15 Radical Superheroes To Diversify The MCU
10. Ironheart
Teenage genius and engineering marvel Riri Williams, the victim of violent tragedy her whole short life, retro-engineers a version of Tony Stark’s Iron Man armour and is taken under his wing. When Stark is out of commission, Riri takes his place as the Invincible Iron Man - Ironheart, as she ended up.
Aaaand the internet went insane: more specifically, a particular section of the internet devoted to the maintenance of the white male status quo in comics books.
Riri Williams operates as an intersectional character in Marvel comics: she is black and female, and touted as smarter than the white male adult she replaced. This infuriated a certain kind of comics fan - and it’s that kind of comics fan that needed to be infuriated, needed to be confronted with the evidence of their own racism and misogyny.
Of course, in superhero comics nothing ever really changes. Dead characters always come back; replacements always make way for legacy characters to take their name/costume/comic back. But the MCU isn’t a comic book universe. It’s a cinematic universe. Change is a possibility. Look at Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy, where Bruce Wayne got to bring about a definite ending to his activities as Batman.
In the MCU, Ironheart could replace Iron Man for good. Wouldn’t that throw the cat among the pigeons.