TL;DR: The Ironheart finale introduces Mephisto in a thrilling twist, but it’s Riri Williams’ grief and brilliance that make this finale truly unforgettable. Let’s hope Marvel keeps her at the centre in Season 2.

I never expected to watch the Ironheart finale at 1AM, only to end up contemplating not just the moral corruption of the MCU’s newest villain, but also the moral corrosion of my sleep schedule. Yet here we are. This is my Ironheart finale review, and it begins with a confession: I was never ready to see Mephisto finally arrive. Because Mephisto, for Marvel nerds like me, has always been the schrodinger’s villain — at once real and never real, rumored and debunked, memed into oblivion.

But now he’s here. And what’s most shocking about his grand debut isn’t that he’s the literal Devil; it’s that his arrival comes in a story that deeply, achingly centres a teenage Black girl building suits to save the people she loves, only to lose pieces of herself in the process. This finale left me unsettled in the way all good Marvel finales rarely do, and that’s both a blessing and a curse.

The Arrival of Mephisto – A Rumored Devil Finally Confirmed

Remember the WandaVision Mephisto rabbit hole? The Reddit threads? The countless YouTube thumbnails with glowing red text screaming “MEPHISTO CONFIRMED!!”? The Ironheart finale decided to resurrect not just Natalie, but also my trauma from those days. Sacha Baron Cohen appears as the Hooded Man who gives Parker Robbins his sinister powers, but by episode’s end, he reveals his true name: Mephisto.

It’s a name drop that carries massive implications for the MCU’s future, but let’s be honest, it’s also a name drop that threatens to overshadow Riri Williams herself. This teenage genius, who built her suit in a dorm room with scraps Tony Stark would have sneezed on, now finds herself bartering with literal hell. And yet, as Mephisto’s oily influence seeps into her veins in the finale’s last shot, I felt two things at once: excitement for the narrative escalation, and dread that Riri’s intimate, personal journey will be lost in the CGI firestorms of Marvel’s larger sandbox.

The Hood – A Villain Who Was Never Just a Villain

Ironheart spent its six episodes building Parker Robbins into more than a thug in a mystical hoodie. We see him as a 12-year-old kicked out by his father, forced into a world of jobs that are “just about the score,” but when he encounters Mephisto in that eerie pizzeria scene, we realise he’s always been prey. The Hood was never truly in control. The finale’s flashback reveals his powers came at the cost of his soul, doled out to him like stale pizza slices.

Anthony Ramos portrays Parker with unsettling vulnerability — his desperation for love from a dead mother and a cruel father bleeds into his ambition. And yet, I felt a pang of pity when Riri rips the hood off him in their final battle. There’s no victory roar; she simply leaves him kneeling and wailing in agony, stripped of power and humanity. It’s a sobering moment that reminded me of Spider-Man 2, when Peter pulls the fusion core from Doc Ock and Octavius realises the horror of what he’s become. This finale channels that same tragedy.

Riri Williams – Between Grief, Genius, and the Devil

What struck me most in the Ironheart finale wasn’t Mephisto’s reveal or even Parker’s monstrous transformation, but the unbearable tenderness of Riri’s grief. The resurrection of Natalie, in her real human form rather than AI, is the moment the series plants its dagger. This isn’t just a magical reset button. It’s a cursed wish fulfilled by the Devil, and as Riri hugs her resurrected best friend, a black vein creeps up her arm.

Dominique Thorne delivers a performance layered with defiance, vulnerability, and a teenage girl’s desperate need to fix what the world refuses to fix for her. When she built her suit after Gary and Natalie were killed, it wasn’t out of Tony Stark-esque arrogance. It was out of guilt. Out of a belief that she could have done something, anything, if only she’d been stronger, smarter, faster. The finale’s garage scene, where she remembers Gary calling her “Ironhead,” is one of the MCU’s quietest, best-written moments this year.

The Fight – Magic Meets Engineering

The finale’s showdown is brutal, clumsy, desperate — everything I want in a superhero fight that isn’t choreographed into balletic nonsense. Riri’s suit, enhanced by Zelma’s magic, flickers with crimson power as she battles Parker, who is part Hood, part demon, part eldritch rotting corpse. The fight ends with a bluff: an illusory explosion masking her move to rip the hood away. It’s clever, deeply Riri, and it shows the MCU hasn’t forgotten what makes her unique: she outsmarts gods and devils because she refuses to surrender her logic to their rules.

But the price is steep. Mephisto takes Natalie’s resurrection as payment, along with a creeping corruption that will inevitably claim more than just Riri’s flesh. Her soul is now collateral in a cosmic war she never wanted.

The Future – Season 2 or The Marvel Sludge?

The biggest question after the Ironheart finale is simple: will there be a Season 2? Because if Marvel uses Riri as just a springboard to launch Mephisto into the broader Multiverse Saga, it will be a betrayal of her character. She is not a vessel for devilish spectacle; she is a deeply grounded, specific, flawed, brilliant teenage girl who deserves her own story, her own enemies, her own triumphs.

The Hood and Mephisto are formidable foes, but the show’s greatest strength has been its willingness to dwell on grief and consequence rather than just spectacle. Riri’s panic attack in the junkyard, her silent breakdown in White Castle, her fractured conversations with Xavier — these are moments of realism the MCU desperately needs. I fear they will be lost if Ironheart becomes another cameo-laden pipeline to the next Avengers movie.

Final Reflections – The Devil in the Details

In the end, Ironheart’s finale is both a triumph and a warning. A triumph because it gives us the MCU’s most grounded, intimate portrayal of grief since WandaVision, while introducing Mephisto with creepy aplomb. A warning because it risks sacrificing Riri’s deeply personal narrative at the altar of franchise escalation.

If there is a Season 2, and god I hope there is, let it remain Riri’s story. Let Mephisto be her problem to solve, not Tony Stark’s legacy’s problem to solve, not Doctor Strange’s problem to solve. Because Ironheart shines brightest when it’s about a girl in Chicago who believes she can outbuild death itself, even when the Devil comes to collect.