodwill might have allowed Ironheart to scrape by has evaporated.
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What you'll learn
- 1 Ironheart: No Wonder Marvel Tried to Bury This Show
- 2 (00:29) **Marvel's Ironheart Problem** - Asmongold introduces the core thesis: Marvel commissioned Ironheart at the peak of the "swap beloved legacy characters for diverse alternatives" craze, based on an unpopular comic character, and now the show is being released into a completely different cultural landscape
- 3 (02:06) **The College Group Presentation Analogy** - Asmongold recounts a personal story about soloing a group project, getting stopped mid-presentation by the professor, and the useless teammates being exposed
- 4 (06:08) **You Can Only Hide for So Long** - Marvel's PR machine reluctantly started promoting Ironheart with barely a month before release, and the first official trailer dropped
- 5 (08:56) **Producers Desperately Spin the Narrative** - Comments from the producers insist Riri is "not a successor to the Iron Man legacy" and that she has "her own identity"
- 6 (11:19) **The Actress Tries to Cement the Narrative** - Dominique Thorne, the actress playing Riri, went on a press tour insisting this isn't exploiting Iron Man's legacy, and claimed Robert Downey Jr. gave her his blessing
- 7 (13:00) **"She's So Much Better Than Tony Ever Was"** - The actress added that Riri is "so much better and smarter and more resourceful" than Tony because she's "dumpster diving" while he was a "bajillionaire"
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