Way before she got her own Disney+ series, Riri Williams flew the flag for MIT’s Pi Day.
Ironheart, the armoured superhero played by Dominique Thorne, is about to star in her own eponymous six-part series on Disney+. But that won’t be the first time the character has appeared on screen.
Of course, eagle-eyed and attentive Marvel Zombies clock that the character, known to friends and family as Riri Williams, appeared in 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. But that was a bit of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it affair and besides, Marvel Studios has a habit of introducing characters that are never, ever, seen again. You’d be forgiven if you filed her away alongside Eros and Pip the Troll.
But we’re not talking about that. Shortly after the comics version of Ironheart made her debut in May 2016 (Invincible Iron Man Vol. 3 #7 by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Deodato), the character cropped up in this pretty sweet little promo video by the venerable Massachusetts Institute of Technology in March, 2017. That may be the shortest journey from page to screen in history. Anyway, give it a spin:
Well, all else aside, it’s got a better soundtrack than Disney‘s upcoming offering. No shade, mind you, but the music here is “The Ecstasy of Gold” by Ennio Morricone, the greatest film composer ever to pick up a baton, from the 1966 Sergio Leone banger, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. That’s the Sistine Chapel of screen music. You might recognise it if you’ve ever caught Metallica live – Lars and the boys like to fang it out at the start of their shows.
But now, let’s have a little context. MIT like to make these cool, geeky little videos for Pi Day (that’s March 14th or, in the American idiom, 3/14 – bloody nerds). Pi Day is when MIT sends out its acceptance notifications for prospective students, and they typically go out at 6.28pm, because 6.28 is “Tau” in math-speak. That’s Pi x2, a factoid so nerdy even I didn’t know it, and I used to spend school lunch breaks playing D&D in the library.
That’s a pretty stressful day for MIT wannabes – for the 2028 graduating class, only 1,284 applications out of 28,232 were accepted – that’s 4.5%. So, to take the edge off, MIT cobbles together these fun little short films, generally riffing on some geeky property or other. Last year’s parodied the v. serious Oppenheimer, while 2023’s played around with the giant robot misery-fest, Neon Genesis Evangelion. If they did one for 2025, my Google Fu has failed me, but the MITBloggers YouTube account has a handy playlist if you want to check ’em out. It seems Star Wars is a popular go-to topic, which should come as a surprise to no one.
But Ms. Williams here has a special connection to MIT – she’s a student there, as was the late (in the movies – he’s doing fine in the comics last time I checked) Tony Stark. Given that Marvel Comics made free use of MIT, MIT figured a little quid pro quo was in order. Speaking to the Boston Globe, Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill, who appears in the video as himself opposite student Ayomide F as Ironheart, noted, “Marvel uses MIT in their comic, so we figured, given we are MIT, it would be okay.”
The MIT Admissions Blog has a fun behind the scenes feature if you’re keen to see how these burgeoning boffins pulled the whole thing together.
Ironheart premieres on Disney+ on June 25, 2025.
RELATED
MORE IN News
