Ironheart (2025) – Episode 3 Recap & Review

The Review Geek

2 days ago

Episode 3
The gang are celebrating their payment, throwing money everywhere, and discussing what they'll do with it but Clown ruins their party with a surprise: she appears there using the hood.
She's over the moon after learning how to hack its safe and steal it, but she doesn't know how dangerous it is. When John sees that, he knocks her head onto the table and gets the hood back. Parker tries to defuse the situation by explaining their future heist, but everyone is shaken. So he sends them away for a while.
Riri calls him to ask what they're doing because she doesn't wanna be a bad person. He reminds her that she's spending time with a bunch of criminals, but she still can't admit she's doing something wrong. The girl also asks what his hood is, but he only says it's magical and refuses to further explain.
When she gets home, Xavier is waiting for her, and he has suspicions about her job. That leads to them talking about Natalie, which fills him with joy, as he cherishes every memory he has with her. He handles his grief in a totally different way from Riri, who avoids thinking about it for long.
Suddenly, Joe, the arms dealer, knocks at her door and demands that she work with him. She inspired him, so now he wants her to help him create things that will help people. After he blackmails her, it's N.A.T.A.L.I.E.'s time to do it. The AI says that if Riri doesn't start hanging out with her, it'll lock the suit. So, Riri agrees to go out with her the next day.
While they hang out, the AI takes her back to her stepfather's garage, which makes Riri have a panic attack. Still, what really interrupts their day out is seeing the police looking for her.
Someone killed Rampage, the guy whom she substituted in Hood's gang, so the cops went after who contacted him last. She takes away their suspicions but closes herself off in her room to think.
She believes Hood is the one who killed Rampage, so she must learn something about his powers soon. Riri wants to steal a piece of it during their next heist, but she won't be able to use her suit there.
Conveniently, one of Joe's projects is a prototype for a biomesh skin material, which can solve her problem. Thus, she goes to his house to get it.
While she's there, she has to help him fix his arm after he hurt it with one of his projects. She ends up finding a bag full of his father's ashes and learns his dad is Obadiah Stane, the Iron Monger. Joe is actually called Ezekiel Stane, the son of Iron Man's first villain.
Because he knew his dad was a villain, he lived his life to be someone different. Getting closer to him allows Riri to open up, and she tells him she built the suit because her stepdad was an Iron Man fan.
At night, the Hood and the rest of the group go after Hunter Mason. To serve as her cover, Riri lets N.A.T.A.L.I.E. pilot her suit, and she tries to find Parker to cut his cloak. However, even with the biomesh, she activates an alarm, and the whole place goes into alert, closing everyone off. As Mason refuses to sign the deal, Hood kills him.
Riri runs off with a part of the hood on her hand but ends up meeting John on her way out. He understands what she did, and then a fight starts. However, because of the alert, the door closes, and they lose oxygen little by little.
Even though her suit makes it in time to save her, she leaves John there by himself in a rush. Later, the whole group meets up, Parker tells her to look for his cousin, and after flying away, she says she found him dead.
Then, the girl arrives at her house, having another panic attack. She can't forgive herself for not helping John and letting him die. However, it only gets worse when she realizes she dropped the biomesh there at the scene of the crime. She promised Ezekiel she wouldn't do anything to incriminate him, but that's what she just did.
At the same time, the Hood screams into the nothing, asking if that was all part of the plan. He's demanding answers, and suddenly they come to him. When he turns around, he sees his cousin suffocating alone. But then, Riri's iron suit walks and stands behind John's corpse.
The Episode Review
Episode three is probably the best Ironheart episode until now, but it relies on many conveniences and dumb decisions. Everything goes wrong for Riri because John sees her with a piece of Parker's hood. But why did she walk around with it in her hand? There are many things she could've done, like hiding it inside her clothes, which she does later. It's a rushed decision to make them fight.
The same can be said about N.A.T.A.L.I.E.'s character. The AI spends a great part of the episode convincing Riri shouldn't trust the Hood. To be honest, it's a good idea to have it function as the angel on the girl's shoulder, but it's too sudden.
During episode 2, it was all about helping with her heist, so why did it change its opinion now? It's hard to know if you should be thankful or mad at that change.
One dialogue that works is Riri's with Ezekiel. At first, it seems like he doesn't have a place in this story, but you can see how he fits after that. Not to mention, it's the first time she opens up and the audience learns something real about her.
This episode is also the first time we see her questioning the Hood's gang and their motives. Again, it might have been a bit too sudden for that, seeing the previous episodes, but it's a good change.
Talking about Ezekiel, his biomesh skin is another convenience here. And, unfortunately, the show making fun of it being convenient doesn't erase that. Many things happen here to change the show's direction, which again, can be seen as both a good and a bad thing. At its best, Ironheart episode 3 is still a rushed mess of plot and character work.
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