‘Ironheart’ Showrunner Chinaka Hodge Breaks Down the Finale and that Devilish Reveal

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Ironheart.

Riri Williams is making a deal with the devil — literally.

Marvel Television’s Ironheart has come to a close after six episodes, following genius inventor Riri (Dominique Thorne) as she leaves her prestigious studies at MIT and returns to her hometown of Chicago. There, she quickly finds herself entangled in a twisty tale of science and magic, as she crosses paths with the enigmatic Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), aka the Hood.

The final episode, streaming now on Disney+, reveals how Parker came to acquire the cloak that grants him his powers: by striking a deal with Mephisto, a demonic antagonist played by Sacha Baron Cohen. In the end, Mephisto offers Riri a deal, too, promising to help revive her late friend Natalie Washington (Lyric Ross) — this time not as the artificial intelligence N.A.T.A.L.I.E. but as true flesh and blood.

It's a devilish debut for one of Marvel Comics’ most iconic demons, and fans have long speculated about if and how Mephisto might somday join the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Here, Ironheart showrunner Chinaka Hodge breaks down that explosive finale, explaining how she kept Cohen’s role a secret and what might come next for Riri Williams.

MARVEL.COM: Riri made her debut in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and here, she’s stepping into the spotlight as the lead of her own TV series. How did you want to approach this new chapter of her story?   

CHINAKA HODGE: I wanted to imagine a Super Hero in a world that looks and feels like the one I inhabit. What has always inspired and compelled me about Marvel shows and movies is there’s some twist on the world we know and love. I wanted to put Riri in a space that felt very much like average stakes for a girl who lives in a neighborhood like mine, but she happens to have access to this incredible genius power and she happens to have been to Wakanda. She’s a rarity. I love characters that are functioning in unique ways in circumstances that our audiences inhabit.

MARVEL.COM: When I spoke to Ryan Coogler ahead of the premiere, he said something similar about wanting to make sure Ironheart felt rooted in Chicago. Riri’s hometown is very much a character in this show, and even with all the heightened technology and magic, it still feels very down to earth.

CHINAKA HODGE: We were lucky to shoot Ironheart in Atlanta and Chicago. I’m from Oakland and I live in LA, so I live in what a lot of people call “chocolate cities.” [I wanted to] create a “chocolate city” in the MCU that has aunties that annoy me like the aunties in my world. I wanted to show a city that looks and feels a lot like where we are. It’s most interesting to me when the otherworldly or the supernatural injects itself into the day-to-day.

MARVEL.COM: A big theme of this show is the tension between science and magic. What interested you about that idea?

CHINAKA HODGE: I believe the order for science and magic actually was part of the original [brief] when I came in to pitch. We wanted to do something that felt like a college-age show, and it would depict what a college kid might experience in the MCU. We wanted to talk about ambition, and we wanted to talk about the conflict between magic and tech. That was sort of my Chopped basket, if you will.

I just got to rewatch episodes 4 through 6, which are the really magic and tech-heavy episodes. There’s something compelling to me about the ethics of it. There’s a line that one of the characters uses: “There’s no such thing as bad tech, just people who apply it badly. But there can be some bad magic.” Particularly in these times, I was thinking about how we approach technology and how love and the human spirit are really important. In the end, the human spirit really wins.

MARVEL.COM: Let’s talk about the finale, where you finally introduce the character of Mephisto, played by Sacha Baron Cohen. This is a character with a long history in the comics. Why was this the right time to introduce that character into the MCU?

CHINAKA HODGE: I have to tell you, I have spoken that word aloud to no one but you. [Laughs] You’re the very first person to get me to confirm that Mephisto is, in fact, in our show. I’ve been very, very careful with that particular bag.

Working with Sacha Baron Cohen  — who is an incredible actor and comedian and just a brilliant mind — was one of the true joys and surprises of this project. I was around for the casting process, but we were all pretty clear on Sacha very early. He’s so good with character and so conscientious about not repeating. If I were Sacha and lazy, I might just be Borat all the time, you know what I mean? But he’s very careful to make sure that his choices are in character and new and fresh. So I think we got a Mephisto like no one expects.

[I love] the choice for him to speak in an accent when he first meets Anthony’s character Parker and no accent by the time he’s the most menacing. I think his accent being an American accent is an incredible choice. Sacha joined us late in the writing process, and it was like an injection of brand new life into the show.

MARVEL.COM: That’s so exciting, especially because fans have been speculating for years about if and when Mephisto might pop up in the MCU.

CHINAKA HODGE: The fan speculation has been nuts! I’ve struggled not to bat an eye. My brother-in-law was like, “Yo, you could do so many things with this show! What if you introduced X, Y, and Z?” And I’m like, “Don’t even say that too close to me!” I’d just walk away. [Laughs]

The payoff that is Sacha will be really great, and the fact that he can exist in any other project in this space is I think what the fans want. I’m very honored that Kevin [Feige] and the whole team up top trusted me to reveal this character in this way.

MARVEL.COM: I love that final tense conversation between Mephisto and Riri in the pizza place. What do you remember most about filming that scene?

CHINAKA HODGE: I loved watching Anthony and Sacha work, and I loved watching Dominique and Sacha work. We filmed those sequences back to back. Writing those scenes and then watching them come to life with these talented actors, I don’t think I can even talk about the joy of that as a writer. I don’t have the words for it yet.

The best part of that scene is that we shot in Desperito’s. Our writers’ room assistant is Nicole Desperito, whose name lends itself to a villain’s lair. But we talked to her a little bit about the origin of her name, and she told us about her father, who was a firefighter who fought fires very bravely, including in the towers on 9/11 and did not survive. So Desperito’s is named for a true American hero. That’s what I mean when our show is infused with this real-life human component. Desperito’s is a special place to introduce into the MCU. For that to be the place where Mephisto gathers, I’m like, “Man, the good guys always win. We don’t even know when we’re surrounded by all the good.”

MARVEL.COM: Speaking of big character reveals, the show also introduces Alden Ehrenreich as Joe McGillicuddy, later revealed to be Zeke Stane, the son of Obadiah Stane from the original Iron Man. What interested you about introducing that character?

CHINAKA HODGE: In very basic writing terms, [it was about] the mechanics of creating opposition and story. Riri has a suit on the outside. Zeke has a suit that’s on the inside. They get to talk about the ethics of partial or long-term augmentation. The conversation in our show about the ethics of tech is really huge, so to create a character who’s a tech ethicist by day and Zeke Stane by night is really fun.

The symmetry of characters is very fun, and there was something magical that happened between our actors on screen. To watch Joe McGillicuddy and Riri Williams in the battle that happens in front of White Castle, that’s the joy of reading comic books. I had Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots and Hungry Hungry Hippos as a kid, and there’s a little bit of that in [that fight]. We wanted to create some fun fights and some fun action sequences. Our stunt and action teams are incredible. [Stunt coordinator] Danny Hernandez worked on The Woman King right before Ironheart, and I feel like we got some of that fight energy all through.

MARVEL.COM: Tell me a little bit about working with Ryan Coogler on this. He served as an executive producer on Ironheart, and he obviously has a passion for this character after introducing Riri in Wakanda Forever.

CHINAKA HODGE:  Ryan and I are from the same neighborhoods in Oakland and the Bay Area, and we went to film school together at USC. My partner actually played football on the same college football team that Ryan did, so we’re connected in a lot of ways. He’s my real-life family, and to be able to work with him on this project is a dream come true.

When we were at USC together, I’d seen his student short [films] Locks and Fig. When I saw Fig, I watched the whole thing, turned it off, and watched it again. The next time I saw him on campus, I would stand two to three feet from him and just be like, “Hire me, bro. Find a production and hire me for it.” [Laughs] I didn’t know [Coogler’s company] Proximity Media was tied in with Marvel when I was pitching for [Ironheart]. So when they veil finally raised and they said, “Meet your other producing partners,” I was like, yes! You hired me! [Laughs]

MARVEL.COM: Another standout character is Zelma Stanton, played by Regan Aliyah. What was fun about getting to introduce her to the MCU?

CHINAKA HODGE: I’ve got to give credit where credit’s due: [Supervising producer] Kelsey Lew was in our writers’ room and found Zelma as a character. We tried our very best to hew as closely as possible to Zelma from the comic book pages, down to the horn-rimmed glasses and the iconic orange hat that she wears. She’s from the Bronx in publishing, so our backstory is that she spent some time in the Bronx but ended up back in Chicago. We loved creating a couple different outposts in the MCU where magic might take place. Zelma is literally the embodiment of “Black Girl Magic,” which is so much fun. And then come on, Cree Summer as her mom? You can’t beat it.

A fun tidbit for super fans is that the candy shop and bookstore, Stanton’s Bookshop, is based on my long-term family friend’s bookshop in Oakland, which is called Marcus Books. It’s the oldest Black-owned bookstore in the country. We just wanted to create a nod to Black-owned bookstores, which are one of the places that we know create magic all over the country.

With Zelma and Ms. Stanton, I could see spinoffs. I could see other movies. I could see people not needing to go all the way to Madripoor to understand some magic. We wanted to create some doors and openings in the MCU for people like us to fall in. And if you watch the end of episode 6, you see that when you create a door, sometimes it opens Pandora’s Box.

MARVEL.COM: Are there any other hidden details that you want to highlight?

CHINAKA HODGE: If you check the spoon that Mephisto is using in his first conversation with Parker, that will reveal everything you need to know. That’s a cool little insert, which engaged our VFX teams for a quick little pop. I would also say the scar spreading on Riri’s arm says everything. And just for what it’s worth, Riri’s got this magic suit and she’s got this cloak, and things might be next. All I can say is she’s got the components to avoid certain doom.

Marvel Television’s Ironheart is streaming now, only on Disney+.