Riri Williams, the child prodigy, left home at a tender age to become the greatest inventor of her generation so she could make her late step dad proud. At the age of 15, she got admission to MIT under the Tony Stark Fellowship, but her ideas were too big to put inside a box. Riri wanted money and resources to bring her revolutionary ideas to life, and her college grant money wasn’t enough, so she started selling assignments to students for easy bucks, which eventually got her expelled. With no other option in hand, she took her iron suit, which she had built from her grant money, and left for Chicago to find a way to fund her passion project. And usually there’s no conflict if the protagonist doesn’t get into a bit of trouble and lose their way while trying to pursue their dreams, which is exactly what happened with Riri as she tried to raise money. So without any further ado, allow me to recap all the major events that took place in the first three episodes of Disney’s Ironheart.
Spoiler Alert
Riri Met Parker And His Gang
Riri’s homecoming journey wasn’t really a smooth ride. She had been using her college AI, TRVOR, on her iron suit, and as soon as she got expelled, she lost access to the AI, because of which she crashed before reaching home. Her ironsuit was damaged, and she really needed money not only to fix the suit but also to create an AI so she could operate her suit without any such blunders in the near future. This was the exact moment when Parker Robbins and his cousin, John, who ran a Robin Hood gang with a bunch of outcast criminals in the area, spotted Riri with her iron suit. Parker asked John to find out more about the young girl, as they urgently needed a replacement for their hacker guy, Rampage, aka Stuart Clarke, who had been constantly botching the operations. So, John approached Riri and told her that his boss was eager to see her skills and therefore left a card in case she was interested in the interview. And Riri, who had no other means to raise money to fix her suit, took the bait and showed up to Desperito Pizza, where Parker, impressed with Riri’s presence of mind and skills, offered her the job. At first, Riri was quite skeptical, as she knew they were a bunch of criminals involved in theft, extortion, and breaking and entering. That was some long list of pretty serious crimes, and Riri didn’t want to hurt someone. Hence she decided to walk away when suddenly Parker showed her a box stashed with cash. Well, money was the only thing that was coming in between Riri and her dreams, which was why she decided to give this job a go. Parker gave her a signing bonus, which Riri used to repair her Iron Suit and prepare it for the first mission.
Riri Created An AI
Back in the day, Riri’s stepdad, Gary Williams, a Tony Stark fan, owned an auto repair shop, where Riri and her best friend, Natalie, spent their evenings. On one fateful night, some people fired shots in the driveway that took Gary and Natalie’s lives. The incident devastated Riri completely, but she never spoke about it with either Natalie’s brother Xavier or her mother, Ronnie. It’s likely that Riri shut herself in with her work so she didn’t have to grieve for the ones she had lost. When Riri returned home, Xavier gave her a mixtape that had Natalie’s recording on it, which brought back a flood of memories that started haunting Riri. This was the same night when she used brain-scanning technology to create an AI for her iron suit for the next day’s mission. Riri had planned to create a very sophisticated Wakandan AI called Griot by connecting her memories or conscience to the computer, but because she kept thinking about Natalie the whole night, the machine ended up recreating the hologram of her dead best friend. Well, it took Riri a bit of time to make peace with the fact that it was all she had, and maybe such a blunder happened for a reason. Natalie, the AI, helped Riri to come to terms with the tragedy and confront the ghosts of the past.
Riri Came Across Joe McGillicuddy
Riri needed some parts to prepare her robot for the TNNL mission and therefore took the help of her newly built AI, Natalie, to search for some black market vendors in the vicinity. Natalie came up with a name, Joe McGillicuddy, and Riri immediately paid him a visit only to find out that the shady stranger had a secret bunker where he kept his growing collection of illegal weapons and bionics. In his defense, Joe told Riri that his old man was an engineer and the bunker made him feel close to his dad. Well, it was a lie. In reality, Joe, whose real name is Ezekiel Stane, was the son of a supervillain, Obadiah, a former COO of Stark Industries who tried to kill Tony Stark and eventually met his fate. Also, Ezekiel didn’t like his dad at all and didn’t want to end up like him, which was why he was skeptical of lending his tech to Riri, as he suspected she was involved in some criminal activities. Well, at the end of the episode, Riri did leave behind one of Ezekiel’s gadgets at the crime scene, which might implicate him for murder and bring cops to his doorstep. Furthermore, after meeting the young and passionate innovator, Ezekiel too aspired to use technology for the betterment of humanity and had come up with numerous blueprints for which he needed Riri’s help. At first, Riri tried to ignore him and refused his request, but Ezekiel threatened her into helping him, which suggests that he might end up becoming a potential antagonist in the near future.
Parker and Team Blackmailed Tech Millionaires
So Parker and John’s modus operandi was to break into the houses or offices of super-rich and unethical tech innovators and hack their system or program to extort money from them. During the TNNL operation, his team hijacked Sheila Zarate’s underground private highway system and forced Sheila to put Parker and his associates on TNNL’s payroll. He even made her sign a contract to make Parker an anonymous co-owner of the company. Parker, aka The Hood, along with his team, tried to pull off a similar stunt with the CEO of Heirlum Bio Technologies, Hunter Mason, but things didn’t go according to plan, and Parker ended up killing the man.
Parker’s Mysterious Cloak
Parker’s gangmates, especially Riri and their pyrotechnics expert, Clown, were quite intrigued by Parker’s magical cloak that had the power to make one invisible and bend bullets. Clown had heard numerous tales of how Parker got the magical cloak, and she wanted to just wear it once. Meanwhile, Riri believed that if she ever wanted to leave the gang, then she might have to face Parker’s wrath, so she just wanted to analyze the source of Parker’s powers so she was prepared for the worst. This was the reason why she tried to cut up a piece of Parker’s cloak during the Hunter Mason operation, but her weapon’s heat signature ended up raising the alarm and botching the mission. The episode further suggested that Parker’s whole body had been possessed by some sort of virus or demon that was slowly taking over. He had scales over his back and arms spreading across his body. I am still not sure what this is, but it seems Parker had made a sinister bargain for his powers.
John Is Dead
Parker’s next target, Hunter Mason, lived inside a heavily secured facility on a remote island. His stronghold was fitted with security designed to detect any metals that could be considered a threat to the biology, which means the robbers couldn’t carry their weapons and had to be a bit innovative to extort money from the industry titan. The Heirloom Heist was successful up to the point Riri decided to sneak into Hunter’s office to laser-cut out a piece from Parker’s hood while he was threatening Mason to sign the contract and make him the co-owner of his company. As soon as Riri’s laser weapon triggered the bioalert system, trapping everyone in the crew in different greenhouse chambers. The automated alarm system also started filling the chambers with CO₂, which meant if the robbers didn’t evacuate the chambers immediately, then they would suffocate to their deaths. However, all the doors had been locked, and there was no escape. Riri’s iron suit, controlled by Natalie, managed to save everyone on the crew except for John, who caught Riri red-handed with a piece of Parker’s hood in her hand. John tried to kill Riri as he disliked her prying on the cousins too much. This was when Riri confronted John and told him that she knew that they had killed their former hacker, Rampage, aka Stuart Clarke, to tie up the loose ends. Well, John didn’t exactly deny killing Rampage, so it’s possible that it was the cousins who killed him. Next, John tried to kill Riri, but they both started losing their breath due to increasing levels of CO₂ in the air. Thankfully, Natalie arrived at the greenhouse with the Iron Suit and saved Riri’s life, but Riri decided to leave John to suffocate him to death as she didn’t want Parker and the whole gang to find out the truth. However, the very thought of killing a man gave Riri another panic attack as she feared that she had turned into a cold-blooded murderer. She’s definitely going to face repercussions for her actions, beginning with Parker, whose demonic master did reveal to him the truth about his cousin’s death. So while Riri will be struggling with her personal conflict, Parker is going to hunt her down and seek revenge for her dead cousin. Additionally, Riri had also left behind her bio-mesh skin material and the mini laser, which is going to blow up on Ezekiel and expose him to the cops, and Ezekiel might end up bringing the authorities to Riri’s doorstep, as he already knew where she lived. Well, let’s see how all these conflicts get resolved in the next episode.
