Ironheart Recap: Only Baddies Make Their Names Acronyms

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Riri is in denial about Natalie’s appearance, but I, for one, am delighted. There’s some debate over whether or not she’s real, and Natalie gets all metaphysical, wondering, “What is real, exactly?” It’s a good question, one we’ll return to frequently when it comes to Natalie, Riri, and their friendship.

Riri refuses to call her new holographic A.I. function “Natalie.” “You could call me ‘Neuro Autonomous Technical Assistant and Laboratory Intelligence Entity’ instead, but N.A.T.A.L.I.E. just rolls off the tongue a little better, you know?” I know that acronym is super-clever, but don’t expect me to key in all caps and periods every time I mention her.

Creating tech that resembles her best friend wasn’t on Riri’s 2025 bingo card. She was seeking a replica of the holographic technology she had seen in Wakanda. Maybe she’s forgetting that a key component of Wakandan communication is accessing the Ancestral Plane. Subconsciously, Riri manifested the ancestor she needed most. A very Wakandan concept indeed.

Ronnie thinks that Riri is being too secretive, and it’s really quaint that she thinks that secrecy has to do with Riri hiding a boy in her room. Or a girl! This is our first indication that Riri may be bi. So far, our only potential love interest has been Natalie’s brother, Xavier, but now my eyes and ears are perking up for some competition! There are a lot of beautiful people of varying gender expressions in this series.

Riri tells Natalie she can’t reveal herself to Ronnie or anyone else; her existence would be difficult to explain, and even Riri is still creeped out by the uncanniness of it all. Xavier shows up as Riri leaves for work and asks her to a Saba concert. A Chicagoan mating ritual, if ever there were one.

At Hood’s lair, the heist crew is watching an ad for a new subway system, TNNL. Riri is late to the robbery-planning session, but she brings bagels, so all is forgiven. Hood proceeds to formally introduce the crew. Slug (Shea Coulee) is their hacker. The Blood Siblings, Ros and Jerry Blood, are back alley fighters and team muscle. Clown is the pyrotechnic specialist. And we already know John, Hood/Parker’s cousin. He’s HR, a recruiter, a mechanic, and a knife man. They all have more personality than Parker himself, who’s going for enigmatic but is coming off as more of a cipher.

Parker wants to know where Riri’s iron suit is, and she says it’s at home charging. “Charging” is relative, I guess. This thing still looks like it’s one strong wind from a scrap heap. Natalie helps Riri find out who Stuart used as his spare parts supplier. Someone named Joe. Is it me or are some of these characters getting off a little too easy with the common names? John? Joe? Generic. Joe turns out to be a suburban pushover whose persimmons tear through his soggy paper grocery bag when he bumps into Riri outside his house. He tries to pretend he isn’t a biomechanical mastermind, but Riri blackmails him into helping her. On the ride to his hidden parts shop, Joe laments how often he gets blackmailed. Riri points out that a backbone might help. And then they rock out to Alanis Morissette.

Back at Riri’s house, Natalie decides that nobody puts baby in a corner and projects herself onto the canvas of Ronnie’s painting-in-progress. You’d think Ronnie would be at least a little nonplussed, but she just welcomes Natalie back in whatever form she’s taken now. It has to be a byproduct of having a tech-prodigy daughter. I can only imagine what wild things she’s seen pop up on her phones, tablets, walls, and ceilings.

Joe pulls his dusty Subaru wagon up to his secret bionic scrap-part silo and uses a retinal scanner to gain access. In a glaring attempt to convince us that he’s a cinnamon roll, a “Live, Laugh, Love” neon sign glows on one of the walls. He tells Riri that this bunker makes him feel close to his dad, and they bond over having dead father figures until Joe decides to redirect to a much less interesting line of conversation.

The iron suit. He wonders why Riri built it if she was just going to use it to pursue a life of crime. “Because I could,” rings her familiar refrain. We keep hearing about “proper” uses of tech and whether Riri is on the right side of the history she’s making as an inventor. But aside from her pre-expulsion speech at MIT, we haven’t seen her grapple much with “doing good.” She joined up with Hood’s motley crew of mercenaries way too quickly for us to think she’s really torn about all of this.

To prove his own strong sense of ethics, Joe refuses to touch the magnetic repulsion field he’s giving to Riri. I guess holding the parts makes misusing them too tempting. He also fears he could be implicated in a crime later. Fingerprints and all. Still, when Riri presses, Joe caves, eyes shining with a heady sense of the field’s power. Riri’s not a bad ethical influence at ALL, right?

She flies off in her now-functional suit to meet the heist crew. And I have to believe that cueing her departure to Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody” means she won’t remain on the wrong side of the law for long. Chaka should only be used for good. Hood materializes in the TNNL CEO’s car — random acts of invisibility and visibility are among his many powers. He forces her to agree to a deal that gives him and his team co-ownership of TNNL. She signs his contract. Probably because Anthony Ramos is so hot. But also because it’s a better option than dying in the underground implosion Hood threatens.

Even though Riri’s role in the mission was compromised when Natalie jailbroke the iron suit and distracted her, they make it back up to street level relatively unscathed. But before they can sigh in relief, a nervous security guard pulls his gun on them. Riri tries to de-escalate the situation, which might have worked if Natalie didn’t start to glitch. Can holograms have PTSD? The guard threatens to shoot, but Parker beats him to the punch, bending the bullet so that it hits the guard. It should be the moment when Parker moves from cryptic to fearsome, but Hood just looks bored. What if the scariest thing we ever learn about him is how resigned he is?

Riri is also trying to get to the bottom of what makes Parker tick. She asks Clown what she really knows about him. All Clown knows is that she once saw him shirtless, and it was truly a vision. Same, girl. Oh. Clown means because his back is covered in scales. John tells them to mind the business that pays them. Parker raises a toast to Riri and his found family. Everyone raises a glass without hesitation except Riri, who can’t get out of Hood’s headquarters fast enough.

Back in her neighborhood, she projects Natalie onto the street beside her and grills her about why she glitched back at the crime scene. Natalie doesn’t have time to unpack that. She’s got Parker on the brain. Natalie picked up some very bad energy when the suit got close to his cloak. She tried to analyze it but couldn’t trace its energy source.

There’s light flirting afoot at the Saba concert, but I’m still not all-in on Riri and Xavier as a couple to watch. They’re both still grieving Natalie, and it seems like their strongest point of connection. Xavier says he wishes he could still talk to Natalie. Should she let him in on her secret?

Meanwhile, Parker’s back is killing him. John meets him in his temp-controlled Hood Vault, and his back starts … erupting? Maybe in scales? It looks more like black veins to me. Whatever they are, they’re definitely spreading. John says he can’t keep covering the damage up with tats. Parker says it’s the price he has to pay. “After what ‘he’ did to me.” Who’s he?!

When Riri gets home, Ronnie compliments her on creating N.A.T.A.L.I.E. “It’s like you brought back her entire soul.” She asks if she could also bring back Gary, and it’s heartbreaking to realize that Ronnie’s been harboring that hope all day. In the suburbs, Joe throws out his Live, Laugh, Love paraphernalia, marching over to his non-poop-scooping neighbor’s yard and hacking away at her flower bushes to the tune of Alanis’s “You Oughta Know.” Our cinnamon roll is burned!