Netflix Retrospective: Iron Fist season 1 episodes 1-2 - Snow Gives Way/Shadow Hawk Takes Flight

Iron Fist is the last of the Marvel retrospectives I’ll be doing for the time being. I’ll be doing Voltron: Legendary Defender next but before we can get a half-decent show, this… Iron Fist is widely considered the worst of the Marvel Netflix shows and believe me, there’s good reasons for that. I’ve had only a little experience with Iron Fist in the comics.

He’s the guy who said “I fart mystic powers” unfortunately the jovial nature of the character is not captured here. Let’s talk about casting, some are upset that an Asian actor wasn’t cast, I get the hatred of white saviour narratives but it doesn’t bother me as much as the fact they cast an actor with minimal experience in martial arts as one of the most martial-arts based superheroes there is. But let’s not beat about the bush and dig into the first 2 episodes of Iron Fists. Because 2 episodes is all I can take.

Snow Gives Way

The opening theme is interesting, I think the music is probably the biggest issue here, as it’s relatively generic and has no Asian undertones.

So we open in the middle of suburbia. Danny Rand is walking the streets of New York barefoot and no-one notices, until that is he starts talking. In the first kinda joke of the movie when he points to the Rand Industries building as his building, the guy says he should sell it and buy some shoes.

What is the stupidest thing he could possibly do, assume everything is the same as it was before he left of course? He asks for Harold Meachum, and despite being told that isn’t possible then goes to tell her he’s a person that the whole world thought dead. I think I know what they’re going for with Danny’s character, he’s still a child underneath everything, but in K’un Lun, where he trained he’d have to mature, become wiser, perhaps not understand everything but I think ‘the whole world thinks you died’ is something he probably knows or at least should know.

Rand Enterprises was formed on a coalition between Harold Meachum and Wendell Rand, Danny’s father, he sees this on an interactive screen before security throws him out. What did you expect was gonna happen. You look like a hobo, least you could’ve done is shaved or is having facial hair mandatory in K’un Lun?

Not getting the message he walks back in and partakes in epic spinning, somehow taking out all the guards and accessing one of their elevators. He makes it to the top floor and finds people he recognises as Ward and Joy, somehow, in the CEO office, which naturally has a massive supply of alcohol. I’m 6 minutes in and I want all of it!

Naturally they don’t believe him when he says he’s Danny Rand and I still have 50 minutes of this episode left. I’m pretty sure this conflict isn’t resolved until episode 3. I want to scream! Joy tells him that Harold died of cancer 12 years ago. The guards escort him out, with a warning that if he returns the guards will kill him

Danny is having head pains, causing him to flash back to his parents’ plane crash. I guess they needed a way to integrate his backstory into the show. He walks the street, finding his parents old house, he rings the bell, then finds they key above the door frame, where no-one could reach it. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong key anyway, since the lock has been changed, I think.

Danny instead jumps up to a window and enters through it. Danny being an idiot again, and not thinking this house could belong to literally anyone now, it’s been long enough. There’s a dog playing guard but Danny manages to calm him down, in the first smart move of the day. He heads to the roof, and flashes back to playing Monopoly with Joy and Ward and we see that Ward was a bit of a dick. A Ward is a bit of a dick, never heard that one before... He refuses to play monopoly by the rules, kicks Danny in the groin then blames him for something.

You know, childhood bullying was not something I ever thought necessary for Iron Fist. With the arc they’re going with for Ward, it doesn’t help us at all. Joy of course doesn’t speak a word against her brother. Joy enters what is now her house (why?) and Danny creepily spies on her before making his exit. Danny spends his night in a park, listening to some hip-hop music. A homeless guy named Big Al offers to search for someone on his iPhone (Apple Product Placement) and they find articles about the fate of the Rand Family

Danny, you’ve been away for 15 years, how do you not already realise this? Next morning Danny runs over to Joy and doesn’t expect her to run the other way because erm… Danny is a f*cking moron! He tries to give her information but she doesn’t buy it, then he basically admits that he broke into her house because he’s a f*cking moron.

Danny meditates and sees a bird, shockingly badly integrated with the background. If that has a point I don’t see what. Someone gives him a rather large amount of money, it’s Colleen Wing, a mainstay supporting character in the show. He asks to get a job with her but not knowing his martial arts prowess, she declines.

Joy and Ward talk about what just happened, Ward promises to have guards posted around her house to prevent another break-in/harassment but they need to deal with him more permanently. Ward thinks it might be an attempt from the competition to evoke a leadership struggle just as they’re about to announce expansion. This seems like a rather dumb assumption to me, surely there are less personal ways to go about corporate sabotage than impersonating your dead best friend. 

Danny breaks into Ward’s car and begins driving, and isn’t happy when Ward uses his gun to threaten him to stopping. Danny manages to grab the gun and tells him he doesn’t seek money, only answers. Danny, you’re homeless, you have no job and I don’t know what you eat or drink, money might be useful also.

Ward tells him that the bodies from the plane crash were never found, then Danny goes on to recite all the dick things Ward did as a kid. He has no living relatives or any fingerprints on file. Did he not have blood taken, you’d think as the son of a well know businessmen, he’d be checked out by Doctors at least once. But I think they’re going out of their way to make this situation hopeless and contrived, the end result being the solution ends up being stupid and contrived.

And in an act devoid of sanity he drives Ward up to the roof and almost drives him off. We are supposed to like Danny, right? I know Ward is still a dick, but Jesus! His timely flashbacks lead to Danny being too late to stop and having to swerve the car so it crashes into the side on Ward’s side. Miraculously, Ward isn’t even remotely injured by all this.

Big Al gives Danny a sandwich, one the local joint threw away after closing time. He then begins spewing out nonsense, just so Danny could go off on one about K’un Lun.

At the Wing Dojo, Colleen is training a bunch of students, she tells them to invite their friends, for she needs the money. Danny arrives and it’s just as awkward as it gets, he offers to teach Kung Fu, something Colleen doesn’t teach, but Colleen rejects his proposal because she thinks he’s a hobo madman who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. She does give him a pair of shoes though.

He’s set upon by a bunch of Rand guards, he evades them relatively easily. Colleen watches him kick one down and disarm him. Danny runs into China Town, which conveniently is hosting some kind of festival tonight so he can blend into the crowds. He buys a mask using the $2 he got from Colleen to further blend in. When given the chance, Danny gets the drop on each of them, interrogating to get the very obvious answer to the question ‘who sent you?’ Of course it was Ward, they’re his guards!

Ward calls an unknown person and says they need to discuss the situation in person. He’s also spending the night at his office for no good reason. He’s taken to a hotel and takes the elevator to a high floor, then heads up some stairs because the hotel is a dick to disabled people, uses a hand-scanner to gain access to a secret room where we discover Harold Meachum is still very much alive, he also has a secretary named Kyle, who’s basically there all the time.

Harold tells him he thinks they should listen to what he has to say, know your enemy and all that. They have a number of questions that he could answer about why he’s come back. Danny returns to the park and finds Al has been killed by some kind of drug. He coats him in a blanket and notices a Raven tattoo on his arm.

Danny somehow breaks into Rand Industries again without the guards shooting them, he sneaks into Joy’s office and she finally agrees to talk. He begins talking over his origin but he begins feeling faint. Joy has drugged his drink and he passes out. He wakes up, strapped to a bed, being drugged, he’s in a mental hospital.  In fairness, given his actions in this episode he kinda belongs there. We see the origin in full this time.

This was truly painful to sit through.

Rating 2.5/10

Shadow Hawk Takes Flight

Danny’s still strapped to a bed, he’s greeted by someone named Simon. He pretends to be a Doctor it turns out he’s one of the more demented patients. The Doctors finally save him and give him some pills or something. He’s also being watched by a camera above. Joy doesn’t feel great for drugging Danny but I literally couldn’t care less. Danny has proven he deserves to be there, although I’d question how legal it is to have someone committed that isn’t directly related to you.

Are these flashbacks gonna keep happening, they’re edited sloppily. Jessica Jones already did the PTSD plot-line, Danny’s had 15 years of finding his centre and focusing his Chi, you’d think the key to that might be attempting to move past the death of his parents and that horrific plane crash. I know PTSD is not something that can be easily stopped, if it can at all, but they could make it certain objects or words that make him remember things, not having it happen at random.

A doctor tries to listen to his story, he woke up after the plane crash, alive, in the middle of a snowdrift. He found his father and the pilots dead, he tried to move quickly but was discovered by the Monks of K’un Lun. The Doctor thinks his real name is John Anderson, thanks to a passport, Danny claims he’s never seen it before.

Colleen is at a market but is being followed by someone, she’s set upon by 4 of them. But apparently this was all some training thing. Colleen is a dick to them too. Moving on, Simon is now Danny’s tour guide, that sounds safe. Oh and Danny is allowed out of the straps now for some reason. But not for too long as he gets into a fight with another patient and is back in the straps again

Simon frees him and takes him to a phone where he calls Colleen and tells her what’s happened. She isn’t willing to get involved and hangs up on him. Ward visits his father, who show him the cameras, and tells him he believes that this really is Danny Rand, and ok, time for Ward to finally fall to the level they wanted me to think he was at last episode. He thinks the solution is to lobotomise him. I hate literally everyone.

Harold tells Ward to visit Colleen and find out what the phone call was about. Danny reveals he lied about the passport, he bought it stolen to get back into the States but the Doctor doesn’t believe him. Ward arrives as Colleen’s dojo, asks about Danny and offering her money if she signs papers saying she felt threatened by him. She refuses but he gives her time to think about it.

Time for another session with the Doctor, he shows them a commercial the features the Rand and Meachum families, Danny responds that they went to the circus afterwards, that was his reward for taking part in it. The Doctor still tries to convince him his real name is whatever the f*ck it was but Danny, in an act unbefitting of someone with the Iron Fist loses his temper and shoves the computers on the floor. Yeah, way to convince them you’re not crazy! Harold watches, still convinced that he’s Danny.

He asks Kyle to get the car ready for tonight. The Doctor thinks about Danny’s story and calls Joy, who corroborates what Danny had said, much to the Doctor’s surprise. Danny remains strapped to the beat as Harold Meachum stands before him, he tells Harold about K’un Lun and how he’s an Iron Fist and how his duty is to destroy the Hand.

He returns home but finds a message written on the Window on the outside. Joy gets an idea from one of her photos and boy is it stupid. Ward pays Colleen a visit again, offering $50000 to get the form signed. Danny gets a big bag of M&Ms from Joy and begins separating the colours. Colleen pays Danny a visit. Colleen asks why they’d offer her money, he tells her that he probably owns half the company to them he’s potentially dangerous, to her, never.

He gives her a packet and… get this, the packet contains all except the brown M&Ms and this confirms to Joy that this really is Danny. Yeah, I’m dead serious! Colleen also tells her she’s not signing the papers and Ward isn’t taking Joy seriously, because why would he? The Doctor asks some questions that basically confirm to him that he is the real Danny Rand. But he doesn’t believe K’un Lun, since Danny chooses the true but ultimately unbelievable explanation. He believes he has an anxiety disorder with psychotic tendencies. He wants to see the Iron Fist to be convinced, but Danny can’t summon it because of the drugs.

Kyle tells Harold that he found nothing of interest on Iron Fist. Ward is chairing a board meeting but gets a call from Harold, telling him to move Danny to one of their riverside properties as, as a sworn enemy of the hand, he may be of value to Harold. Ward is not impressed, we see him taking a pill of some sort, before making a call.

Danny is put in a straight-jacket to be moved, he’s placed in a room full of inmates that begin beating him, he finds out that Ward sent them before breaking out of his straight-jacket with the first summoning of the Iron Fist, he uses a second to break straight out of the hospital, guess the drugs wore off.

This episode was a lot nothing happening, combined with some really stupid moments, it’s only better than the first episode because Danny is more tolerable.

Rating 4.5/10