Ironheart Introduces a Major Iron Man Villain, But There's a Big Catch

Warning: this article contains full spoilers for Ironheart’s first three episodes! If you haven't already, be sure to check out IGN's Ironheart review.

Marvel’s Ironheart series puts the solo spotlight on Dominique Thorne’s Riri Williams, building on her debut in 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The series also introduces several new villains to the MCU, not the least of which being Anthony Ramos’ ambitious supernatural gangster The Hood. But that’s not all. The series also introduces one of the most significant Iron Man villains of the 21st Century in Alden Ehrenreich’s Ezekiel “Zeke” Stane.

There’s just one catch. Zeke (or Joe, as he prefers to be called) isn’t much of a villain. He’s a surprisingly nice guy for being the son of Tony Stark’s original arch-nemesis, to the point where he’s a bit of a pushover. Will that change as the series progresses?

While we wait for the second half of the series to drop on Disney+, let’s take a look at Ezekiel Stane’s comic book roots and why Ironheart is going in such a different direction with the character.

Ezekiel Stane in the Iron Man Comics

Ezekiel Stane’s roots as a character go back to 1985’s Iron Man #200, which depicts the final battle between Iron Man in his upgraded Silver Centurion armor and Obadiah Stane’s Iron Monger. Their rivalry ends when Stane commits suicide rather than face imprisonment and public humiliation. However, that act would inspire a deep grudge in Obadiah’s son Ezekiel, a character who didn’t actually make his debut until 2008’s The Order #8.

Following his debut in The Order, Zeke quickly became one of the main antagonists of writer Matt Fraction and artist Salvador Larroca’s Invincible Iron Man series. The series is all about Tony’s struggle to evolve as both a businessman and a superhero and confront the rapidly shifting landscape of the 21st Century, and Zeke plays right into that struggle. As Fraction told CBR, Zeke represents a new, more advanced, and more anarchic fusion of man and machine.

“Zeke is a post-national business man and kind of an open source ideological terrorist, he has absolutely no loyalty to any sort of law, creed, or credo,” Fraction said. “He doesn't want to beat Tony Stark, he wants to make him obsolete. Windows wants to be on every computer desktop in the world, but Linux and Stane want to destroy the desktop. He's the open source to Stark's closed source oppressiveness. He has no headquarters, no base, and no bank account. He's a true ghost in the machine; completely off the grid, flexible, and mobile.”

Zeke is meant to highlight Tony Stark’s fundamental weakness as a hero. No matter how advanced his technology, Tony is a man wearing a suit at the end of the day. Separate the man from the armor, and he can be defeated. Zeke is instead a true fusion of biology and technology. He’s augmented his own body with hyper-advanced bionics that allow him to innately wield many of the same powers as Iron Man. He has super-strength and healing. He can fire repulsor blasts from his fingertips. As long as he keeps his accelerated metabolism fed with enough calories, he’s basically the next generation of Iron Man.

Tony eventually defeats Zeke, though not without some major collateral damage (including the near-death of Pepper Potts). Their rivalry inspires Tony to rethink his approach to the Iron Man armor, transforming it from mechanical suit to a bio-organic, liquid metal construct that lives entirely within his own body. This evolved armor, dubbed the Bleeding Edge suit, was the inspiration behind Tony’s Mark L and Mark LXXXV suits in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, respectively.

Zeke has continued to be a thorn in the side of Tony Star and other Marvel heroes in the years since. Later in Fraction and Larroca’s Invincible Iron Man, he’s recruited by The Mandarin to carry out the latter villain’s master plan, creating a true alliance of old and new-school Iron Man villains. These days, Zeke runs the new incarnation of Stane International, making him a peer of fellow supervillain businessmen like Alchemax’s Tiberius Stone and Fisk Industries’ Wilson Fisk.

Why Aldren Ehrenreich’s Ezekiel Stane Is So Different

Given how much Fraction and Larroca’s Invincible Iron Man draws inspiration from the MCU, many fans assumed it would only be a matter of time until Zeke Stane crossed over to make his MCU debut. That’s finally happened, with Alden Ehrenreich portraying the character in Ironheart (though we don’t get confirmation of that fact until Zeke reveals his true identity in Episode 3).

But again, this is a very different take on the character than comic fans might have been expecting. In the comics, Zeke is defined by a ruthless hatred of and disdain for Tony Stark and everything he represents. He blames Tony for his father’s death, even though that death was entirely self-inflicted. He also views Tony as a technological dinosaur wielding an outdated form of power.

Ehrenreich’s Zeke, by comparison, literally couldn’t be a nicer guy. He’s warm and pleasant and endlessly patient with his selfish, uptight neighbors. He doesn’t seem to hold any ill will toward Tony Stark for his father’s death, but rather recognizes that Obadiah was the architect of his own destruction. And rather than moonlight as a terrorist, he’s a mere tinkerer with a day job as a tech ethicist. Apart from being a brilliant scientist with a knack for bionics and the son of Obadiah Stane, Zeke could scarcely be more different from the source material.

That seems to be the entire point. Marvel Studios has never shied away from making profound changes to the villains of the Marvel Universe in the past, whether it’s making Ultron the child of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, redeeming Daniel Brühl’s Helmut Zemo, or literally everything involving The Mandarin. In this case, depicting Zeke as a fanatic with a lifetime grudge against Tony seems pointless when Tony himself is long dead. What is there for Zeke to prove, exactly?

Instead, the idea seems to be to subvert expectations by making Zeke the level-headed voice of reason in the rush to crown the MCU’s Iron Man successor. He recognizes the danger posed by Tony’s technology. He forces Riri to examine her own motivations and question why she’s so hellbent on building her Ironheart suit. One of the key ideas driving the series is that just because you can build a thing doesn’t mean you necessarily should. Riri needs to find her reason for being Ironheart before she can truly become who she’s meant to be.

This isn’t to say Zeke will remain the squeaky clean tech ethicist and understanding neighbor for the entire series. We’re already seeing cracks starting to form, as he realizes he can push back against those trying to take advantage of him. It remains to be seen just how deeply he’ll transform over the course of the second half of the series and if he’’ll become something more akin to the vindictive tech-terrorist of the comics, but we do expect he’ll start to butt heads with Riri more and more. She represents the old approach to Iron Man - a flesh-and-blood human wearing an external suit. He embodies the new Iron Man - a person augmented by bionics to become truly superhuman. It may be that to truly triumph, Riri will have to find a happy medium between the two.

Do you think Zeke Stane will become a villain by the end of the series? Vote in our poll below and let us know what you think in the comments.

For more on Ironheart, see why fans think the series is hiding a Mephisto reveal, and brush up on every Marvel movie and series in development.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.