IRONHEART Makes Her Debut in BLACK PANTHER 2
In an interview with comicbook.com about the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Marvel Studios Head-Boss-In-Charge Kevin Feige revealed that Riri Williams, also known as Ironheart, will make her debut in Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever, arriving July 8th, 2022.
Ironheart
The role of Williams will be played by Dominique Thorne.
Thorne attends the 56th New York Film Festival in 2018. Photo: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
According to Feige, she started shooting Black Panther 2 this week ahead of the production beginning for the Ironheart series on Disney+, which will be written by Chinaka Hodge.
After the news broke at comicbook.com, Ironheart’s debut in Black Panther 2 was subsequently confirmed by Variety.
Photo: Listal
What to make of Ironheart’s inclusion in the Black Panther sequel? Well, as you might imagine Marvel Blog True Believers, I have one or two ideas.
Wakanda Forever
Consider the final minutes of Black Panther, which saw King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) opening up relations between Wakanda and the rest of the world by building enrichment centers for Black youth in cities across the world.
In the Marvel comics, Williams is a teenager who’s enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). She manages to reverse-engineer one of Iron Man’s armors in order to build her own power suit.
Ironheart 2020 by Danny Lore, Vita Ayala, David Messina, Mattia Iacono, and Joe Caramagna, with a cover by Skan. Photo: Marvel Comics
However, perhaps in the MCU, she will instead be a student at one of the Wakandan centers established by T’Challa. This would both explain her inclusion in the movie, and also provide an opportunity to emphasize the way that T’Challa’s influence and legacy persists in the world, in spite of the fact that the character will be absent from the movie – a necessity borne of the passing of the late Boseman, whose final performance as T’Challa took place earlier this week on What If…?.
Photo: Marvel
Black Panther 2
What do you think about Ironheart appearing in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in advance of her Disney+ streaming series? Do you think we’ll see any other characters in the highly anticipated sequel? We’re waiting to hear from you in the comments, Marvel Blog True Believers!
Featured Image: Listal/Marvel Comics Ironheart 2020 cover art by Woo-Chul Lee
