Ironheart Gets a Robert Downey Jr. Endorsement and an Embarrassing Release Schedule
Marvel’s desperation is mounting as Ironheart nears its series premiere. The upcoming Disney+ series starring Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams debuts on the streaming service on June 24, 2025, exactly one week from today, and the outlook is not good. Aside from the downward spiral Marvel shows have been caught in, including the disastrous ratings for the first season of Daredevil: Born Again, every Ironheart trailer gets an embarrassing like-to-dislike ratio; as of this writing, the first one has 217,000 likes to 520,000 dislikes, while the second has 44,000 likes to 68,000 dislikes, which is more respectable until you realize that the second trailer has 3.6 million views while the first has 9.5 million. That means fewer people are even bothering to leave a dislike, so disinterested are they with an annoying Iron Man knockoff from the studio whose recent Disney+ offerings included She-Hulk and Agatha All Along. Yesterday, they highlighted the show’s drag queen character, and I’m betting that didn’t do them any favors (who’d have guessed?) because today, they brought out the MCU’s biggest gun: Robert Downey Jr.
That’s Tony Stark (and Victor Von Doom, because creativity is dead at Marvel) crashing a Good Morning America interview with Dominique Thorne and her co-star, Anthony Ramos, to give the show his full endorsement live in front of everyone. And he does it as only Robert Downey Jr. can, with humor and charm, like everyone’s favorite uncle stopped by to make us all laugh. He even makes a joke out of the idea of Ironheart replacing him by talking about the Hood’s cloak. It’s funny and comes off as a sweet gesture from a big star to an upstart, with RDJ being everything you imagine he is. Does that mean it wasn’t totally staged? Of course not. This was done because everyone knows Ironheart is going to bomb, the story Dominique Thorne told of Downey wishing her well didn’t land the way Marvel wanted it to, drag queens are part of the discussion surrounding the show now, and Marvel asked their biggest star to help them pull a Hail Mary – another one, and one that won’t necessitate them paying him another $100 million. How do I know Marvel was behind this? Aside from my lack of a lobotomy, there’s this from the Marvel Studios Instagram account:
The whole point was “Iron Man hearts Ironheart,” a catchy slogan they could use to sell the show with an image of their most popular actor and character. And I don’t blame Robert Downey Jr. for doing it; he’s just being a team player and a nice guy. I don’t even really think Marvel is bad or wrong for it; it’s just kind of funny how obviously desperate they are, especially since they didn’t think of this a while ago. I also laugh at the idea that their go-to fallback is consistently “Get Robert Downey Jr.!” Are they regretting killing Iron Man yet? As for Ironheart, I doubt this will work; sure, everybody loves Tony Stark, but we all see right through this, and it’s not like Downey is going to pop up on the show (although I imagine he’ll be mentioned, or at least alluded to – almost certainly in a disparaging manner, because that’s how the heroes that built this universe are treated now). Moreover, Marvel and Disney seem to know Ironheart is not destined for greatness, and there’s new proof of this as well, which also comes from Instagram:
Ironheart’s six episodes will air in two three-episode blocks on two nights, June 24 and July 1. They’re dumping the whole thing as quickly as they can without pulling an Echo and releasing it all at once. I wonder why they’re using the extra week; wouldn’t it make sense to surrender to the binge model? Maybe it’s because they were mocked for doing it with Echo; maybe it’s because they tried to hype this one up so much and want to save the tiny bit of face they can; maybe there’s a legal thing in a contract somewhere they have to weasel around. Whatever the case, I don’t look forward to reviewing three episodes of this thing two weeks in a row, but at least it’ll be over quickly – although I imagine twenty minutes of this crap will feel like a month.
Let us know what you think of Robert Downey Jr.’s Ironheart endorsement and the show’s release schedule in the comments!
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