After a lackluster first season, Marvel’s Iron Fist Season 2 on Netflix received generally positive reviews from fans and critics alike. The latest season is a breath of fresh air when compared to the much-maligned initial live-action take on Marvel Comics’ martial arts superhero. It’s like the series got injected with steroids!

Though it is better in a lot of ways, the show forgot to bring its titular character along for the ride. More than that, Danny Rand, the comics’ incumbent Iron Fist, was unceremoniously given a less than stellar treatment in his own show in lieu of his more popular supporting cast member.

SPOILER ALERT! Please refrain from reading if you don’t want to find out details from season 2 of Marvel’s Iron Fist!

Season 2 of the Living Weapon’s live-action series fixed the nagging issues that plagued the first installment. Issues such as acting, pacing, fight choreography, too much corporate drama, and the Meachum siblings’ penchant for talking about their past made season 1 such a chore for many to finish.

As for the show’s main protagonist, he was written as being too naive and childish, not to mention kinda bland, hence the not-so-flattering nickname, “Danny Bland.” Actor Finn Jones has played Iron Fist since the beginning of the series, and after two seasons plus The Defenders series, his take on the character has gotten mixed reviews.

Practically all of these were addressed in season 2 except for Iron Fist himself who should have been at the forefront of the title’s resurgence. I know Samantha Nelson of The Verge agrees with me.

After watching the first six episodes, I loved the direction it was going. New showrunner Raven Metzner, a comic book collector himself when he was younger, clearly knew how to revitalize the show. The pace was tightened and the script was mostly excellent. But he devastated many Iron Fist fans by favoring the more popular season 1 breakout character, Colleen Wing (played by Jessica Henwick).

I have more than a few gripes with season 2 and here are most of them:

The Plot

Rival gangs trying to take over the city seemed a bit too familiar to me. It was the old, tired trope of the hero trying to keep the peace between two factions and in the end, they would find a common enemy that united them. In this story, it was Colleen who was taking the lead to prevent an all-out war between the Golden Tigers and the Hatchet Gang. You could see early on that Metzner and the writers were giving Henwick’s alter ego the spotlight. What Iron Fist fans weren’t prepared for was how much of the spotlight was going to be given to her. More on this later.

The Characters

Jones still seems to be finding his way around when it comes to playing the lead role. A lot of it has to do with the script given to him and how he is too serious. Danny has to act more like Jones in real life. Brett White of Decider suggested that Jones needs to be let loose and be himself in the show.

“The show presents Iron Fist as a kind of zen Superman, a morally upright dude with zero humor. He’s earnest AF, to the core. That’s maybe what Rand was in his first appearances in the ’70s, when solo heroes had a much more cut-and-dry personality, but it’s not who he is now. The Danny of the comics is goofy and cheesy, armed with as many ill-timed jokes as he is spin kicks. He’s earnest, yeah, but he’s ridiculously irreverent and has zero self-awareness at times. He is, essentially, martial arts Star-Lord. That’s Iron Fist.

Now, watch any interview with Finn Jones. That’s who Finn Jones is. He talks fast, he’s charming, he’s endlessly goofy, he’s got a whole lot of personality–and I know this because I have interviewed Finn Jones! Look at what he did when we said that a social media game about stunt work was called ‘Getting Physical.’ He started singing Olivia Newton-John!”

Let’s have Jones play himself in the character just as Robert Downey Jr. isn’t doing anything different than being himself when he’s playing Tony Stark/Iron Man.

Henwick is as charming as ever and plays the character well. Those who watched her in season 1 will be pleased to see that she continues to be as cool and badass as ever. The problem with her character, however, is that she takes the spotlight and the leadership away from the principal character too much. There is absolutely nothing wrong with her having an arc that gives her more screen time, but there’s something to be said about a show that decides that its supporting character should be given the lead role because she’s the more popular one.

Davos, played by Sacha Dhawan, is a compelling villain, one whose reasons for hating Danny is quite understandable. His agenda, even in the comics, has always been to take the power of the Iron Fist for himself, something that he believes is his right. Dhawan is a terrific actor and one who is believable as the main antagonist. What he lacks is an imposing stature as he is too short when compared to his character’s comic book counterpart. In the comics, Davos, aka the Steel Serpent, was an intimidating figure who dwarfs Iron Fist when they stand face-to-face. When you see him, you wonder if Danny has a chance at all against this brutish kung-fu master. I’m not one to judge someone else about his height since I am also vertically challenged at five-foot-three, but visually speaking, Dhawan is just too short to appear as though he’s a real threat to Iron Fist, in particular, and to the city, in general.

Simone Missick as Misty Knight is as good as she has always been since she started playing her comics counterpart in Luke Cage. The Daughters of the Dragon team-up between her and Henwick resulted in some of the best fight scenes in the series. If there was anything that I wish they did with Missick’s character, it’s that she should have been given more fight scenes and given a better arc than just being a police officer. I was also hoping that Knightwing Restorations, Misty and Colleen’s detective agency, would have started by the end of this season.

The Meachum siblings, played by Tom Pelphrey (Ward) and Jessica Stroup (Joy), had some of the best acting on the show. Ward was quite funny and smart while Joy was deceptively evil while retaining a sense of morality. They had some of the best lines in the show and the actors delivered them well. Hats off to Pelphrey and Stroup! No rant here.

Mary Walker, the psychotically deranged villain more popularly known as Typhoid Mary in the comics, was played effortlessly by Alice Eve of Star Trek: Into the Darkness fame. Though not exactly like her comic book counterpart, the villainess was quite the femme fatale who proved herself to be a worthy opponent to our protagonist.

The Dumb Iron Fist

The main reason why I wrote this review was specifically to address the injustice that was done to Iron Fist, specifically Danny Rand. Every portrayal of Danny on the small screen so far (except for Luke Cage season 2) has been as a person who was full of self-doubt, reckless, naïve, and incompetent. A line from Daredevil’s Stick tells you that’s what the scriptwriters think of him, too.

“…the Immortal Iron Fist, living weapon, and protector of the ancient city is still a thundering dumbass.”

Honestly, after watching him for over a year, Stick is absolutely right and it’s so spot on in every incarnation of the character in Netflix so far. I hate the fact that at the end of episode 10, when Colleen was reading a letter from Danny, he said this about himself:

“It may be that the destiny that I believed was mine was always hers, always yours, from the start.”

The iron fist isn’t something that is passed down from one generation to another, it is given to the one who completes the trials and is deemed worthy to face and defeat Shou-Lao the Undying. The iron fist doesn’t go to a “chosen one” but to the one who trains and works for it, making himself worthy of being the champion of the mystical city of K’un-Lun.

Toward the end of episode 8, I was shocked to hear Danny not wanting to take on the power of the Iron Fist because of this reason which he told Colleen:

“The heart of the dragon. I can feel it calling me. Because of that, it will make me a danger to the people I care about the most.”

If this is true, then why should Colleen wield it? Wouldn’t she be a danger to the people she cares about the most, too? If you say that it’s because Colleen has a pure heart, then that means Danny doesn’t and that’s just not right. Asking someone else to take on the power of the Iron Fist knowing how dangerous it is makes these lines even more troubling. If he truly loved Colleen, he wouldn’t want her to have that kind of power because of the consequences he mentioned.

Subtly, the writers have written Danny as though he didn’t deserve the Iron Fist despite being the champion of a city filled with martial artists. It’s almost as if Netflix decided to give Iron Fist a second season mostly because they found Colleen to be so popular and that the condition was for Marvel to hand over the Iron Fist to Henwick’s character.

https://twitter.com/courtz022/status/1001193240446603269

Season 1 had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 19%, easily the lowest among Marvel’s Netflix series. But many fans tuned in to binge the series, regardless, making it the most watched among Marvel’s slate on the streaming service.

They had to change something if they wanted to keep the series alive. Unfortunately for fans of the Living Weapon, the writers, Marvel TV head Jeph Loeb and Metzner thought that the best way to continue making Iron Fist stories in live action was to remove its main character from the lead role. That’s just a pathetic decision and one that has angered a vast majority of fans like me. Go ahead and search #IronFist, #IronFistSeason2, and #JusticeForDannyRand on Twitter. You’ll see what I’m talking about.

The Ceremony

Taking the Iron Fist away from Danny has been done in the comics by Davos before as you’ll see later. However, having someone take the power away from Davos after he stole it and transfer it into Colleen is just ridiculous. It’s as if that ceremony they did with Davos can be done by anyone as long as they have the right “ingredients” and the bowl. What was all that training in K’un-Lun for anyway if it can be stolen by anyone?

No need to fight a dragon, folks. Just steal it and it’s yours!

It’s as if they made acquiring the Iron Fist more accessible than it should have been. Yes, getting the corpse of a former Iron Fist is quite the challenge but the fact that they were also able to perform the ceremony on Colleen later in the series shows that as long as someone else was able to do it, you can do it, too.

Fighting Skills

Danny spent 15 years (only 10 years in the comics) training in K’un-Lun. He should be more than a match for any street thug that comes his way. But so far, in order to create a sense of danger against any foe that he faces, he has had to sweat a little for almost every battle he won. The fight scenes should show how superior he is to most of his opponents other than Davos. Rather than lengthen the fights, make him show off more fighting skills and give him more thugs to fight in one scene.

What’s also bothersome was in the last episode, Danny had a difficult time handling Mary despite being good enough to take on Davos in episode 9. In fact, he needed Misty’s help to defeat Walker. Remember, this is the best K’un-Lun has to offer we’re talking about. Even without the power of the Iron Fist, Mary should be no match for him especially after he was able to defeat Davos who had the Iron Fist then.

Drugs vs. Iron Fist? Drugs 3, Iron Fist 0!

What is it with drugs playing a huge part in taking down anyone who wields the Iron Fist? In season 1, Danny was drugged for almost an entire episode, making him unable to focus his chi. In season 2, Walker drugged Danny and prepped him for Davos to take the Iron Fist from him. Later, it was Danny’s turn to drug his longtime buddy and remove the stolen power from him.

If you ask me, there’s no need for special villains in this series. Just pepper Iron Fist with drugs and he’s done!

Training with Colleen

This was one of the most disturbing decisions ever by the writers. How could Colleen be good enough to train Danny? If he is supposed to be her superior as a martial artist, he should know more than her when it comes to training, technique, and mentality. Instead, Colleen appears to be every bit his superior in all three in episode 8. If this is K’un-Lun’s champion, then the inhabitants of that city are probably incapable of protecting themselves at all. What are all those years of training for anyway?

Colleen had him go through tests to control his emotions. Again, how can Danny be the best in K’un-Lun if he didn’t know how to manage his emotions? Any training in martial arts includes mastery of oneself not just physically, but mentally as well. That’s why you see Danny meditating and centering himself all the time. And now he doesn’t want the Iron Fist back from Davos because he can’t control himself for much of season 2?

No matter the explanation they come up with, Colleen was depicted this season to be better than Danny which is just a slap in the face of every Iron Fist fan. This is not about which gender should be superior to the other, don’t get me wrong. By virtue of his training in K’un-Lun alone, Colleen had no right to train Danny.

Rather than asking Colleen to train him, Danny should have asked her to help prepare him for Davos. He should be leading the training despite having a broken leg. Rather than Colleen simply not wanting to train Danny because of her past, she should have been written as someone who was hesitant to do so by acknowledging that she isn’t as good as him. She should have felt unworthy of training Danny knowing that her boyfriend is the superior martial artist. What Danny needed was someone to spar with and prepare him for his one-on-one with Davos.

Final Battle

If there was a final battle to happen, it should have been between Danny and Davos. Though he helped out in the end, our blundering hero was just helping Colleen take the Iron Fist from Davos.

In Marvel Team-Up #63-64, Davos, the Steel Serpent, successfully stole the power from Iron Fist. Though he was in a weakened state, Danny sought to retake the power from his archenemy by taking him on by himself. Eager to help, Spider-Man and Misty sought to join the battle but Colleen wouldn’t allow it. The dialogue that followed was beautiful and one that showed how Danny deserved the Iron Fist and was more than willing to die for it. It’s the kind of dialogue that should have been adapted in season 2’s finale.

Check out the pages below from issue 64:

Danny knows he deserves the Iron Fist and he should not be seeking to pass it on to someone else.

In the Netflix series, it’s as though K’un-Lun is a place of dishonesty and deception. Go listen to Danny read the letter to Colleen again. Better yet, listen to some of the dialogue between Danny and Davos. There are times when they describe K’un-Lun as if everything they’ve been taught was wrong. It’s a far cry from what it should be.

Rather than the Iron Fist being an ideal, a dream, a code of honor and a sacred tradition, when it’s in Danny’s hands, it sounds as if the power is corrupting him instead, making him uncontrollable and emotional.

Preview to Season 3

As exciting as it was to see them tease Orson Randall, I disliked the fact that Danny fired bullets powered by his chi. If there was anyone who should be shown as the first one to be able to do that in the Netflix series, it should have been Orson and he should have been the mentor to Danny on how to do something like that. Instead, they took that moment away from Danny and Orson’s relationship and rushed into it just to tease what will happen in season 3.

Three Iron Fists?

If Orson is alive and he still has the Iron Fist, then that means there are three individuals who are currently using it. In the comics, when Orson finally used the Iron Fist after dumbing it down for decades, Danny felt that the power being used by someone else and that he wasn’t as powerful as before. But there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with Colleen or Danny’s use of the Iron Fist. So now we have three of them who can use the power without consequence.

No Costume and No Dragon…Again

Sure, we were teased with the Iron Fist mask and a kimono that looked a bit like the white costume he gained during comics scribe Brian Michael Bendis’ New Avengers run, but that’s still not a costume.

I don’t understand why we can’t have a costume yet. They already know that fans are clamoring for it, so why don’t they do it? If Marvel’s Daredevil can get it done in the first season alone, why can’t they? In fact, the Daredevil series is so into costumes that even Elektra and the Punisher received theirs on the show as well.

Is a costume too much to ask?

In an interview with The Immortal Iron Fist podcast, Metzner said that he wanted the costume to have meaning and not have him put on the costume easily just like in the comics. That would have been lazy writing, definitely, if they did it from the very beginning. But this is season 2 we’re talking about now. They could have had Danny go through the journey of needing a costume for the right reasons after a few episodes in season 2. Heck, they could have had him wear the costume at the end if they really wanted to do it. Just to reiterate, Daredevil did it in one season. Danny has appeared in three seasons already (Marvel’s Defenders included) and there is little indication he’ll get one by season 3.

And what about Shou-Lao the Undying? Of course, this show is not like Game of Thrones where they have an insane budget, but I’m sure they can find a way to create a scene where Danny is fighting a shadowy dragon figure of some sort. The audience who know little about Iron Fist’s comic book background must think that Danny’s just imagining that dragon fight all this time unless they took the time to Google it.

We all wanted to see a costume and a dragon last season and after abandoning it again this season, it pains me to think that they may never show us either of them in the future.

Conclusion

As bad as my review of Iron Fist Season 2 seems to be, the show is actually more entertaining and faster paced than the slow burn that is Jessica Jones season 2 and Luke Cage season 2. Among the Netflix series from Marvel, I’d rank Iron Fist’s latest installment as fifth best behind Jessica Jones 1, Daredevil 1 and 2, and Punisher 1.

The show is easy to binge as it is has found a way to balance drama with action well. In this, Metzner succeeded and he genuinely seems to want to cater to what the fans want if he only listened to the right people.

But the series new big boss focused too much on how to liven up the series while forgetting that the main reason why there is a show, to begin with, is because Danny Rand is Iron Fist. I followed the show so I could follow Danny Rand’s adventures from the comics into live action. I want to see him kung-fu his way against any and all opponents and show the world how cool he is and how he can go toe-to-toe against Spider-Man, Black Panther, Captain America, and yes, Daredevil, too. Sadly, I don’t see him good enough to last more than a few seconds against these heavy-hitters who are pretty much his equal in the comics. In fact, many would say that he can best any of these super folks.

When I started following the series, I wasn’t expecting them to adapt the comics in the exact same way. But I was expecting them to stay true to the core of the character. I wanted to see Iron Fist become the best Marvel superhero on Netflix and, perhaps, be one of the best in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Instead, all the Netflix series have given me is a shell of my favorite superhero, one who was sacrificed in order to get better ratings.

I hate to say it, but if they’re just going to make him look like the weakling that he is being portrayed to be on Netflix, I’d rather they just scrap the series altogether and let him live on in peace in the comics. At least, we fans can always have Danny be the hero that he was always meant to be.

That idea may have been lost to the makers of Iron Fist, but it’s not lost to those of us who truly care about the character. If you think that I’m exaggerating, imagine if they did the same to your favorite character. You’d be up in arms, too, I’m sure.

Does this mean that I’ll stop watching Marvel’s Iron Fist if it gets renewed for season 3? Not a chance. If there’s anything that I learned from Danny, he can always come back to life better than ever. There’s a glimmer of hope that they’ll get Iron Fist right because Metzner appears to be genuinely all ears with what fans think of his work.

My only hope is that Marvel and Netflix finally give Danny the chance to shine in his own show.