Iron Fist S02E03 Review: Talk It Out

Marvel's Iron Fist, Season 2, Episode 3: This Deadly Secret

Yeah, still kind of a rocky episode,  but one that's fundamentally not bad. The writing is certainly far, far better than the first season (again, I stress, not a particularly high hurdle to clear), and thank god for Colleen Wing basically telling "fuck all of this subterfuge" at that dinner table. This entire episode could've been so dull and drab if it was just the godawful dinner party where Danny tries to pretend that nothing's wrong and that they can talk it out like a family. But in my firm belief that Colleen Wing really should've been the protagonist of this show in the first place, she quickly shut it all down, managing to dodge half a season's worth of bullshit dodging around the bullet as Davos and Joy basically tell Danny what they think of him -- which is basically that he's a self-absorbed little shit. Yes, their motivations are definitely warped -- Joy in particular -- but I don't think you can say that it came out of nowhere. There are also a lot of acknowledgements of Danny's own flaws as a character, with Colleen pointing out how he's compensating a lot for trying to be the defender of the city like the late Matt Murdock told him to, as well as searching for a purpose when the Iron Fist doesn't have a secret ninja organization to beat up. 

And that interaction ended up leading to a whole lot of outpouring from Danny, Joy and Davos that ended up turning a scene that I was rolling my eyes throughout into easily one of the stronger moments in this series -- again, not a particularly high bar to clear. 

The other major plotline running through this episode is the revelation that the whole split-personality thing going on with Danny's new friend Mary seems to be of a Jekyll-and-Hyde mentality going on, with the scared artist Mary being the good personality, whereas "Walker" is a private investigator working for Davos and Joy. That's a genuinely clever way to drop that revelation, by the way -- and one that this particular episode doesn't make 100% clear, so for all  I know she may just be a set of twins or some shit, I dunno. Davos looking at the weird photographs and just being suspicious ending to him getting a bit of a freak-out is great, and it really helps me alleviate one of my biggest worries about Mary -- that she's going to be a bit of a plot tumour to established storylines. Seeing that she has been in league with Joy and Davos from the beginning is definitely great. The split persona isn't the most original supervillain concept out there, but it's certainly one that could be great if executed properly. Also, apparently Walker/Mary is able to play around with machetes to really scare the shit out of Davos, which is neat. 

The side-plots are... serviceable, I guess. Ward probably got the biggest screentime out of the subplots,  basically in this whole well of self-loathing and paranoia and general unsuccessful in showing empathy, and it's... it's an interesting direction to take his character in, is all I can say. Colleen continues to search for clues about her family or whatever, which is interesting only so far as the fact that I do like Colleen. Joy continues to look for deals or whatever the fuck she's doing, and the final scene shows the actual triad parley go down, something which, of course, ends up going all straight to hell as apparently the police arrive or something? At least we get a great fighting scene this time around. Even old lady Sherry Yang got to stab some fool in the eye!

Yeah, not much for me to talk about, and the first half  of the episode is still kinda boring, but it did manage to land with some of my favourite scenes in the show so far.