The Marvel Cinematic Universe has a male fan problem that seems to stem from manosphere rhetoric. A problem that has become increasingly clear since fans have not been challenged enough to consume anything they cannot relate to.
The latest victim of manosphere attacks is Ironheart, which Disney haphazardly dropped last month with no promotion or marketing. The sudden nature of its release not only reveals the problems plaguing the studios but also the problems that have made the Marvel Cinematic Universe a hard watch.
Whether you attribute it to Black Lives Matter or Me Too, there has been an extreme pushback on cancel culture and the need to hold people accountable. The rise of the manosphere and its heralds, including Andrew Tate and Armond White, has seen a repeat of the 2014 and 2015 Gamergate phenomenon.
During that time, women in the video gaming space were subjected to an intense harassment campaign, something that echoes the behaviour towards shows like Ironheart and its stars.
The series follows Riri Williams (played by Dominique Thorne) who flees back home after her scholarship is terminated. Feeling financial strain in her attempt to build and maintain a supersuit inspired by Tony Stark's (Robert Downey Jr) iron suit, she gets embroiled in a Robin Hood-style gang led by Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), a version of the troubled Hood from the comic books.
Before its initial release, the series had already garnered negative fan reaction on movie rating sites, a technique eerily similar to the intense bullying seen during Gamergate. Dogpiling on the series as garbage, much of the conversation reduced Riri to her race, with many of the fans being misogynistic and prejudicial to her plight without having seen the show. While this can all be blamed on the rise of how lucrative it is to participate in the manosphere, Marvel and its affiliates are also to blame.
While the conclusion of each episode and the season as a whole is trite, as it continues Marvel's trend of unresolved or flash-in-the-pan resolutions, Riri's story is one that directly confronts Faustian bargains. It's a tale that looks at the high price of success or power. Riri and Parker are set as opposites in this regard. While Parker seeks revenge on his wealthy father by striking a deal with the devil (brought to life by Sacha Baren Cohen as the comic book universe's answer to Satan, known as Mephisto), Riri seeks to help him steal from the rich so she can continue to build a supersuit that will help her protect her community and others.
While her predecessor had similar objectives, Riri's is charged mainly by the trauma of being the sole survivor of a shooting that killed her stepfather and best friend. While the story could easily zoom in on an Ocean's 11 storyline, it moves away from glamorising Parker's misfits and uses the environments they expose themselves to as reflections of the traumas Riri and Parker have not quite dealt with. In the end, Riri also faces Mephisto and must decide whether she can strike a deal with him.
Faustian bargains are not always made for a neat or happy ending, but can tell a tragedy and that is where it leaves both leads. While fans have come to have high expectations of being rewarded with connective storytelling that ties movies and series together, Ironheart feels a lot more like an island rather than another cog in the MCU machine. A feature that does not help, considering it is one of the shows most affected by the misogynistic vitriol from its fandom.
In its telling of Captain America's story, they never confronted the two black successors and predecessors. This is a decision that has created the false idea that Marvel movies have never been political. Especially with non-white male leads being the ones to lead stories dealing with racism, female empowerment and PTSD that have been explored in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Captain Marvel and Wanda/Vision, respectively.
Much like fans who have actors to hold fans accountable for attacking co-stars in movies or theatre productions, production houses and studios also need to play their part. If the manosphere or other problematic ideologies continue to dominate, we will be limited in the kinds of journeys we can go through and which stories are told. This would be a shame, especially with scene stealers such as Lyric Ross, who plays the late best friend Natalie, and Regan Aliyah, who plays the resident witch of the show, Zelma. As Marvel charts new territory, let's hope they take the bold step to hold fans accountable before they fail their diverse cast and crew.
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