Iron Fist S02E02 Review: Gang Wars

Iron Fist, Season 2, Episode 2: This City's Not For Burning

A bit of a slower episode that I don't really have a lot to talk about. Again, it's still a huge, huge improvement over Iron Fist's first season in that it's not utter dog turd, but it's still not quite as engaging as most of Marvel/Netflix's output.

If nothing else, at least this episode manages to deliver what the entirety of the first season couldn't have, and that's some actual martial arts fighting with the flashback to the actual battle of the right to inherit the Iron Fist between Danny and Davos in the past. Sure, the white-and-yellow comic book homage costume looks hilariously low budget, but I do like how the scene is shot to be deliberately ambiguous if Danny won straight and fair (he did play possum for a bit, and the Thunderer definitely stopped the fight before the yield-or-death conditions) or if Davos was being petty and salty over not being chosen (it's clear that from Davos' point of view the fight's not over). Plus, whether Danny's tricks of playing possum or blinding Davos with sunlight are dishonourable methods or pragmatic ones that a sufficiently experienced warrior would've been able to guard against is genuinely a gray area on whether Danny truly earned the Fist. Honestly, with the lack of goodwill I have towards Danny and the lack of outright malice I have towards Davos, the flashback certainly ends up causing Davos to feel a lot more sympathetic.

The rest of the present day storyline is kind of just moving along at a slower pace that all the Netflix shows have in their earlier episodes. We've got obligatory scenes of Ward Meachum trying to make sense of his lief and his brief attempt to reconcile with Joy. We've got scenes building up and highlighting this Mary fellow that seems to have fallen for Danny, and I think her gimmick is that she's got multiple personalities or something? She's definitely creepy, and Alice Eve manages to steal scenes in her brief bits. Colleen Wing does that whole nice friendly neighbourhood peacemaker thing in offering help for the bunch of random thugs that attacked the restaurant in the previous episode.

Also, see how much nicer and mystical K'un Lun ends up being when it's not just a blurry old man in a vaguely-maybe-Chinese stage? We get an actual proper fighting hall and while it's not as impressive as it should be, it's at least not just a blurry, badly-rendered dojo.

The two big storylines in this episode are definitely Danny and Colleen going to try to investigate and prevent the Hatchets/Tigers gang war from spinning out of control, with Danny talking unsuccessfully to recurring character Hai-Qing Yang, and Colleen managing to get through via Yang's wife, who coincidentally is a major player in Colleen's community shelter. And tragically, just as Yang was about to have a proper sit down for the sake of peace, the fact that he reneges on the deal with Davos causes him to get eliminated by the Steel Serpent.

Joy and Davos, meanwhile, go off to an auction for antiquities in order to obtain some presumably magical bowl, and Joy stops Davos from stabbing the auctioneer in the neck and instead manages to convince Davos to... seduce the lady? By just glowering and letting the lady strip him? Okay, yeah. I'm genuinely not sure what the fuck that was all about. I'm also not quite sure just why Davos is going on with all this. S'weird, especially since the final scene of the episode shows that he has some magic kung fu pressure point near-instant death finger poke skill that he used to kill Yang.

Overall, though, it's got a lot of weaker moments and some obviously filler moments, but it doesn't want to make me whack my face against my desk the way the first season does.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The bowl that Joy and Davos are attempting to acquire is noted to come from the Erskine collection, presumably a reference to... dr. Abraham Erskine from Captain America: The First Avenger? I'm not familiar with the comic-book version of the character, but I genuinely find it rather surprising that this WWII-era scientist apparently collected presumably K'un-Lun flavoured artifacts.
• The getup worn by Danny and Davos (yellow mask, white clothes) resembles Iron Fist's white costume from the comics.
• Hai-Qing Yang's brief alliance with Danny against the Hand in Iron Fist's first season is brought up. Yang and his Hatchets gang have shown up in both Iron Fist's first season and Luke Cage's second season.