Main cast: Dominique Thorne (Riri Williams/Ironheart), Lyric Ross (NATALIE), Manny Montana (John King), Matthew Elam (Xavier Washington), Anji White (Ronnie Williams), Paul Calderón (Arthur Robbins), Regan Aliyah (Zelma Stanton), Sonia Denis (Clown), Shea Couleé (Slug), Zoe Terakes (Jeri Blood), Shakira Barrera (Roz Blood), Anthony Ramos (Parker Robbins/The Hood), and Alden Ehrenreich (Ezekiel Stane)
Director: Angela Barnes
You know a show’s in trouble when you find yourself rooting for the crime boss. Karma’s a Glitch continues Marvel’s bold new experiment: seeing how many catastrophic, morally questionable decisions one character can make before even the villains start looking like sympathetic victims of bad writing.
Let’s spare a moment of silence for Parker Robbins, aka the Hood. Sure, the guy’s a criminal, a killer, and a walking Dormammu cosplay, but at this point, he’s the tragic hero of this disaster. All the poor man wanted was to do his nefarious, villainous thing in peace.
Enter Riri Williams, our so-called heroine, who’s developed the uncanny ability to ruin everything she touches — and then look around in confused, self-absorbed disbelief like, “Wait, is this about me? It is, isn’t it? Good.”
This episode sees Parker’s entire criminal operation implode because of Riri’s chaos vortex. His crew turns on him, and his magic hood — shocker — it turns out the hood is evil because it is pilfered from Dormammu’s drawer! Who could have seen that coming?
And in true Disney+ fashion, we discover Parker’s tragic backstory. Wait for it… daddy issues! Because, apparently, if you’re a character in the MCU these days, your childhood trauma has to be directly tied to your absentee, abusive, or evil father. It’s like some unspoken studio mandate. Dear Disney writers: your scripts aren’t therapy sessions. Please see a professional.
Meanwhile, Zeke, who was sent to kill Riri, suddenly has a change of heart because — and let’s be honest — no force on Earth can breach the impenetrable wall of Riri’s plot armor. The writers clearly ran out of ideas halfway through the script and just scribbled “he chickens out” in the margins.
You can also smell the frantic studio panic in this episode. Karma’s a Glitch hastily tries to slap a moral justification on her dumpster fire of a character arc. Now, she’s making the suit to protect her family!
Touching, really — except for the minor issue where none of this would’ve happened if she hadn’t endangered them in the first place by choosing to hang out with literal murderers. Remember, this is a genius with access to MIT, Stark tech, and probably a LinkedIn profile filled with offers from every billionaire in the MCU. But nah — crime rings it is!
The episode’s crown jewel, though? NATALIE, the AI you have come to know and roll your eyes at, gets fried out of existence when Riri’s latest brilliant plan inevitably backfires. Watching Riri’s smug, self-satisfied face collapse as everything blows up in her face is chef’s kiss. Best laugh this show’s delivered all season.
At this point, you have to feel sorry for Dominique Thorne. The woman’s a decent actress saddled with one of the worst-written protagonists in the modern MCU. Somewhere out there, she’s probably staring at a WandaVision box set, whispering, “Why couldn’t I have been in that one?”
