I guess I see why C-Ironwood turning into a villain is a problem. Plus it makes no sense. Just wanted you to know I got your back (besides, General Ironwood needs some support in this trying time.)
Honestly, here’s the things I would’ve done to change up Ironwood’s antagonist situation--because I think he could be an interesting antagonist, just not a villain.
First of all, let him get angry when Ruby and Oscar reveal Salem’s immortality to him. Let him get frustrated, shout, pound a table maybe. “What?! You mean you knew that the plan to get the whole of Remnant to form an army against Salem would be a wasted effort, yet you continued to allow me to waste resources on it? Encouraged, even!” But he’s too focused on cleaning up the mess to really dig into them, so they get to walk away.
Second, he doesn’t shoot Oscar. He lets loose again, shouting, getting angry--when he’s compared to Salem, he starts a shouting match with Oscar, pointing out everything he’s trying to do, every way he’s being beat down on in an effort to fight a war he knows he can’t win. He accidentally backs Oscar up to the edge, an explosion up above rocks the platform, Oscar, falls, he’s too late to catch him.
He does shoot at the councilman, though--he doesn’t shoot him, but he shoots the wall by his head, maybe, just to silence everyone because, fuck! We’re at war! General’s in charge now!
Third, he doesn’t immediately jump to hacking Penny--he keeps trying to message her and convince her, but is more focused on just making sure the Grimm don’t cause too much damage. It isn’t until the Whale attacks after the message is sent out that he’s like, fuck, we have no other choice, get me Watts. And when the hack fails, he decides to send in the bomb on the whale.
Now, what about the bomb for Mantle? Easy--Watts has Ironwood’s scroll he used to hack Penny. He just needs access to the tech he used to disguise Tyrian as Penny, and he can send out a message to Ruby and company as Ironwood threatening to bomb Mantle, then messages the Ace-Ops with a similar command, before locking Ironwood out of the system. And this time, it’ll be even harder to disbelieve the message because it came from Ironwood’s own scroll, and RWBY has already been against him because (checks notes) he values saving at least some lives over possibly dooming all of them.
