Got through the first three episodes last night. The show was much better than I thought it would be, yet at the same time, I can see why Disney isn't marketing it very much, as it's going to appeal to only a small subset of folks.
Part of this is (quite unfortunately) just subliminal racism (with probably a side of sexism). Riri is obviously a black female character, but this show is unapologetically rooted within American black culture. We've obviously had black characters before in the MCU, like T'Challa and Sam Wilson. But the former is the Afrofuturist pastiche of Wakanda, and Sam (for all the efforts of TF&TWS to root him in Louisiana) is a fairly deracialized character. Riri is, for a lack of a better way to put it, very hood (no pun intended). Black characters like her don't appear as the "black best friend" in mainstream media, largely because white creators would be worried they'd be playing into stereotypes if they put in a portrayal like this. So I do think this will be alienating and offputting to a lot of white viewers.
This is doubly a shame, because the rootedness of part of the show in the South Side of Chicago is one of its strengths, and I think the frank look at the realness of the black experience would help a lot of racists become more empathetic people. At the same time, we can't ignore that Ms. Marvel and Echo were two of the lowest viewed MCU shows on Disney+. It seems like around half of MCU fans are just completely uninterested in watching rooted shows about women of color who live quite different lives from them. Disney has learned this, hence dropping it with such little fanfare.
The ironic thing is, Riri is one of the best protagonists that they've come up with yet. One aspect is she's not (yet) a superhero - in fact she could be either a hero or a villain, with where the show is to date. But the most important thing is she's gloriously flawed, much like her role model, Tony Stark. Even better, she makes mistakes, repeatedly. It's very rare to see a plot in the MCU largely driven by the mistakes of the protagonist. And the way that the end of the third episode left off, it seems like they're not going to let her off the hook.
The emotional core of the show is great, but it's not perfect.
One element I don't like much is just it's an awkward transition from where we last saw Riri in Wakanda Forever. I thought she felt needlessly shoehorned into that movie, but within the first ten minutes they (with very jarring exposition spoken aloud by her) completely upend her life to get her back home to where they need her for the plot to go forward. Once Episode 1 settled in a bit, this wasn't as much of a concern, but I still couldn't understand why this character would idolize Tony Stark. Okay, so we get that it was her stepfather, but that doesn't really make it better. Some of this may be ported over from the comics, but I feel like the two aspects of her character clash pretty strongly. And I'm not saying that because I don't think an inner-city black girl can't be a tech supergenius - I think Miles Morales in the Spiderverse movies worked great with an overall similar origin story.
The sudden tonal shifts with the subplots is also a bit weird. The gang (I don't think they have a real name) come off as a joke in their initial introduction. Robbins and his right-hand man John have real menace to them, but then we have all these goofs like a retired drag queen hacker and a pair of lesbian cage fighters, all of which are impeccably dressed. Or the tonal whiplash that Eric Andre's character (who is played up as comic relief) is just killed offscreen by John. I don't have an issue with queer representation here at all, but I wish the gang was less flashy and more grounded, because they stick out like a sore thumb in the South Side setting the story sets up.
The tonal shift whenever we get Riri hanging with Joe...sorry, Zeke...is also pretty jarring. That said, in this case, I think it's a great thing. The first scene in Evanston is so shocking, dropped off into white people land. The two have a great dynamic, which makes me wish we got more "fish out of water" stuff with Riri at MIT. If it wasn't for the age gap thing (since I think Riri is supposed to still be a teenager here) I'd say I'd much rather romantic tension develop here than with that Xavier dude. Still, this stuff feels ported from another, far more generic MCU property, and I wonder if this whole subplot was added in the 2024 reshoots. In an alternate version of the story where it was cut down to theatrical length, this is an obvious thing to cut. Hopefully it will tie in some more, and it's not just meant to introduce whatever bio-mechanical superhero/villain Zeke becomes, who will then be completely ignored going forward.
Overall, I think it's pretty good, but I do think few people are going to give it the chance it deserves.
