“Fans are looking for ties to movies and other projects we’ve seen in the past,” creator Chinaka Hodge tells EW.
This article contains spoilers about
Ironheart
episodes 1-3.
Ironheart
just took things all the way back to the very beginning of the
Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The first three episodes of the new Disney+ series revealed the twist that Joe McGillicuddy (
Alden Ehrenreich
) is actually Ezekiel “Zeke” Stane, a.k.a. the son of Obadiah Stane (
Jeff Bridges
) from 2008’s
Iron Man
,
and someone with a very storied (and villainous) comic book history.
While Obadiah was the true villain of Tony Stark’s (
Robert Downey Jr.
) origin story, the general public in the MCU still believes he died a hero. Zeke was forced to reveal the truth — about his name, parentage, and the real story behind Obadiah’s death — to Riri Williams (
Dominique Thorne
) when she discovered Obadiah’s ashes in Zeke’s kitchen.
“That was so much fun,”
Ironheart
creator Chinaka Hodge tells
Entertainment Weekly
of debuting Zeke Stane in the MCU. “Introducing Joe McGillicuddy as the real Zeke Stane was one of the more fun things to do in the MCU. I think fans are looking for ties to movies and other projects we’ve seen in the past, and I feel like that was a really great and deft way to pull him through.”
While Zeke denounced the sins of his father in his conversation with Riri, and has been trying to help save the world as penance, he’s already shown similarities with Obadiah’s genius mind and passion for biotechnology and weapons. And comic book fans know his new partnership with Riri likely won’t end well, since Zeke Stane is a major supervillain in the source material with a penchant for terrorism and upgrading his own body with weapons rather than building a suit of armor.
“Overall, the character of Zeke Stane as a tech ethicist … is interesting to me,” Hodge explains. “[Riri and Zeke] are [both] struggling with a lot of the same, ‘Am I good or am I bad? And what’s the point of being either?’ It was so much fun there and one can always hope for a Zeke Stane-Obadiah Stane flashback, crossover, I don’t know. It just was so much fun to open up that box of worms.”
Director Angela Barnes reveals that Ehrenreich worked closely with the
Ironheart
creative team to figure out who Zeke is in live-action.
“Alden’s a real one,” Barnes tells EW. “He’s on my list of people I would work with any day, anytime, whatever. He is present. He’s talented. He’s just an all-around nice guy.”
Hodge also praises Ehrenreich for his intelligent collaboration as they brought Zeke from the pages of the comics to the show.
“We had great conversations about father-son relationships and we carried that through,” the creator says. “He took the words and he made choices, and as we created the character, he brought his own vision to it and it just happened to very much align with my own. So I’m just very thankful it ended up in his hands.”
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By the end of the third episode, Riri put Zeke’s secret identity and quiet life at risk of exposure by leaving his invention of synthetic skin at the crime scene where John (Manny Montana) died and Parker (
Anthony Ramos
) killed a tech billionaire. Expect to see how the fallout from Riri’s mistake impacts Zeke in the back half of the season.
“One of the best things about that character, about his relationship to his father, is the opportunity to always change and always go back,” Hodge says. “I think he’s a really fun character in publishing, and I know Angela did right by him on screen.”
The last three episodes of
Ironheart
debut Tuesday, July 1, on Disney+.
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Entertainment Weekly
