Marvel Television’s Ironheart has had a bit of a journey to the small screen. Announced in 2020, the streaming series was originally intended to hit Disney Plus in Fall 2023, roughly one year after Riri Williams was introduced in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. However, a pair of Hollywood strikes and a change in leadership at Disney led to a major overhaul to Marvel Studios Multiverse Saga plans. And after taking in the first three episodes of Ironheart, it seems as though reshuffling its place on the streaming slate may have impacted the studio’s plans for one of its theatrical releases.
Episode 2, “Will the Real Natalie Please Stand Up?”, introduces Alden Ehrenreich‘s quirky and anxiety-riddled Joe McGillicuddy who is eventually revealed to be Ezekiel Stane, the son of the MCU’s first big bad, Jeff Bridges‘ Obidiah Stane. In the pages of Marvel Comics, Ezekiel “Zeke” Stane was created by Matt Fraction as a dark shadow of Tony Stark. A brilliant, genius-level intellect who specializes in advanced technology, particularly bioweaponry and cybernetic enhancements, Zeke focuses on upgrading his own biology ratelher than building suits.
No matter how high tech or evolved, even with Extremis, the Iron Man armor is still a guy in a suit, if you get between the man and the suit you can undo it. So Stane doesn’t need a suit. That’s the difference. That’s what we start to see, the future of Iron Man is that there’s no gap between Iron and Man. It’s one being and Stane is quite literally evolving himself and people who pay him as we see in the book’s opening.
-Matt Fraction
In Ironheart, Stane’s creative genius seems to be sparked by meeting Riri Williams. When he appears again in Episode 3, “We in Danger, Girl”, Zeke has been inspired to design biomechanical upgrades, some of which include nanotech muscle fibers, laser-enhnaced fingernails and, eventually, going so far as to “upgrade himself by establishing a working nuerolink between himself and a computer chip. He’s also created a bio-mesh skin that Riri wants to upgrade for her own purpose and in an example of the show’s occasional fault of laying it on thick, Stane acquiesces to her using it with the promise that it won’t “blow back on him.” But it indeed will.
Without spoiling what’s next for Stane in Ironheart, marketing material for the series have shown that he continues working on upgrading himself, eventually becoming a VERY comic-accurate representation of the character. And by connecting some pieces of available evidence, it seems as though the studio had some very comic accurate plans for Stane in the larger MCU prior to the major overhaul of its slate.
Zeke is a post-national business man and kind of an open source ideological terrorist, he has absolutely no loyalty to any sort of law, creed, or credo. He doesn’t want to beat Tony Stark, he wants to make him obsolete. Windows wants to be on every computer desktop in the world, but Linux and Stane want to destroy the desktop. He’s the open source to Stark’s closed source oppressiveness. He has no headquarters, no base, and no bank account. He’s a true ghost in the machine; completely off the grid, flexible, and mobile.
-Matt Fraction
In the comics, Zeke has been involved in illicit tech and weapons manufacturing for terrorists and supervillains, often operating behind the scenes, manipulating other villains. While there’s no direct evidence yet that he was headed in that direction in the MCU, a bit of deductive reasoning can lead to the conclusion that Stane was likely the genius behind the cybernetically enhanced Serpent Society that was originally intended to appear in Captain America: Brave New World.
Prior to the slate being reshuffled, Ironheart would have premiered several months before Captain America: Brave New World, which was originally intended to hit theaters on May 5, 2024. Earlier this year, concept art for four members of the Serpent Society (Cobra, Constrictor, Diamondback and Mamba) meant to appear in the film was found the internet. And it doesn’t take much to recognize that these are very much in line with the ideas Stane was describing to Riri.
Despite scenes featuring those characters being filmed–set photos of Rosa Salazar and Seth Rollins made their way online in early 2023–the enhanced version of Serpent Society was cut from the film and replaced with Giancarlo Esposito‘s very ordinary Seth Voelkers, aka Sidewinder, who was about as lame as it gets. Captain America: Brave New World director Julius Onah went on record saying that the original plans for the Serpent Society ended up “deviating probably a bit too much from the grounded tone that we wanted the movie to have,” which is why they were cut; however, it’s also obvious that with Ironheart releasing AFTER Brave New World, the characters being upgraded by Stane would not have fit in the MCU timeline.
It’s sadly ironic that after years of rarely accurately adapting villains taken from the comics, Marvel’s own struggles behind the scenes pulled the rug out from under Ehrenreich’s wonderfully comic-accurate Zeke Stane. While it’s possible there are plans for him to return to upgrade other baddies in the future, for the time being it seems as though the whole scenario resulted in a lost opportunity for the Ehrenreich, Stane and the MCU.
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