{"id":80022,"date":"2025-07-05T14:40:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T18:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/?p=80022"},"modified":"2025-07-05T14:40:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T18:40:07","slug":"is-ironheart-related-to-iron-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/is-ironheart-related-to-iron-man\/80022\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Ironheart related to Iron Man?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ironheart: Even though the lines between Marvel<\/a>\u2019s phases are starting to feel less important, we\u2019re now moving from Phase 5 to Phase 6 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Surprisingly, the final piece of Phase 5 isn\u2019t the movie Thunderbolts<\/em>, which was the last to hit theatres, it\u2019s a Disney+ TV series called Ironheart<\/a>. And the movie Fantastic Four: First Steps is expected to kick off Phase 6.<\/p>\n

So, who exactly is Ironheart? Have we seen her before in the MCU, and is she connected to Iron\u00a0Man<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Ironheart is a new six-episode show on Disney+. It tells the story of Riri Williams, a smart teenage girl played by Dominique Thorne. She comes back home to Chicago after briefly studying at MIT (yes, she\u2019s a genius). It\u2019s nice to see a Marvel story take place outside of New York for once, Chicago\u2019s skyline has a lot of cool buildings that Marvel could use in future stories!<\/p>\n

The first three episodes of Ironheart came out on June 24, and the final three were added on July 1. If you\u2019re a bit lost on where this fits in with the comics or the movies, don\u2019t worry, here\u2019s what you need to know.<\/p>\n

\n

Is Ironheart related to Iron Man?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

You might think that Ironheart is closely connected to Iron Man, but not in the way you\u2019d expect.<\/p>\n

Riri Williams (Ironheart) doesn\u2019t work for Tony Stark, isn\u2019t related to him, and didn\u2019t get any help from Stark Industries or other Iron Man-like heroes (like War Machine). She\u2019s never even met Tony Stark.<\/p>\n

But Riri is a super smart inventor, which is how she got into the famous school, MIT. She\u2019s a big fan of Iron Man, so she decided: Why not try to make my suit? And she built her version of an Iron Man suit,\u00a0all by herself.<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t even have one of those powerful Arc Reactors that Iron Man used. That just shows how talented she is!<\/p>\n

Unlike Spider-Man, who got his suit and help from Iron Man, Riri figured everything out alone. No billionaire funding her, no fancy labs, just her brain and hard work.<\/p>\n

But, building a suit like that isn\u2019t cheap.<\/p>\n

Parts are expensive, and she\u2019s not rich. That\u2019s where a lot of the story\u2019s drama comes in: she needs money to keep building and fixing her suit. Maybe she could\u2019ve used a mentor (or a sponsor!).<\/p>\n

So, how does Ironheart fit into the Marvel world?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Even though Riri never worked with Iron Man, she\u2019s already appeared in the MCU before!<\/p>\n

If you watched Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, you might remember her. In that movie, a vibranium detector caused some serious problems. The U.S. used the machine to find underwater vibranium, which made the underwater kingdom Talokan angry.<\/p>\n

When the Wakandan heroes Shuri and Okoye tried to find out who built the detector, they ended up at MIT, because Riri built it.<\/p>\n

Later in that film, Riri fights alongside Wakanda using her very first version of an Iron Man-style suit. So, that was our first real look at Ironheart in action.<\/p>\n

In the Ironheart series, one of the villains is Zeke Stane, played by Alden Ehrenreich.<\/p>\n

Recognise that last name?<\/p>\n

You should! Zeke is the son of Obadiah Stane, the villain from the very first Iron Man movie (the bald guy played by Jeff Bridges). So yes, there is a link to Iron Man \u2014 through the bad guys!<\/p>\n

In the Ironheart series, there\u2019s another thing that connects Riri to Tony Stark in spirit.<\/p>\n

Just like Iron Man had a smart computer (like JARVIS) inside his suit to help him, Riri has one too.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s what makes hers different: Riri\u2019s AI is based on her real-life best friend, Natalie. She created the AI and named it:<\/p>\n

\n

N.A.T.A.L.I.E. \u2013 which stands for Neuro Autonomous Technical Assistant and Laboratory Intelligence Entity.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So while Tony Stark\u2019s suit AI turned into a real person (Vision), Riri\u2019s AI started as a real person and became part of her tech. A beautiful flip on Tony\u2019s story.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ironheart: Even though the lines between Marvel\u2019s phases are starting to feel less important, we\u2019re now moving from Phase 5\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":80023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film"],"reading_time":"4 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}