Iron Fist, Season 1, Episode 11: Lead Horse Back to Stable
We get answers, kind of. It's just very, very shitty answers.
So let me go through the good parts of this episode: Claire, Davos and I guess Colleen. Claire and Davos are an absolute hoot, with their conversations about pizza and Davos playing up the 'fish out of water' trope far more hilariously than Danny did. Claire also manages to sound earnest about telling Danny not to kill and not to be so one-dimensional in hating Colleen, as well as her analysis that a lot of Danny's mental problems are about not being able to move on from the deaths of his parents. Also staple guns. Staple guns are inherently darkly hilarious. Also, "the Ear" is absolutely the highlight of the episode. Colleen's characterization is a little muddled, but at least her being confused between her love and her rose-stained view on the Hand causes her change of heart to be believable, and I really liked when she realized that, hey, all her students? Totally brainwashed into a cult.
But I'm really not a big fan of a lot of things. Harold and Joy are just going through the motions at this point -- Joy's going to call Harold out on his shit, or Harold's going to flip out in his anger and attack Joy (and Ward maybe comes to the rescue?). The revelation that Bakuto is actually just another evil Hand overlord means that he's significantly a lot less interesting than the moral ambiguity that the previous episode presented... which made a lot of the previous scenes between Bakuto and Gao a lot more confusing. Is Bakuto a rebel, and is Gao part of the real Hand? Is Gao the real Hand, and Bakuto the rebel? Are the two factions equal in power? Where does Nobu, Elektra and Black Sky fit in all this?
Still, those are a lot less important and the real big question is...
What the fuck, Danny Rand?
What the utter fuck?
I don't really blame the actor in all this, really, because all things considered (and especially compared to the last episode where Finn Jones seemed to have an off day) he's actually doing a decent job with the script he's given, but man, the writing and the reasoning in this episode is atrocious. We get to see briefly Danny receiving the Iron Fist brand from Shao Lao the Undying -- who we don't actually get to see, sadly -- but other than a few shots of Danny and Davos guarding the pass, we don't actually get to see a lot of K'un Lun.
Davos did ask Danny a question I have been asking all throughout the season -- why did he leave K'un Lun? Did he sense that the Hand is massing? Did he want to uncover the secret behind his parents' death? Did Shao Lao task him with something that the other K'un Lun residents don't know? By this point we've figured out that the duty of the Iron Fist is to guard K'un Lun, as well as to destroy the Hand. But Danny flip-flops on that all the time, so Davos, rightfully, asks Danny what the hell.
Danny's reason?
He wants to find a purpose. Also he got bored. So he just abandons his post.
Yeah.
So I'm not saying that K'un Lun is perfect. From the stories Danny told us, it sounds like a pretty horrible place with propaganda, abuse-esque training and a very strict sense of 'serve us to your death' cult mentality. And I do agree with Claire that Danny, as the Iron Fist, is doing more good on the worldy plane of New York where he's at least beating up drug dealers. And maybe Davos's anger is hugely because of his own envy -- though he's a lot more mature about his problems than Danny is.
But Danny? So he climbed up and worked hard to obtain this sacred position of the Iron Fist, edging out all the other people in K'un Lun, who all wanted to get there. Which, to the native people of K'un Lun, is a sacred and noble position. And then he gets bored, because what the fuck did he think guarding a pass entails? And then he sees a hawk. And then he goes off to the mortal world, abandoning the pass without a second thought. Hell, he even thought the Hand was a myth when he arrived in New York! So this sacred position that the K'un Lun people revere, something that's sacred and an end-goal to them, just gets kind of pissed upon by this jackass entitled little shit who appropriates it, shrugs it off as 'eh, not that important' and goes off following a hawk for the next big thing he thinks he's entitled to, which is his company.
I did promise not to really mention racism here, but come on, there has got to be a better way to write Danny Rand abandoning his post as Iron Fist than having him think so little about a sacred position and duty that is absolutely important to the natives of K'un Lun. It's like, all the sacred parts of the K'un Lun culture just gets thrown out of the window. Danny literally doesn't give a shit about how important the Iron Fist position is to the people of K'un Lun, or his friend Davos -- who wants it his whole life but respects the decision that the elders trusted Danny to undertake this mantle. And what does Danny do? Run away with absolutely no concrete reason or explanation. And I'm supposed to root for him?
Everything about Danny's backstory just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps it's me wanting and expecting more? Like, I expected the Hand to be more than just a big drug industry that happens to use undying frankenstein monsters. And I expected the Iron Fist to be more than just a glorified runaway soldier. Damn, I really tried to like this show, y'know? I really hoped the back end would be a lot better. But at this point I'm just so disgusted at the writing that if there aren't only two episodes left I would've stopped watching this series entirely.
Also why the fuck did Davos beat up that poor hot dog vendor last episode? That was totally and completely unnecessary and actually contradicts what we learn about Davos in this episode.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- The bullet-riddled shirt belongs to Luke Cage, obviously.
- The facility with cages and what appears to be blood-draining devices is the same facility that the Hand (or, well, Nobu's faction) used to make the child soldiers from Daredevil's second season.
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