Iron Fist S02E08 Review: Danny Can Think

Iron Fist, Season 2, Episode 8: Citadel on the Edge of Vengeance

We're in the home stretch now, and it's basically at this point that the show decides to turn Davos from a slightly-more-unhinged version of the Punisher into just a crazy extremist that needs to be put down. We get to see Davos, his new one-eyed buddy Chen Wu and the misunderstood street-rat students go around the city. Joy's whole speech about the whole "you need to brand yourself" in order to not be seen as a random murderer causes Davos to experiment a bit, but after an argument with Henry Yip the random store-owner, Davos ends up killing the dude because of his... inaction? Or something? To be fair, Davos did try to tell the man that all he asks in return is for them to be good people, but he goes too quickly from well-meaning-tyrant to, well, your average garden psychopath. It's a bit of a shame because a superior show would've taken its time to dissect Davos and see just how his world-view might have merit and/or have flaws, but nah. He's just a mad dog that needs to be put down now.

Oh, and in case you have any doubts about Davos's sanity, we get scenes of BB being thrown into a dark cell for daring to argue against Davos's teachings -- causing Joy to recruit BB to steal the bowl that she infiltrated Davos's operation to obtain (oh, right, that). Meanwhile, Rhino, the leader of the gang, tries to question Davos, only to get murdered by Crank. I... I genuinely don't care about any of these characters, I'm sorry. Other than token-good-teammate BB, they're so flat and so interchangeable, that I had to genuinely google their names.

Davos then returns to Joy, and basically argues with him a bit for attempting to compromise with half-truths and half-lies and all that stuff (Joy's just buying time for BB to escape), and we get a brief bit of conversation between Joy and Chen, with the latter claiming to be a survivor who will survive the madness that is Davos. Okay, then.

The main storyline for the good guys is... it's basically the best I've ever seen Danny Rand in an unironic way. Colleen and Danny fight each other in the empty cage match from the first season, and the lesson of the episode is a combination of getting Danny to think before he act,  to have restraint... and, best of all, this causes him to ponder the nature of his bond with the Iron Fist.

I do love just how much Colleen criticizes Danny's usage of the fist, using it in an emotional instead of a cerebral fashion, causing lots of chaos and breaking parleys, and without the excuse of "I need to destroy the Hand", the lack of direction and purpose of Danny (and the show as a whole, I'd argue) ends up being something that Danny really, really needs to take a hard and long look at.

Eventually, this episode has Danny realize that he's became addicted to the power of the Fist, and it has consumed him, driving him on and on with a new 'mission', the same sort of zeal that is consuming Davos, and Danny decides that someone with more restraint should wield the fist... and that person is Colleen Wing. And... and you know what? I actually agree with Danny. And that's not because I really, really enjoy the live-action version of Colleen here, but it's because the show has actually actively displayed the sheer amount of restraint Colleen Wing displays, being far more mature and far more uncompromising with her ideals, while at the same time having a good heart. I'm unsure if the studio will ever let anyone but Danny Rand be the Iron Fist (for the same problem that they didn't cast an Asian man in the MCU version in the first place, or the constant "I'll hang my hood, but not really" main character switcheroos in other superhero shows like Arrow or Flash), but honestly, this is a genuinely sensible character growth for both Danny and Colleen.

What else went on? To fill the episode's martial arts quota, we get a surprisingly good fighting scene between Chen Wu and Colleen early in the episode, which is honestly pretty interesting! There's the subplot about the hatchets and the tigers banding together, but I am honestly just done with this vaguely-developed world-building, and it's honestly pretty ambiguous just how huge their operations are and how much Davos has fucked them up. Every time we see them it seems to just be Sherry Yang and like, a half-dozen other people.

There's also the Mary Walker subplot, with Walker watching a video from Mary, and we get a flashback to the rescue in Sokovia. Interestingly, after an encounter with the therapist, Walker realizes that there's a third alter -- both Mary and Walker had assumed that the other was the one responsible for their escape from the Sokovian prison, but apparently there's a third, far more brutal alter-ego buried deep  within her. As much as I enjoyed Alice Eve's performance, though, I really kind of wished that this season had kept its focus on developing its actual main villain -- or maybe drop Joy and Ward's whole plotline (their little scene in this episode is short, at least), and have the dual villains of Davos and Mary get more screentime. I dunno. At least Ward and Walker are now buddies, sharing the same goal to kill Davos and free Joy.

Overall, though, the Danny/Colleen stuff is pretty well-done and pretty powerful, a huge analysis of a flawed character from an in-universe perspective and sort of an acknowledgement by the writers of the cock-up they did with their handling of Danny Rand. It's a shame that with the cancellation of a potential third season, this would probably end up going nowhere.