Iron Fist S02E10 Review: Iron Bullet

Iron Fist, Season 2, Episode 10: A Duel of Iron

I forgot to upload this final episode of Iron Fist and went straight to Daredevil's third season. Whoops!

So you apparently can't stop the ceremony halfway through, and the entire final episode ends up being kind of this cat-and-mouse game as Danny and Colleen chase down Davos since they need him to fully transfer the fist to Colleen, otherwise they'll both die from the side-effects of the vaguely-defined dragon magic. Okay, then.

Ward and Joy, meanwhile, quickly make up and make peace as they go away via ambulance. I really, really wished that they had done the Ward/Joy storyline a lot better with more focus and less meandering and flip-flopping all over the place. Done competently, they could've reached the same conclusion with far less scenes that deliver more impact. As it is, I really do think that the Ward/Joy stuff really ended up taking way, way too much screentime.

The final fight takes place in the warehouse, where the dilemma is quickly shown -- they're trapped in a three-way fight. Danny and Colleen need Davos alive for the transfer ceremony. Mary Walker just wants to put a bullet in Davos's head. Davos, meanwhile, just wants to fist everyone, and we do get some of the most badass usages of the Iron Fist with Davos launching bricks and shattering a wall to dust. The four-way battle is pretty neat, too. I'd argue that Mary Walker's presence in this season feels a bit rushed and kind of unnecessary, but hey, at least she gets to participate in the climax.

Misty Knight shows up, fights Walker alongside Danny (robot arm versus machete FTW!) until Danny gets the bright idea of using the whole flowing water/strobe light trigger to turn Walker back to harmless old Mary.

We did get a huge Danny-vs-Davos brother-vs-brother fight last episode, so I think it's actually appropriate that this time around, it's Colleen that gets to fight Davos. Davos's whole problem with Danny in the first season is that he fraternizes with the Hand-aligned Colleen, and that bubbles back to the surface as he rants about his birthright and all that shit... and Colleen basically tells him to shut the fuck up. The white-fist-against-red-fist bit is pretty cool, and the arrival of Danny manages to lock Davos down long enough for Colleen to finally obtain the full power of the Iron Fist.

In a neat showcase of restraint and just how different Colleen is from Davos, Colleen refuses to "END ITTTT" and merely knocks Davos out instead of killing him. Davos ends up being arrested by Misty and the police, although we at least do get a final conversation between Davos and Danny. Danny notes how it had taken so long for Danny himself to own up to his mistakes, and he is willing to give Davos a second chance... while Davos, of course, is in full villain mode,  swearing vengeance and all that.

The rest of the episode is just kind of an epilogue. Misty and Colleen hang around,  making jokes about their shared names, noting that they could hang out as a team called "Knight Wing". Which, while admittedly a whole lot less racist and far more catchy than "Daughters of the Dragon", is taken by DC. Misty also drops hints of how a more level-headed person like Colleen is going to be needed should Luke really go off the edge as the new mafia boss or whatever of Harlem.

(Not that we're likely to see a Colleen Wing vs Luke Cage fight, mind you, what with both shows being cancelled, but still)

Colleen also gets to talk to Sherry Yang, basicalyl telling the triads to go to legitimate business. A bit of a lazy shortcut, honestly, but at the same time, I can't say I really am invested all that much in the hatchet/triad gang war.

Ward ends up going to the addicts-anonymous deal, sharing about how he's lived his life in relation to others without any self-worth... but still kind of gets denied the chance of being a dad to his son by Bethany because, shit, we've seen Ward -- he relapses basically every other episode. He has some character growth, though,  which is neat. Meanwhile, Mary Walker is clearly being set up as the villain of the third season, confronting Joy and basically telling her that she's going to rely on a very reluctant Joy until she figures out this whole third-personality thing.

Oh, speaking of sub-plots, apparently Colleen never looked at the back side of her family sigil, and that's kind of like the most low-key and weak revelation ever as Danny leaves a letter, telling Colleen that based on the emblem and the childhood story, she is apparently the descendant of Wu Ao-Shi, the Pirate Queen of Pinghai Bay and a denizen of K'un Lun (also, a previous Iron Fist,  it seems), which means that apparently destiny found her, and that the Iron Fist was always destined to go to her?

Danny's giving some really mixed signals, though, as he ends up going on a walkabout to discover himself, roping Ward (who also needs self-discovery) into the plane. It's... it's a bit of a weird decision because while I do agree that Ward and Danny's relationship have certainly been repaired in this season, I don't see him as someone who'll go on walkabout for vaguely-defined zen reasons.

The show then skips ahead a couple of months, showing Colleen Wing as New York's new Iron Fist, lighting up her katana into a glowing white magical sword by channeling the Iron Fist's power through it. Badass, right? Well, it seems that Danny Rand is willing to upstage Colleen, as he and Ward goes off in search of some dude called Orson Randall (another Iron Fist from the comics), and that Danny... somehow has two glowing iron fists? And he can channel those fists into guns and bullets?

Wait, what?

As badass as that scene is, I have a lot of questions about just how Danny manages to regain his Iron Fist powers (or is it just generic chi manipulation? I can never tell, due to the show's minimal showcase of K'un Lun).

Overall, though this final episode, while doing pretty well with dealing with Davos, ends up biting off more than it could chew with how intent it is in seeding the plotlines for the now-nonexistent third season with the Iron-Bullet gun-fu Danny Rand, or the new Iron Katana Colleen, or building up Mary Walker. Honestly, while the second season of Iron Fist certainly have improved a whole lot compared to the first season, it's still a problematic one. A lack of balance between which subplots are important and which is not, and a still-confusing mythology really ends up making this a pretty weak season overall. It at least manages to end on a pretty positive note, though, with Danny recognizing his errors and going around on a journey to truly be worthy of the Fist. Overall, there is marked  improvement...  but then again, I'm not surprised that this series ended up being cancelled, even without all the legal problems that probably happened in the background.

Anyway, I surprisingly enjoyed myself through these ten episodes. We'll be back soon with the third season of Daredevil soon.