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I don’t know about sorcery, but last I saw she was in possession of the Ten Rings in the comics and using their powers.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
I'm not super familiar with the comic character but what I did run across don't recall her dabbling in sorcery. Is everyone doing Dr. Strange things these days?

I'm not sure if she in particular has, but its not at all an uncommon theme for Iron Man stories. The main reason the Mandarin was traditionally Tony's arch rival was that he challenged his technology with magic and a lot of his stories would result in Tony approaching magic with a scientific approach and win the day by incorporating it into his tech. It's also effectively Dr Doom's motif, so they may be building something there.

The Mandarin's rings aren't magic, they are alien in origin from a crashed space ship.

 Quixote wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
I'm not super familiar with the comic character but what I did run across don't recall her dabbling in sorcery. Is everyone doing Dr. Strange things these days?

I'm not sure if she in particular has, but its not at all an uncommon theme for Iron Man stories. The main reason the Mandarin was traditionally Tony's arch rival was that he challenged his technology with magic and a lot of his stories would result in Tony approaching magic with a scientific approach and win the day by incorporating it into his tech. It's also effectively Dr Doom's motif, so they may be building something there.

The Mandarin's rings aren't magic, they are alien in origin from a crashed space ship.

Oh right. I always forget they treated them as alien from the beginning unlike Fin Fang Foom who was retconned later.

Still, Man of Science facing Magic is still a pretty common theme in his books in general.

The rings are technology, but they have been treated as and are effectively magic. "Any sufficiently advanced technology..." and such.

I am curious if this is really Riri making a magic armor or if this is her walking into a trap and her armor being corrupted or contaminated.

We know the Hood is the main bad guy in this and that his titular hood isn't Dormamu based, but instead Mephisto based. Corruption and traps are basically his whole deal.

 AduroT wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
So, her version of JARVIS is a jive-talking ratchet hood-rat?

A AI recreation of a friend of hers who was killed.

That sounds like it belongs in a Black Mirror episode more than a super-hero show. Feels weird too with with all the anti-AI art sentiment to gloss over the ethical implications of creating a digital approximation of a deceased loved one.

It's not a new concept for the MCU, though, given that Tony did the same thing with his family's butler...

 insaniak wrote:
It's not a new concept for the MCU, though, given that Tony did the same thing with his family's butler...

And in the regular comics that's what Tony Stark did with himself.

For a while he was just an AI in an Iron Man suit.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
It's not a new concept for the MCU, though, given that Tony did the same thing with his family's butler...

And in the regular comics that's what Tony Stark did with himself.

For a while he was just an AI in an Iron Man suit.

In the Iron Heart comics it was a Tony Stark AI, so even if they went that route here it would still be a deceased person being turned into ChatGPT.

She met Tony just a couple times before his “death” and he decided he liked her so set her up with support, including an AI of himself to help her and run the suits. When she lost that she made her own AI, and I Think it unintentionally took the form of her dead friend. It’s been awhile so I forget the specifics. The scene in the trailer has her hooking wires to her head and then the new AI saying Who Else Would It Be? so I’m guessing it’s a subconscious thing here again and not actively choosing to model it after the dead friend. Incidentally I tend to hate her Natalie AI in the comics. It’s generally kind of an arse.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
P.S. Tony’s current AI in the comics is IronGPT. It’s terrible and calls him Username and tends to get everything wrong.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
It's not a new concept for the MCU, though, given that Tony did the same thing with his family's butler...

And in the regular comics that's what Tony Stark did with himself.

For a while he was just an AI in an Iron Man suit.

In the Iron Heart comics it was a Tony Stark AI, so even if they went that route here it would still be a deceased person being turned into ChatGPT.

Tony was dead at that time in the comics as well.

Looks like Thunderbolts was a loss. Not a catastrophic financial bomb, but a loss nonetheless:

Per Variety: https://variety.com/2025/film/box-office/thunderbolts-lost-millions-box-office-marvel-next-1236427994/

With $371 million globally, it’s one of the lowest-grossing installments in all of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe

Still, “Thunderbolts*” needed to make $425 million worldwide to break even, a figure that seems unachievable.