James Ironwood - is he a baddie?

well no because that wouldn't stop her that would help her

luke nwagbara

A goal without a plan is just a wish. They want to get rid of Salem. But they know there is no way to do that.

DarthCaedus

The negatives of Ironwood's semblance/behavior seemed decently mitigated when the people around him tried to sanity check him. Unfortunately, as head of the military and as an extremely paranoid individual, it's very easy to lose the ability to get through to him.

David J Moore

I feel bad for Ironwood partly because he isn't a bad guy. As others have said his Semblance, which probably isn't the best one to have on your military leader, hard focuses him in on a single idea and doesn't let him change his mind that easily. So his emotional side, even though Team RWBY is appealing to those emotions talking about leaving Mantle and everyone there to die, it's literally not his fault that he isn't considering that side. His semblance is passive like Qrow's so there is no On/Off switch. In his mind it's like 60% people survive, 40% die by leaving with Atlas in the sky. Sucks that it had to turn out this way for sure.

freshyjazzy12 .

"I will sacrifice whatever it takes to stop her." Whatever it takes. Ironwood has no limits to what he would do to destroy Salem. Including the complete destruction of Remnant.

Jason S

Mettle

Zen Reacts

"World may simply end" yeah by killing everyone and everything in it so... not really something id call simple. At least RWBY's goals have to do with getting rid of Salem for good and uniting the world. Ironwoods plan was to run away.

Tanyelle

they never mention it in the show but his semblence a forget the name of it but it pushes his emotion aside to help him make better decisions. Not a spoiler cause they never tell u in the show it was in an interview with the creators.

James Hall

That's not just the question for Ironwood. Team RWBY is risking the lives of everyone on the planet to be "right." They don't even have a plan. They want to stand their ground and... just fight Salem? They know that wont work. If she gets the relics, the world may simply end. How many others are we willing to risk because we don't want to trade lives?

Cyrinil

ayoo thats pretty cool lol

Asellian

The ultimate question with James Ironwood is what price are you willing to make OTHERS (and sometimes yourself) pay to be "right"

Cmdrwilkens

The key moral question is, is a Humanity that will discard any and all of its Humanity to survive worth saving? Does it deserve to survive? If you discard morality completely and view it completely as a binary question of survival, yes, Ironwood's plan is better. If you don't discard morality, the question becomes more complicated and the answer less clear.

David J Moore

Yea since the fiasco at beacon he was on edge and his disheveled appearance reflects his mental state and even worse all the enemies are well aware of how to get under his skin no matter what because they're smart and Salem has thousands of years of strategic battle experience from when she tried to overthrow the gods, when she and oz were ruling and from all these years of them being enemies. It's like a grand master going against an amateur

FryLord

........I just realized his name is already a pornstar name

FryLord

he's a hottie

Asellian

Ironwood's entire character arc has been interesting since season 1, kind of annoying because he's an "emotionless robot". He tries his hardest to remain objective and ignore his feelings but the feeling he has always struggled witht he most is his fear. Just look at him. He's half metal from some horrid accident that we don't know about. Just imagine how shaken up you'd be if you lost an entire half of your body ina conflict then some time later find out you're fighting what's essentially a malevolent goddess. I don't agree with his decisions because they're motivated by fear and ignoring obvious flaws....flying higher into the air ain't stopping Salem who...again...is a powerful 'goddess' and has an infinite supply of flying murder beasts. A very simplistic plan just sacrificing an entire city thinking thats going to save his fortress. It's foolish but I understand that he's panicking and afraid. And of course the show doesn't go into this detail but when we have intense emotional reactions our brains have this flip-flop mechanism that literally shuts down the prefrontal cortex responsible for all those slow, methodical thought processes because we're in fight-or-flight mode and need to react to anything coming our way and that's where Ironwood is now. A tin man with a really big gun ready to use it on anyone or anything in his way, he did say he's willing to sacrifice ANYTHING to stop Salem and he wasn't lying.

FryLord

To answer your question without going into too much detail; Ironwood isn't a baddie. However, since he's working against team RWBY and company, he (obviously) isn't the hero either... He's the antagonist.

Tan B

Deep down Ironwood is a good man. I think it’s just the fear that’s really gone to his head after learning Salem is approaching Atlas. Plus he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was already paranoid, but I think him seeing/talking to Salem in his office was in a way a kind of a breaking point. Wish Ozpin would talk to him.

I honestly never really liked Ironwood that much, and was always suspicious of him since he first showed up. Though I did really like him in the end part of Vol 3 where it became obvious I was(at least at the time) wrong about him and he was a badass and did everything he could to help. I also loved how he defended Weiss in Vol 4 but the way his last scene of the Vol went with him being super paranoid and closing the Atlas borders I saw as a red flag for the future. Vol 7 again gave me hope I was wrong for the most part but when he refused to even talk with Robyn and wanted her arrested as a first priority instead of bringing her into the fold at least a little bit(no need to tell her everything) I saw the possibility of him going full dictator like he just did in ch 11. Sure as everyone says Ruby decided to lie to him about Salem and Ozpin but even if she told him the truth right away I feel he still would have gotten to this point eventually. The bad guys have been playing a long game with his sanity and paranoia and Cinder putting the glass queen chess piece on his desk was last thing to push him over the edge. If Ruby told him the truth right away he probably wouldn't have targeted them right away like he did this episode but they still wouldn't have agreed with what he was doing which means it would still end up with him telling the Ace Ops to arrest them and we'd be in the same place as the actual show. People are so quick to always place more of the blame on the heroes for lying to him but even if they didn't he was already too far gone by this point and would have snapped sooner or later.

DanFDTR

I love Ironwood with all my heart but yes I think he’s turned into a baddie

Blake

A Baddie? Yea I'd hit that.

Bisibia