Marvel just can’t help itself. The house that Stan Lee built (and Kevin Feige turned into a mega mall of blockbusters) has been mashing characters from different universes together and making villains out of heroes for the better part of this decade. But this time, the comic book powerhouse may have gone off the deep end, as a Marvel executive alluded to Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) going the antihero route in the upcoming Ironheart miniseries, comparing her arc to—wait for it—those of Walter White in Breaking Bad and Tony Soprano in The Sopranos.
And now our imaginations are going to the strangest places.
Ironheart executive producer Sev Ohanian told SFX magazine that Ironheart viewers can expect the “brilliant yet flawed” Riri to find herself spiraling down a questionable path he’s not sure has ever been explored in the MCU. Seeing as Thunderbolts recently had a superhero’s internalized depression send people to the shadow realm, I wonder how much darker the MCU can get. Unlike the Thunderbolts, Riri’s dark side might be a bit more grounded in reality.
“She kind of breaks bad in the show, and we go to some uncomfortable places for audiences that I think will be really fun to explore, almost in the vein of Walter White from Breaking Bad or Tony Soprano,” Ohanian said.
Yes, somehow Marvel has seemingly found some connection between a teen superhero and two of the most despicable criminals in 21st-century television history. For those unaware, Walter White broke bad when the underpaid and undervalued high school chemistry teacher was diagnosed with terminal cancer and became determined to not die without building an empire that would help his family and outlast him. That empire turned out to be made of meth. Tony Soprano was already bad but spent six incredible seasons trying to reconcile his violent mob boss life with his desire to be a good person.
Honest question: What the fuck does that have to do with Ironheart? I’m not entirely sure, but this does open the door to some unhinged possibilities.
As the heir apparent to Tony Stark’s iron throne, the MIT student could follow the morally dubious path he laid out when he was selling weapons that ended up in terrorist hands. Alternatively, the young woman who created a way to detect vibranium could go full Heisenberg and find a way to turn the Wakandan export into an injectable drug to help impoverished people around her gain a fighting chance against the cops. Noble intent, but it will just lead to drug-dealing flying robots everywhere like those annoying Amazon Scouts. I also wouldn’t put it past her to become so drunk with power that, like Walt, she spends an entire episode using every weapon she has to exterminate a pesky fly in her workshop.
There’s also a world in which she realizes these suits she’s creating cost a lot of money and just unleashes swarms of robot drones to break into banks while she’s telling kids to get good grades and stay in school. Can you imagine Riri needing to go to therapy like Tony Soprano? She also could just start killing people to avenge her dad’s death.
There is some comic book precedent for her not-so-good streak. In the comics, she grows distant and emotionally detached from her fellow superhero allies, opting to focus more on tackling the Ten Rings organization and the mystery of her father’s death than mending any personal relationships. She even beats a villain so badly in a fight that her teammates are concerned she could one day kill someone. That sounds like she could easily break bad.
We’ll see how closely she resembles the two iconic TV show villains when Ironheart hits Disney+ on June 24.