Let's review Ironheart Episode 2 - Will the Real Natalie Please Stand Up?

"Riri's new A.I. dredges up painful memories ahead of her first heist with Parker and his crew." Which is how Disney+ described this episode but, if we learned anything from the previous episode (which you can and should read about here) is that every single thing on the planet makes her dredge up painful memories. I don't know how she gets anything done without constantly flying into a series of rapid fire flashbacks. But let's see how this goes.

Hopefully it's better than the previous episode which was so filled with nonsense trying to speed up the "get to know you" stages of the characters. Let's go. You're watching this with me as I type.

Oh, and obviously, HERE THERE BE SPOILERS:

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So, we establish that Natalie is now, in fact, the suit's AI. And I got to admit, NATALIE being an acronym for "Neuro Autonomous Technical Assistant and Laboratory Intelligence Entity" is not only clunky as fuck but also doesn't really make sense. Also, she explains that she's visible because of light shining out of the chest plate of the Ironheart suit DESPITE the fact that Riri is constantly circling her and getting between her and the suit. Okay, I'ma shut up and keep watching.

Alright, I'm gonna admit, I love Natalie. Despite the fact that the episode description tells me that the A.I. is going to "dredge up memories, this scene with her and Riri is the longest I've seen Riri without her going into some type of flashback heavy fugue state.

So, next scene we got Riri leaving her room and finding Xavier hanging out in her kitchen eating from their fridge. Which...is cool I guess? He invites her to a thing and everything I ever learned in the 40K+ I wasted at Full Sail University's writing program is telling me that there ain't no way in hell that she's gonna make it and we're gonna get a scene of Xavier being ghosts and, potentially, saying "damn" at his notification empty phone. We'll see.

Now, if you thought the title card from the first episode where Riri crashed into the street and the damage and potholes in the road formed the word IRONHEART with her being the A, you are going to be absolutely underwhelmed when this time, they just zoom into a street sign that says S IRONHEART AV on it. Shit ain't even at an intersection, you guys.

We're then introduced to Chicago's plans to turn their historic freight tunnels into a system called TNNL that allows drivers to get around through the tunnels quicker via weird little platforms. Which might work since it's like that idea Elon Musk had but doesn't have the problem of being attached to Elon Musk. This one is, instead, run by someone named Sheila Zarate who does not have a Marvel Comics equivalent so I'm sure she'll be absolutely fascinating and meaningful to the story.

Oh now this next scene. Oof. If you read the write up on the previous episode, you'll know that I absolutely HATED how they portrayed The Hood's gang and, luckily, this episode actually explains the characters and...oh, it's still bad. Slug is still skinny. Blood Siblings are...okay. Hood hired Clown because she...burnt a car? And Cancer? Hood's cousin? He...is good with knives. Sure.

Oh, and remember when I talked about how Eric André's Rampage was the most accurately portrayed out of all of them? Weeeeeell...they fired him so he's gone.

In fact, in the next scene she goes to call him by finding his contact informa...WAIT...HOLD UP. Underneath Rampage's records is an unknown with the note "A.K.A. Silhouette". PLEASE tell me we're going to get Silhouette. Jesus, I was a fan of her's since she showed up in the 90's. If you don't know, Silhouette is a character who is KINDA like Daredevil except she was a gymnast who lost the usage of her legs but still fights crime with a special suit and some really dope crutches. I'm not kidding.

And BEST give her that awesome new suit of hers too...

Sorry, focusing on the show again.

They try calling Rampage who is not picking up so Natalie looks up some black market shoppers in the area who might have stuff she needs to get her suit together. She gets a list of names of mostly random people (who just happen to share names with people who worked on various MCU production teams, and a gentleman named Joe McGillicuddy. As he has the closest address they go with him.

They decide to go with him despite his name being fake as hell because the recent list of his black market purchases line up with a LOT of stuff that Riri needs for her suit which, honestly, black market, what are you doing? You're just keeping people's shopping history with their real name? Eeeeeesh.

Now, you remember that thing where like, previous episode Riri flies through the city and then crashes and no one cares? Well now she's pulling the suit on a wagon, taking it on a subway filled with people, and no one seems to notice or care that there's just this whole ass Iron Man like suit laying in a wagon.

At one point she covers it with a stolen blanket which...now makes it look like she's dragging a corpse. But, luckily for her, with the exception of one extra who REALLY plays it up in the background of the subway scene, no one seems to notice.

She makes her way to the dude's house to find him living in a very nice suburban neighborhood which, holy shit how far did she walk that wagon?

Anywho, she meets with the dude who, again, a lot of focus on the fact that his name is weird making me think that he's legit someone important, and the fact that he's anxious, prone to crying, and likes making "persimmon jam" which 100% tells me that this dude is gonna get a big ol' reveal of his own if they're doing to him what they did to Bob in Thunderbolts.

We gotta talk about this next scene though. Remember the last episode when I went off about the fact that the mom casually admits to paying an MIT janitor to spy on Riri and give her information and no one acted like that was weird?

Well, Natalie escapes the laptop she was trapped in and ends up in Riri's mom's projector. The mom gets scared but Natalie says, "I'm not a ghost, I'm just an AI." The mom goes, "Oooooh, did Riri build you?" To which Natalie says, "Yeah." And then we're fucking good. In. What. World.

Anywho, McGillicutty takes Riri to his secret lab which is just an absolute scrap yard of a property. He takes her to a silo which he's turned into a hide out for his "growing collection of bionics."

Under the silo, McGilly turns on the light revealing his secret unground lair filled with illegal tech, missiles, and a Live Laugh Love neon sign because why not. This could be a really good scene but they just go through it like a high school play. Riri drags at this shelf and looks at the stuff on it and gets all excited and goes "Oh come ON!" Riri, you pulled out a shelf of closed briefcases. You're looking at four suitcase handles, all sealed, none of them matching. Why is this the thing you're excited for?

Now Riri starts getting him to open up and he admits the bunker helps him get closed to his dad, whom he keeps going on about in the past tense. A man who "kept going on about how tech is the future." He talks about how tech shouldn't just be used to make weaponry, in a way that makes it sound like his dad used to...no...I swear to god...if this is who I think it is I'ma get real mad. But let's wait and see on that.

But he goes on about how he wants to design tech that can help mobilize people. Synthetic limbs and prosthetics (like Silhouette's suit by the way).

Meanwhile, back at home, Riri's mom and Natalie are...bonding on the couch (Natalie on a tablet now). These scenes are actually cute. They're mostly there to just push the plot along and convince Natalie that she needs to force her way into the suit tech, but they're actually some of the better scenes on this show.

SPEAKING OF GOOD SCENES, I'm starting to like the exchanges between Riri and McGilliwhatever now. They're kinda just having chill tech talk and dropping weird random shade and it's the most human I've ever seen Riri which is going to SUUUUUUCCCCCK when this dude turns out to be some sort of big bad.

During this scene, Riri talks about how her suit is solar and wind powered which...hold on how? First of all, you charged your suit in a closet by plugging it into the wall outlet. But now you're saying it runs off solar energy and wind? Where? Those are two techs that need to have some big visual cues and this does not have them. takes a breath Anywho...

So we finally get to the point where the Hood's gang is robbing TNNL. I get that they're supposed to be good (other than the fact that so far all we saw was a botched robbery) but the Blood Siblings and Cancer walk into a room where they only people with guns are easily dispatched by Cancer occasionally throwing knives? Big nah. Also, I really thought they were going to wait a little longer before breaking that whole "we're not going to hurt anyone" promise they made to Riri cause that guard got hole punched.

Luckily, the rest of the incredibly expensive company's guards are unarmed so that the Blood Siblings can use their powers of punching to dispatch them all.

During this fight, all set to a looping singular chorus from Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody" mind you, we also see Clown blowing a hole in the ground so that Riri can fly into the tunnels and I'm sorry, I don't know who needs to hear this, but the TNNL system looks like the fucking underground Mushroom Kingdom in the 1993 live action Mario movie.

Mama mia...

There's a really funny moment where I was about to say that the dated CGI in this tunnel scene made it look like something out of Spy Kids when Natalie goes "Man, this is just like Spy Kids!" Good timing, Nat.

Long story short, the Hood's gang shuts down TNNL and the CEO of the company is started when The Hood sighs and becomes visible in the seat next to her. Now, I know that The Hood can stay invisible as long as he holds his breath but this has been like a 10 minutes scene. I don't even remember how long it's been since they wore out the Chaka Khan tape. And while the world record for breath holding is 24 minutes, Robbie is not a professional breath hold diver like Budimir Śobat, okay?

The Hood reveals his plans that would involve the CEO of TNNL signing a paper that would hire him and his gang as private security for TNNL with six-figure-salaries and benefits...which most companies would do. And...apparently she does.

As Riri gets out of the tunnels, the one other guard on the payroll with the gun (who also didn't get the memo that she...I guess...works there now) is about to shoot Riri when Natalie freezes as if she's locked up. She disappears and suddenly the guard is about to fire but instead The Hood shows up out of nowhere and shoots the guard in the shoulder.

They then get out of there and cut to the gang hanging out and celebrating while listening to Lupe Fiasco's "Kick, Push II" so...they earned ONE point with me so far. Riri is hanging out with Clown where she tells her that she once say Parker shirtless and "scales everywhere" which I'm not sure I missed in the scene in the first episode where dude was shirtless and getting tatted.

Next up, The Hood gives everyone a speech about how you can't be seen without cash, which is a weird parallel to Riri's previous monologue about that only, more bad guyish.

Riri starts getting nervous and tries to leave when she calls her suit which was apparently charging using some now protruding solar panels and wind turbines which would be great if there was ANY indication there was wind blowing (you need MASSIVE winds to get power from something the size of a basketball) and also, it's night time, what're you doing with those panels?

When the suit comes down, Natalie is projected and her and Riri have a chat about what happened and why she froze up earlier. Apparently the sight of a gun makes Natalie's program freeze because of how she died and the way it spikes in Riri's memory. She then tells Riri that she analyzed some crazy energy coming off The Hood that she can't describe and Riri, just like her mom, is like "so"? So, healthy family there.

Next scene, guys, I was wrong, she DOES make the show with Xavier. Which, holy shit how long is this day? But while we may have lost this cliche, we get another when Xavier casually talks about how much he wishes he could still talk with his dead sister Natalie. To which Riri has to act casual about it and just say "same". Cool. I'm sure this will be an awesome moment in which he finds out the truth and then has to take like two fucking episodes to cool off.

Now, back at The Hood's place, we find Hood going through some WB Buffy bad-times as the hood, which is hanging up in the other room is making fun little demon whispers which is causing Hood to be in pain. Cancer comes in while Hood is taking his shirt off and...I still don't see those fucking scales but we DO see these black lines coming out of the tattoos and extending more across the Hood's body to which Hood states, "is fine". Cool. Cool cool.

We find out that the purpose of the tats is to cover up the constantly growing black lines. Cancer explains that he can't keep doing this for him, covering up the lines. Why? Not sure.

Elsewhere Riri comes home to a "where have you been" from mom. They have a talk about Natalie and the mom is just super excited about it. The mom is claiming Riri brought back Natalie's entire soul and then decides to ask if one can be made for Gary, the dad stepdad who died the same day. Riri says no and the mom looks REAL upset while Riri explains she has no idea how Natalie happened.

Now smash cut to McGillicutty who's now suddenly throwing away all his Live Laugh Love stuff he had all over...oh man...here we go, it's like the end of the episode, it's gotta be reveal time. He steps in dog shit from Heather's dog, this woman across the street who explained that she purposely has her dog shit there, goes inside and comes out with a gardening tools and proceeds to cut down all Heather's flowers which he claimed are the reason the dog can't go in their yard. And...it ends. Goddamnit.

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Alright, so...all in all, the episode was definitely better than the first. The mom is still absolutely insane but there's not a million background extras in every scene anymore. And the characters aren't saying bananas shit to establish characters. Though, I will point out, Xavier caught some flack on the internet for saying "Hello, Black People" as he first walked into the room and that's actually a thing I've heard multiple times. Like, I don't know why the internet got upset over th...okay I know why they did cause 2025 sucks...but that one's actually normal. Ahem, anyways.

So, this episode was a little more...hinged. Though, the trailer still promised me a lot of stuff the show still isn't delivering on. The suit hasn't done much other than fly. The demons haven't done anything I can't do after a visit to Spirit Halloween. And the other guy hasn't even revealed himself yet. Though, if I'm right about that one, let's just say McGillicutty's clean demeanor is about to get...Stane'd. We'll find out.

But all in all, better episode. Not MCU level, more like an episode of one of the Netflix shows, but it was more enjoyable and we barely got any flashbacks from Riri! Let's goooo.

I give this one a 7/10 and a promise to be back for episode three. Let's see if I'm right next time.