As the release date for Ironheart quickly approaches, there may be a lesson that the Marvel Studios show could learn from Andor Season 2.
Marvel’s Ironheart will premiere on Disney+ later this month. The show stars Dominique Thorne, who previously appeared in 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, as Riri Williams, Anthony Ramos as Parker Robins/The Hood, and more.
“Set after the events of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Marvel Television’s Ironheart pits technology against magic when Riri Williams (Thorne), determined to make her mark on the world, returns to her hometown of Chicago,” the synopsis reads. “Her unique take on building iron suits is brilliant, but in pursuit of her ambitions, she finds herself wrapped up with the mysterious yet charming Parker Robbins aka The Hood (Anthony Ramos).”
Ironheart release date schedule shows initial three-episode drop
We know that the first three episodes are all coming to Disney+ on June 24, 2025. We also know that there are six episodes in total. But there has been no official word if the other three episodes will all come out on the same day the following week, or if we’ll only get one new episode a week following the premiere.
In the past year or so, the MCU Disney+ shows have adopted something of a ‘let’s try this and see if it works’ strategy when it comes to their release dates. Some of the bigger ones are released weekly. Others, like Echo, just suddenly arrive all at once. Armor Wars has gone with the bold approach of never having a release date, ever, while now they’re doing this three-episode drop thing with Ironheart.
I don’t know what kind of conversations they’re having over there at Disney+ or what their reasoning is behind Ironheart’s strategy. I’d imagine it has to do with giving fans some more breathing room between Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps — but, also, they could have just pushed the Ironheart release date back, if that’s what they were worried about. Especially now that there’s a pretty big gap in the company’s release date calendar since Avengers: Doomsday has pushed back.
Why larger drops work for Disney
I like the idea of getting the first three episodes on June 24 and the second three episodes on July 1, though. I was a little skeptical when they announced they were doing a similar strategy for Andor Season 2; that ended up working out great, though, because it was like getting a little Star Wars movie every week. It’s a good way to build up some hype and get people talking about the show.
Sure, Andor Season 2 had more episodes than Ironheart will, it was able to build up some strong word-of-mouth because it had some more time to do so, but take an example from outside of Disney: Fear Street. That project kind of came along out of nowhere, but, suddenly, we got three feature films over the course of three weeks, and it was pretty much the only thing horror fans were talking about for that whole month.
And, then, on the other side of things, you have Daredevil: Born Again — a show that, despite its difficulties in production, Marvel was really, really trying to hype up and get everyone excited about, as Season 2 is already in production. While there were weeks where more than one episode was released at the same time, it was mostly a week-to-week release, and those numbers didn’t come back good. Those numbers didn’t come back good at all.
Larger episode drops for Ironheart could be an easy, simple way to get people to check it out. Who knows? If they do more releases like Ironheart’s and that works out for them, maybe they will even adopt it for Daredevil: Born Again Season 2. We’ll see!
