Ironheart wrapped on Disney+ in July 2025 as the final entry of Phase 5 — earning a 77% critics' approval rating but facing one of Marvel's most aggressive review-bombing campaigns in years. Producers confirm Riri Williams's future in the MCU stays open, with crossover paths into Doomsday and Secret Wars on the table.
Marvel Studios' Phase 5 ended in July 2025 with Ironheart, a six-episode Disney+ series following MIT student Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne, reprising from Wakanda Forever) as she returns to Chicago and confronts the magical underworld led by Parker Robbins / The Hood (Anthony Ramos). The first three episodes dropped June 24, the final three July 1 — capping Phase 5 with what Marvel positioned as a deliberate technology-vs-magic confrontation.
The critical reception was solid: a 77% Rotten Tomatoes critics' score positions Ironheart in the upper tier of Marvel Disney+ originals. Variety, IGN, and ComicBook.com all delivered positive notices, with particular praise for Thorne's lead performance and the show's Chicago setting. The Riri-Robbins dynamic — a tech genius confronting genuine occult magic for the first time — was widely cited as the most distinctive thematic premise of any recent MCU streaming project.
However, the audience reception split sharply. Ironheart became the seventh MCU project to be review-bombed, with Rotten Tomatoes' audience score sitting markedly below the critic consensus. This pattern — pre-release brigading by organized review groups targeting projects with non-white or female leads — has affected The Marvels (2023), Captain Marvel (2019), and several Disney+ shows previously. Rotten Tomatoes has not publicly responded to whether Ironheart's audience score reflects authentic viewer sentiment or organized brigading.
The cliffhanger ending — which we'll keep spoiler-free — was deliberately constructed to allow Marvel Studios to pick up Riri Williams's story at multiple potential entry points: Avengers: Doomsday (December 2026), Avengers: Secret Wars (December 2027), or potentially a Phase 6 standalone follow-up. Thorne told The Direct in post-release interviews that she remains "completely open" to returning, and that conversations with Marvel are ongoing about both ensemble appearances and a potential second season.
For broader context, see our MCU Phase 6 Roadmap, Wakanda Forever (2022) where Thorne first appeared, and our coverage of Black Panther 3 — where Riri Williams could plausibly resurface as a Wakanda-adjacent character.