#ik they can’t go with the mentor/mentee story like the comics but her name and tech are so intrinsically tied to iron man that it’s weird

[bye-bye-miss-american-pie]

My biggest gripe with Black Panther Wakanda Forever is literally what was Riri doing there. She was just There throughout the whole movie. Like why was she suddenly so willing to fight in the frontlines for a country she knows little about let alone been to? The only connection she has to Shuri is her idolisation of her as a superhero/genius inventor. There’s no backstory for her (the mentions of her stepdad’s car don’t count), she only talks about calling her mom once. She gets a lazier introduction into the mcu compared to Spider Man (a household name that didn’t need his origin story retold, which was a conscious choice the mcu made). She was the mcguffin at the start of the movie but then we’re told that Namor doesn’t even care about her?? He just wants to wage war on the surface world?? She goes to Talokan to do fuck all??? She doesn’t even get a confrontation with Namor?? She was there in the finale to contribute with her Iron Heart armour but,,, Shuri already invented a bunch of flying/underwater tech armours for Okoye and Co. which ended up underselling Riri. Literally there was nothing Riri could do in the movie that Shuri couldn’t have done. Maybe I missed something but did they even name drop her title “Iron Heart”? She’s not even a teenager anymore (she was like a 13yo MIT student in the comics I think) so it’s even more annoying when she just gets ordered around like a kid. Literally why was she there.

Tldr: Riri should debut properly in her own show with a complete backstory/character arc instead of being dumped into BPWF for no reason.