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- "Technology is meant to advance humanity. And bionics is about so much more than weaponry and defense. You can actually help people. Organ replacements, prosthetic implants. I mean, that's just the tip of the iceberg."
- ―Ezekiel Stane to Riri Williams[src]
Ezekiel "Zeke" Stane is a tech ethicist and the son of the late Obadiah Stane, who worked as a black market dealer under the name Joe McGillicuddy. Stane briefly worked and befriended Riri Williams until she accidentally revealed his identity to the public and incriminated him. While incarcerated, Stane was recruited by Hood, who upgraded his bionics to grant him superhuman abilities and ordered him to kill Williams. Though Stane spared her and urged her to leave Chicago, he soon discovered that Hood had secretly rewired his bionics to control him. After a confrontation with Ironheart, she was able to free him from Hood’s influence, though Stane’s resentment toward her endured.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
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Ezekiel Stane was born to Obadiah Stane in the 1980s.[1] As a child, he listened to his father speak passionately about technology, which sparked his own fascination with the field. While he shared Obadiah’s interest in futuristic innovation, Ezekiel gravitated toward bionics, viewing it not merely for warfare or defense but as a means to advance humanity. Motivated by a desire to help others, Ezekiel developed a strong ethical drive to explore how technology could be used for healing and human enhancement.[2]
The Stane Legacy[]
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After learning the truth about his father's death and his legacy as the Iron Monger, Ezekiel adopted the alias “Joe McGillicuddy” and withdrew from the public eye, eventually settling in Evanston, Illinois. Though he still held respect for his father, Ezekiel made a vow not to follow in his destructive footsteps. In an effort to confront his inner turmoil, he began attending therapy sessions, where he was told he had a tendency to project his insecurities onto others.
Ezekiel’s guilt led him to purchase a set of biomimetic mechatronics, which he stored in a bunker built from an old silo. Over time, he amassed a stash of black-market technology, carefully avoiding any interaction with the devices to prevent fabricating evidence against himself. Seeking a legitimate path, he took a job as a tech ethicist, only to be manipulated by his coworker Frank, who tricked him into falsifying a report for a client. Frank then used this to blackmail Ezekiel on a near-daily basis, further compounding his stress and isolation.[2]
Meeting Riri Williams[]
One day, after buying groceries, Stane came home in his car to find his neighbor, Heather, walking her dog, and meekly confronted her about the pet's constant relieving themselves on his lawn. Being brushed off by her, Stane tried to get his groceries inside his house until he dropped them on the floor, being helped by a younger woman who was standing on the sidewalk. As she introduced herself as Riri Williams, she revealed her knowledge of his illegal purchases and, after inviting herself into his house, demanded that he gave her the parts she needed for her newest project.
Initially, Stane tried to deny his possession of the items, but folded under Williams' threat of calling the FBI on him; he reluctantly agreed to take her to his safehouse, where she'd find the technology he had been collecting. On the drive there, Stane began to cry at the prospect of having his items taken from him. Williams initially believed it to be due to her blackmail, but he dismissed it, citing how often he gets blackmailed on a daily basis - with his coworker Frank as the main example. Stane was admonished by Williams, who told him he had been born with the power to not let anyone push him around; he considered her words, and was surprised to find out Williams also enjoyed listening to Alanis Morissette when he turned on the radio.
As they neared the location of his bunker, after jamming to Morissette's "You Oughta Know", Stane was warned by Williams not to try and pull any tricks on her, finding her assumption of him being a threat slightly humorous. Unloading her armor off his car, Stane explained how he came to acquire the bunker, and when they entered it, defended himself from Williams' quips and concerns about the amount of illegal weaponry and technology he had stashed there, calling his acquisitions a "quirky hobby". Stane went on to talk about his father: about how close to him the bunker made him feel, and his father's views on technology compared to his own.
The duo spent hours working on Williams' armor until early nighttime, when she declared she had to have it ready for a job she had taken. Stane snarked, throwing her accusations of shadiness back at her but admitting he was merely projecting. He was then questioned by Williams on a hypothetical scenario about the possibility of using brain-scanning technology to create an A.I.; Stane cast doubt on how ethical the hypothetical procedure would be, but didn't pry further into the subject.
Williams then asked him to pass her a Magnetic Repulsion Field, but he refused to touch any piece of his stash out of fear of leaving traces of himself on the tech. She goaded him into holding the MRF, which he admitted was a nice sensation, enjoying the feeling of metal against his skin. Stane then started analyzing the armor in admiration, until Williams suddenly had to leave for her job.
The next day, Stane was taking out the trash when he stepped on dog poop, which his neighbor had once again neglected to clean up after their confrontation. Taking Riri's advice to stand up for himself, he grabbed a pair of side cutters, walked up to Heather's lawn and started snipping some of her flowers.[2]
A Reignited Spark[]
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Williams' visit profoundly impacted Stane, as he couldn't shake the feeling of holding his tools off his mind: he started having new ideas for bionic enhancements, and then creating their blueprints. Stane decided to enlist Williams to help him, googling her address and visiting her a few days later.
At the door, Stane was met by Ronnie Williams, and questioned on the affiliation between him and her daughter - who covered her tracks by telling her mother they met at work. Excusing themselves, they talked on the hall, where Stane displayed his excitement and presented to her his many designs and ideas, only for Riri to dismiss him. Stane hesitated, but rejected her denial, threatening to expose her lie to her mother unless she agreed to help him with his projects; he told her to go to his house the next day, and on his way out thanked her for teaching him to be more assertive.
The next day, Stane didn't wait for Williams to arrive to start his work, attempting to create a neurolink between himself and a computer chip and installing it on his arm, only for it to malfunction. Stane covered the wound with gauze, waiting on Williams to help him fix the problem. As she tended to the gash on his arm, Williams suggested upgrading his bio-mesh skin design to comport a cloaking feature, something Stane was highly opposed to.[1]
Taking a Fall[]
To be added
Taking Revenge[]
To be added
Controlled by the Hood[]
To be added
Personality[]
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Stane is a very anxious and submissive person, as seen when confronting his neighbor about the dog poop on his lawn: instead of making his displeasure clear, he tried to appease Heather as much as he possibly could. He has a loose grip on his emotions, crying while driving Riri Williams to his bunker, and has a tendency to project his insecurities onto others.
While he looked up to his father, Ezekiel was severely impacted by his fall from grace, swearing never to "go supervillain" like Obadiah. This could be the root of his fear of getting arrested, as he states that he believes inmates would gang up on him were he to be caught.
After a pep-talk from Williams, Stane started being more assertive of his own wishes, acting more confidently. However, with this newfound confidence, he demonstrated a slightly unhinged streak, as he snipped his neighbor Heather's flowers in retaliation for her leaving her dog's excrement on his lawn, and tracking down Williams' home to demand her help with his new projects.
Despite this, Stane is idealistic, believing in the potential of technology to benefit human lives instead of harming them. He doesn't think highly of technological weapons and defense systems, instead directing his interest to bionic augmentations and prosthetics; things he believes would really cause a lasting impact.
Powers and Abilities[]
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Powers[]
- Bionic Enhancements: To be added
- Superhuman Strength: To be added
- Superhuman Durability: To be added
- Electricity Manipulation: To be added
Abilities[]
- Master Engineer: To be added
Facilities[]
- "My bunker's not shady."
- ―Joe McGillicuddy to Riri Williams[src]
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- Bunker: To be added
Relationships[]
Family[]
Allies[] |
Enemies[]
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Appearances[]
In chronological order:
Ironheart | Episode 1.02: Will the Real Natalie Please Stand Up?- Ironheart | Episode 1.03: We in Danger, Girl
- Ironheart | Episode 1.04: Bad Magic
- Ironheart | Episode 1.05: Karma's a Glitch
- Ironheart | Episode 1.06: The Past Is the Past
Trivia[]
- In the comics, Ezekiel "Zeke" Stane was the son of Obadiah Stane who developed a vendetta against Tony Stark following his father's death. Hoping to destroy Stark and his legacy, he reverse-engineered Stark's technology through cybernetic implants, which both removed his need to breathe and made his metabolism considerably more efficient than that of a regular human, enabling him to divert excess energy into powering technology like his repulsor rays.
Behind the Scenes[]
- During early development of The Avengers, Joss Whedon, worried that Loki would not be enough to match the Avengers, wrote Ezekiel Stane into the story to fight the Avengers alongside Loki, following his father's death in Iron Man, but the idea was dropped due to Kevin Feige's suggestion.[3]
- Christopher Bogdanski Shore was a stunt double for Alden Ehrenreich in the role of Ezekiel Stane.
