After Ironheart Got Review Bombed, Fans Seem To Be Coming To The Marvel Show’s Defense

Dominique Thorne looking anguished in Ironheart as RiRi Williams
(Image credit: Marvel Studios)

The MCU’s run of streaming shows continues with the Ironheart TV show, which just debuted the first half of its season earlier this week on Disney+. The series is currently getting a positive reaction from Marvel fans on Rotten Tomatoes, but not without first getting review bombed before the show had even been released to the public. Here’s how it went down:

How Ironheart Got Review Bombed In Time For Its Premiere

Unfortunately, we’ve seen this trend a few times before regarding Marvel and Disney projects lead by a POC female character. It happened to Captain Marvel back in 2019, and once again for the live-action The Little Mermaid, which actually led IMDB to take action, for example. The same fate befell Ironheart hours before the series was even available for audiences to watch and form enough of an opinion to review. GameRant reports the Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter rating (which is accumulated from audience ratings) debuted at 32%.

Something similar happened on IMDB, where the TV series apparently got started with a 4.7 out of 10 before the series was even available to stream. On that front, it’s since gotten even worse, with the series having a 3.7 with 15,000 ratings. Over 50% of the ratings over on IMDB gave the series a flat one out of 10, which is a good indicator of users just logging on to give it the worst score possible.

Disney+: from $9.99 a month w/ ad-supported plan

Disney+: from $9.99 a month w/ ad-supported plan
The first three episodes of Ironheart are now streaming, with the rest of the season to come this Tuesday, July 1. A Disney+ subscription starts at $9.99 a month for its new ad-supported plan. Go ad-free and pay $15.99 a month or save 16% and pre-pay $159.99 for a year.

It Looks Like Marvel Fans Are Helping Give Ironheart More Love

In terms of Rotten Tomatoes, just three days later, it’s a different story, as Ironheart has a more accurate 60% Popcornmeter rating. It seems to show that Marvel fans are fighting back against review bombs and taking the time to make sure the latest MCU series is getting more praise than all out hate.

Now it’s not like everyone who’s seen the series has given it undisputed praise. The series has a 72% critics score after they’ve shared mixed opinions on the series. Some of the commentary called it “a bit of a mess” and in “desperately need of soul,” while others called it one of their “favorite Marvel shows.” Certainly, the series going up 30% on its audience score shows a lot of fans care enough to make sure the show isn’t thought of as a failure by Marvel.

The series follows Dominique Thorne’s Riri Williams, who was introduced in Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Robert Downey Jr. has already declared his support for Ironheart, and within the episodes released thus far, a connection from the Iron Man trilogy was revealed. You can catch the first three episodes on Disney+ now and see the rest of the season when the other three come out this upcoming Tuesday, July 1.

Sarah El-Mahmoud
Staff Writer

Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.

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