Though we haven’t met Riri Williams yet, her superhero series Ironheart is busy assembling its team.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ryan Coogler’s Proximity Media has joined the Disney+ series, with the Black Panther director serving as one of its executive producers. The show has also found its directors in Sam Bailey and Angela Barnes. Bailey (Dear White People, Grown-ish) will helm episodes one through three, while Barnes (Blindspotting, Mythic Quest) will direct four through six.
Created by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Mike Deodato, Riri Williams is a teenage Black genius who uses scraps to build her own Iron Man suit in her MIT dorm. Once Tony Stark discovers her suit, she’s brought into the superhero fold, fighting alongside Black Widow, Spider-Man (Peter Parker), Spider-Man (Miles Morales) and Ms. Marvel. She will be played by Dominique Thorne, who is set to debut in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
As usual, Marvel has told us nothing about what to expect from the Ironheart series or the character’s role in Black Panther 2. If we were to take a wild guess, Wakanda is the perfect place for a young Black girl genius looking to enhance the tech of her homemade Iron Man suit. Perhaps, she’s in Wakanda learning how to fight?
Anthony Ramos (In the Heights) and Lyric Ross (This is Us) are the only other members of the cast we know about. Marvel has done the coming-of-age story with Hawkeye, and the upcoming Ms. Marvel, so I really hope the studio decides to go in a different direction with Ironheart. Maybe we’ll get the introduction/origin story out of the way in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever?
Another Marvel series that we know less than nothing about, but could possibly involve Riri, is Armor Wars starring Don Cheadle’s James Rhodes/War Machine dealing with the fallout of Tony Stark’s tech getting out in the world.
I guess we’ll get some of our questions answered when Black Panther: Wakanda Forever hits theaters Nov. 11.