It was like this for Ironheart, the long-gestating spinoff of director Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The latter was the closing of a chapter in more ways than one: specifically, a farewell to the late Chadwick Boseman, who’d brought Black Panther into the MCU. Wakanda Forever was set to be the springboard for the character, and that meant developing her solo series at the same time Coogler was filming. Ironheart faced a few delays before crossing the finish line, but Ryan Coogler believes “it’s perfect timing for this show.” Marvel Studios“If it had come out when Wakanda Forever had come out, I don’t think it would’ve been the right timing for conversations around responsible, ethical behavior around technology,” Coogler says of Ironheart. The characters never got to meet in the MCU, leaving Hodge and Ironheart’s writers to remix Riri’s origins after Wakanda Forever.