‘Ironheart’ Star Dominique Thorne Didn’t Know About Mephisto’s Official MCU Entry Until Filming

‘Ironheart’ Star Dominique Thorne Didn’t Know About Mephisto’s Official MCU Entry Until Filming

[This story contains spoilers from the Ironheart season one finale.]

With #IronheartRewatch calls already issued and some folks still wrapping up the six-episode Disney+ series, there is a lot of speculation as to what is next for Dominique Thorne’s Riri Williams in her Ironheart quest.

Her return to Chicago after being kicked out of MIT has been filled with a lot of emotion. That drive to be someone great, she finds, is basically impossible without huge cash infusions. This realization leads her down a dangerous path with Anthony Ramos’ Parker Robbins or The Hood, who approaches her through his emissary John (Manny Montana). Riri joins their band of bandits — hacker Slug (Shea Couleé), pyrotechnic master Clown (Sonia Denis), enforcers Jeri (Zoe Terakes) and Roz (Shakira Barrera) aka the Blood Siblings.

Grief more than anything permeates the series from the onset. Losing her stepfather Gary (LaRoyce Hawkins) and best friend Natalie to gun violence haunts Riri in ways she cannot verbalize. Her relationship with Natalie’s brother Xavier or Xay (Matthew Elam) is a trauma bond of sorts that prevents them from connecting romantically, but gives them solace.

“The grief and loss and weight of that is something that only they understand in a very unique way, having been so close to her, and that loss probably brings them closer than they were before,” Thorne tells The Hollywood Reporter.

The emergence of her AI companion N.A.T.A.L.I.E. or AI Natalie, a virtual version of her best friend played by Lyric Ross, forces Riri to somewhat acknowledge her grief more publicly than the silent moments of understanding she shares with Xay. Given how much action is also in the series, creator Chinaka Hodge and her writing team’s ability to incorporate these intense emotions simultaneously is quite impressive.

Everyone serves a purpose. Riri’s mother Ronnie (Anjali White) is filled with concern, but also becomes the gateway to the magic elements that play a bigger role later in the series. Ronnie’s friendship with Madeline (Cree Summer) leads to Riri and Madeline’s daughter Zelma (Regan Aliyah) developing one. Zelma, who is still developing her craft, helps Riri by analyzing the stolen piece of Parker’s hood. And Parker seeking out Zelma (Regan Aliyah) in the end credits already has MCU fans in a frenzy about the Strange Academy finally make its way to meaningful screen time.

Still, it’s Riri’s relentlessness to find answers to her many questions — especially a key one about what happened to Rampage (Eric André), whom she replaces in the crew, as well as the source of Parker’s powers — that ignites the flames of Parker’s animosity towards her. When John finds her with a piece of the hood, she ends up killing him. Because John is the one person who loves Parker unconditionally, Riri is not safe. Parker then goes from previously offering to help her to launch a relentless charge to destroy her. Parker’s creation of Ezekial Stane, whom Riri met as Joe (Alden Ehrenreich), a perennial pushover, actually stalls that plan by letting Riri live and then lying to Parker that he had killed her. These are the kind of dynamics no suit can protect Riri from.

Fans first met Thorne as Ironheart/Riri Williams in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever back in 2022. Filming of the series, with Black Panther maestro Ryan Coogler serving as executive producer, started not long after. That distance, Thorne tells THR has served her well. “I filmed this three years ago, so I’ve definitely had my time to enjoy the process and cherish it and also separate myself from it.”

She’s also been pleased by the fan reception and their willingness to go on this ride with her, which has come with a jaw-dropping appearance of Sacha Baron Cohen as Mephisto in the end that has the MCU faithful buzzing. “One of the most impressive things about the MCU fanbase is how committed and connected they are to the story structure and just how it connects to everything,” she says. “I’m absolutely just stunned and really blown away by the love and the support that that fans have given for the series.”

In that spirit, Thorne spoke with THR on all things Mephisto, or at least what she can share, explained key plot points with The Hood and Zelma, as well as how she envisions a season two. She is, however, very clear that no series has yet been greenlit. That, she says, is up to the fans. 

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Let’s talk about Mephisto. When did you know he would show up in Ironheart?

I didn’t know he would show up until we started filming, actually. We were finally up to that portion of our filming, so definitely the winddown. And for the duration of the shoot, we had faux names. We talked a lot about Dormammu, and we kind of focused on him but it wasn’t until we were getting ready to shoot that scene with Sasha Baron Cohen that I even knew [that was him].

Do you think you would have been more nervous had you known earlier?

No, I don’t think so. I definitely think a lot of that was really just the Marvel secrecy of it all, and them wanting to keep things tight so that it doesn’t slip through the cracks anywhere. On set there are millions and millions and millions of folks involved, so I totally understand them changing the characters. Even for the audition, some of my castmates told me they didn’t even know what characters they were auditioning for. They just had generic scripts with names that weren’t real and plotlines that weren’t real, so it’s not out of the ordinary.

So then, for you, what does Mephisto represent to you and to Marvel fans?

think there was clearly a lot of anticipation from Mephisto. A lot of people wondered if they were going to see him earlier with other storylines. Obviously, WandaVision was a big one where fans felt like maybe we were [going to see] him. And there’s a lot of lore that folks can sink their teeth into, not only from the shows or whatever Easter eggs folks might drop in throughout the series or throughout the movies. Really this love for the character comes from the comic books. So I think there’s a lot of excitement when the MCU decides to lean into the fandom in that way and really give the people what they want. But whether it was WandaVision or Agatha, I think folks were hoping and praying Mephisto would pop up sooner rather than later. It’s a whole lot of excitement to know Ironheart is where they chose to get that ball rolling.

Now does Riri really swap her soul to bring Natalie back? What deal, if any, does she make with Mephisto?

That’s a great question that hopefully we’ll get to answer in a season two or a film or something. But your guess is as good as mine at this stage. I definitely think Riri’s battle with the realness of grief throughout this series, and even in Wakanda Forever, she comes head-to-head with another very terrible loss. So I think the weight of that is real, and the weight of that for Riri, in particular, this young girl who just wants to do the right thing in a lot of ways, but I think the super genius of it all is we definitely see her kind of struggle to choose the quote, unquote right path, with the host of options that she can run in her head and that she can see before her. She’s definitely trying to do the right thing at the end of the day. I think the weight of the grief and the humanness of that loss for her kind of wins over.

A lot of social media has determined that this is exactly what happened, but I think it’s hard to conclude that with any certainty.

I think it’s perfect, especially in the MCU, to not really have certainty over anything until it’s kind of spelled out.

Explaining the appearance of AI Natalie is already hard. So how can the real Natalie even be brought back?

As soon as Riri gets kicked out [of MIT], we see her scrambling to leave with what she believes is owed to her, what she has spent her time and her money creating. And a part of that is this brain scanning technology that she knows is very experimental and is clearly very risky, but she decides to give it a chance because, what other options does she really have and [she’s] really not wanting to start over from square one. So she scans her brain, and, as we come to learn throughout the series, a big portion of her brain space is occupied with this loss. And maybe when she was at MIT, or even when she was in Wakanda, she had all these other things to distract her or to occupy some of her time and her energy. But being forced to go back home, we see that as soon as she hits Chicago airspace, her heart rate starts elevating and the tech in her suit is like, ‘girl, are you okay? Like, what’s going on?’

So it doesn’t completely come as a surprise. Her being back home and hooking her brain up to a computer, the combination of those things pulls out the top conversation in her head and in her heart, which is the loss of her father and her best friend. So that really is the appearance of AI Natalie [which is] her subconscious not having any other way to put out this grief or to confront these emotions despite Riri [trying] to shut that part of her brain off and focus on other [things].

That’s how we get this AI who isn’t really functioning as an AI should. It’s not really listening to commands. It’s far more in line with Riri’s heart and her soul. By the end, of course, when we see the real Natalie come about, that’s really what makes the show so intriguing to me. It’s this crossover between tech and magic in a way we haven’t seen before. This is the first time I’ve seen an iron suit imbued with magic and wanting to know what in the world its capabilities are and its full potential is.

And I think a part of that learning for Riri is the truth about what magic can do and the truth about the responsibility or the cost of magic. The tagline for the show is “every dream has a cost.” And when it comes to technology, that’s a price that Riri is fairly well acquainted with paying, but magic is something different. So I think the consequences of bringing Natalie back, if this is even the real Natalie, is a whole new world of lessons that Riri’s going to have to learn playing in the magic space.

And within that magic space, let’s talk a little bit about Zelma and Madeline and Riri and Zelma. Although what Zelma’s mom Madeline does doesn’t crossover into Riri’s mom Ronnie’s life, Zelma and Riri come together in a dynamic way that feels exciting because these two young women both have these amazing gifts, if that makes sense.

It absolutely makes sense. We see that Riri’s mom just wants to be a part of her life in some meaningful way to alleviate the obvious pressure that she can see her daughter is under. And Madeline clocks that. As soon as Riri walks through the door, she starts sage-ing her and bringing the crystals out. There are minor parallels between Madeline and Zelma and Riri and her mom in that here are these women who’ve made decisions in their lives to protect their daughters, and here their daughters come creating whole new worlds of their own with the resources that they have. I think that’s why Riri seeks out Zelma individually because she can relate to that ambition to prove to yourself and show what you’re capable of.

We hear in Zelma’s introduction that she wished her mother stayed at Kamar-Taj. She has all these thoughts and dreams about what kind of magic she could have learned and created for herself had her mother stayed. And her mother so beautifully says “Well, me leaving forced you to create magic of your own.” I think that needing to chart your own path and do it your own way is absolutely something that Riri can relate to. So it’s a no brainer that the two of them then get away on their own and are sitting down in White Castle really trying to dig into something that both their mothers told them to stay away from.

We see Zelma’s curiosity and desire to just “practice, practice, practice” come back into play in that final post credit scene where we see her talking to Parker, and she has no idea that this is the person whose hood she was analyzing earlier on, but she’s absolutely intrigued by the opportunity to practice her magic even further. I think that is the perfect duo, for better or worse, to collaborate on charting this new path, you know, between magic and tech.

Speaking of Parker or The Hood, what was Riri’s relationship with him? And what is it at the end of the series? She doesn’t feel like she wants to be at odds with him.

He, in a lot of ways, represents everything she has been saying to herself [from the beginning]. She starts off talking about how she doesn’t want to be small. She knows she can be bigger than him and Stark and all these people combined. She just needs the resources and just give her a chance. She has all these thoughts in her mind, and then she’s kicked out of school, and, as soon as she goes back home, here comes this guy saying ‘don’t you want to do something great? Why aren’t you rolling in cash the way that you deserve to be? Why don’t you have this? Why don’t you have that?’

So he’s holding a mirror up to her. He is the first person to make her a deal that she thinks is semi-worthwhile. She’s obviously very adamant that she’s not like him and she’s not a crook, and she’s not going to get mixed up with it all; it’s just the means to an end. But I think that initial attraction is because he’s really emulating everything that she knows she deserves. He’s also not afraid to do it a little bit of charisma and a little bit of charm [to] sell her on the dream. Obviously by the end, Riri comes to realize that this man’s ambition has been consumed by a darkness that she doesn’t fully understand. I think that’s what pushes her to draw the line. She becomes more concerned and invested than whatever it is that’s controlling him. You can see her wanting to keep the dream alive. Like, dude, this isn’t you. You’re so much better than the hood. Forget about it. She doesn’t understand yet the weight and the hold that magic has on him. Maybe she’ll be forced to learn it.

What is her relationship with Ezekiel Stane? Why does he save her life?

She knew him back when he was Joe. We see them very early on. I think she takes a bit of a liking to this very strange dude who’s just living a totally different life than what she’s got going on a world away. And she definitely feels for him. We see her encourage him to stand up for himself because she witnesses how the neighbor is walking over him. He starts to talk about how the folks at his job are walking over him, and that absolutely creates a soft spot for him and her. He only ever touched the tech, because Riri encouraged him to.

Of course, he has his own internal battle of what that means as the son of Obadiah Stane. But I think, ultimately, in that moment, there is that sort of kindred spirit between these two engineers and a respect there that they came to cultivate, that in this moment where she is begging for her life, he calls on that soft spot and decides to let her go. I also don’t know if it’s fully in his nature [to kill anyone]. So I think it’s just a little bit of both the humanity and the relationship that they’ve built meeting the frustration that they’re in this situation now, and Ezekiel leaning into the Joe parts of himself, and choosing to let her live.

What might a second season look like for you?

It could look like so many things. Honestly, probably chief among that is getting some answers about what exactly we saw in the last few minutes of the show. Is this the real Natalie? Is that what Riri did? Did she make a deal with this man moments after seeing what he did to Parker? What makes her think that she’d be able to outsmart him compared to how Parker did? I definitely think that she isn’t completely wrong. I think she might be right. She’s got a little bit of an edge up on Parker in terms of attempting to stay one step ahead.

But I think it could be really cool in a second season to see how magic is something that Riri is not proficient in, and it’s not something that she has mastery over. But what does that look like for a super genius, and especially in the tech space, to be confronted or maybe even humbled by magic because it is so different and calls on different parts of you? I think it could also be fun to see what other characters, what other magic folk, are brought into Riri’s world, or that Riri ventures into because of this crossover.

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All six episodes of Ironheart are currently streaming on Disney+.