Glow Star Cast In Ironheart Series

The upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe series Ironheart has cast Glow star Shakira Barrera in an undisclosed role.

By Douglas Helm | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Marvel’s Ironheart continues to build its cast, with the latest addition being Glow’s Shakira Barrera. Barrera is known for playing the wrestler Yolanda on Glow and also recently appeared as a series regular on the Freevee series Sprung. Her role in the upcoming Ironheart Disney+ series has not yet been announced and Deadline reported that Marvel reps are keeping mum on the matter for the moment.

Shakira Barrera in GLOW

Barrera is joining the already stacked cast that includes Anthony Ramos, Manny Montana, Alden Ehrenreich, Regan Aliyah, Shea Couleé, and Zoe Terakes. The star of the show will be Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, aka Ironheart. Ironheart is one of the newer characters in Marvel’s history. She’s a young genius inventor who creates an advanced suit of armor — perhaps one more advanced than Iron Man himself. Now seems like the perfect time for Marvel to bring Riri Williams into the fold with Iron Man gone. Now Riri Williams will get to show off her armor and bring her own genius flair to the MCU.

Before we get to see the solo Ironheart series, we’ll get introduced to Dominique Thorne’s Riri Williams in the upcoming Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. We got a brief look at her character in the trailer, so it’s possible that Riri could be using Wakanda’s tech and their Vibranium resources to build her armor. While the focus of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever won’t be on Ironheart, it does seem like it’ll be the perfect introduction for her own series. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever seems to be focusing primarily on Wakanda’s conflict with Atlantis and its king Namor, along with who will be taking over the Black Panther mantle after the tragic passing of Chadwick Boseman. It’s unclear how much Ironheart will factor into the story, but we’ll get to find out on November 11 when Black Panther: Wakanda Forever hits theaters.

Disney also held their D23 event the last several days and there were a ton of announcements. They also held a brief preview of Ironheart behind closed doors. While those clips aren’t available to the general public yet, the footage briefly showed Riri Williams as a student at MIT as well as a brief shot of her in the Ironheart armor. The footage also gave the audience a brief look at Anthony Ramos as Parker Robbins. Comicbook fans will be familiar with Parker Robbins as the villain The Hood, though it doesn’t seem like he’ll be in full villain mode when we first meet him. Hopefully, we’ll the general public will get to see some of these clips, along with a full trailer, soon enough.

There’s no word yet on when Ironheart will be officially released on Disney+, but it’s expected to be sometime in 2023. It’ll be interesting to see how Riri factors into Marvel’s long-term plans for the MCU, especially with the Avengers films they have planned for Phase 6. Until then, you can check out the ongoing She-Hulk series on Disney+, which just aired its fourth episode this week. Marvel will wrap up the year with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever followed by two holiday specials with the Werewolf by Night Halloween special and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.