#if countdown

[daresplaining]

HAPPY IRON FIST DAY, EVERYBODY!

[bookoftheironfist]

    *Clutches chest* Ow...

    Here’s something I’d never noticed before: the first two episodes emphasize the kindness of strangers. Danny returns to New York and suffers the pain of being rejected by the Meachums, who he thinks of as family. But in the midst of his despair, he finds emotional support in chance encounters: Big Al (the homeless man) in episode 1, Simon in episode 2, and then eventually Colleen. These people tend to be fellow misfits and outsiders, who-- even if they don’t understand what’s going on with Danny-- still treat him with dignity and compassion.  

    This also ties into one of the biggest themes of the season, and one of Danny’s motivating forces throughout the whole show: identity. This is going to come up a lot, because-- again-- it’s a big deal this season. In these first few episodes, Danny is literally forced to fight for his personhood as the people around him try to strip him of his identity. Being the Iron Fist doesn’t mean anything on Earth; when he arrives in New York, his civilian name is literally all he has. Being Danny Rand means he has something to connect him to this world. He has friends, family, a place to belong. Without that, he has nothing. This is why it’s so horrifying when this identity is then ignored and delegitimized, and why he becomes desperate for someone, anyone to actually call him Danny and believe he is who he says he is. 

[bookoftheironfist]

    This is a really cool fight, and I love that they took this opportunity to highlight a visually distinctive style of kung fu (drunken style). This show takes its time with its fights, making them often seem somewhat exhibition-y, which feels perfect for a martial arts-centered story.

    Zhou Cheng is one of my favorite Iron Fist antagonists. He is the host for a creature called the Ch’i-Lin, which eats dragon chi and has killed nearly all of the previous Iron Fists. MCU Zhou Cheng mentions having a dragon inside him that he has to keep sedated, but that is as far as the reference goes. I would love to get the actual Zhou Cheng/Ch’i-Lin in a future season, because it’s an awesome, terrifying villain.  

[daresplaining]

Iron Fist Countdown: 9 Days

Danny Rand’s Continuing Identity Quest

    Over the past year-and-a-half (our time) Danny has been fighting his way through one of the most complex and emotional character arcs in the Netflix MCU. In the first season of his solo show, he had all aspects of his identity scrutinized and ripped apart by the people around him, by circumstances, and by the turmoil of his own repressed trauma. One of the most dangerous villains in that show was Danny’s own internal strife, and its biggest mystery was his motivation for leaving his home-- a mystery he could not solve until he had worked through the layers of grief and rage surrounding his parents’ deaths. Upon returning to Earth, Danny had to figure out what it meant to be Danny Rand. Through his fight with the Hand and his struggle to figure out why he left K’un-Lun, Danny had to figure out what it meant to be the Iron Fist. And due to the changes in his origin story, MCU Danny didn’t have an easy target to blame for his parents’ death, and thus struggled with how to find closure and thereby reconcile the confusion and conflict in his life. By the end of that show he’d gained hard-earned answers: what happened to his parents, why he abandoned his home, how to move forward, and how to be the Iron Fist without also losing himself. 

    And then the unthinkable happened: while Danny fought the Hand in New York, K’un-Lun was (seemingly...) attacked, kicking off the events of The Defenders (a.k.a. Iron Fist Season 1.5). Danny’s attempts at finding a comfortable balance of being the Iron Fist on his own terms were smothered by a new flood of grief and rage-- this time for his lost home. Blaming himself, he seized his role as the city’s Immortal Weapon with a vengeance, determined to prove himself and make the Hand pay. He saw his previous identity questions as the root of his failure, and so he tossed them aside entirely. 

    In the end, Danny’s Defenders arc was weakened by the fact that he wasn't the one to take down the Hand. He didn’t get the satisfaction of having his vengeance, and he didn’t get the chance to prove himself and come into his own as the Iron Fist, and we found that extremely frustrating. But he didn’t come out of that show empty-handed either. 

    In Luke Cage Season 2 we saw a happier, more optimistic Danny in the process of healing. In The Defenders he’d found a new supportive community-- most notably, in Luke-- and through these friendships he started to become emotionally settled in New York City. No feeling longer quite as lost and hopeless, he was able to step back for a minute from all of his personal issues and just enjoy hanging out with a friend. His conversations with Luke also revealed that somehow, in between shows, he’d seemingly learned that K’un-Lun hadn’t been destroyed after all. Thus, with that weight off his shoulders, we saw him relax into a more comfortable sense of his self and identity.   

    The Defenders also left him with a mission-- a way of still acting as the Iron Fist while on Earth. With his “dying” words, Matt Murdock made Danny promise to protect New York. Thus, Danny was given the motivation to take on a new identity: that of a superhero. In the upcoming season of Iron Fist we will get to see how he negotiates this new melding of his Earth- and K’un-Lun-based identities.  

“I am Danny Rand. The Immortal Iron Fist. I made a promise to Matt Murdock to wear his mask... I’ve fought this war in his place... And I’ll continue to. But I haven’t forgotten who I am... and soon it will be time to carry my own burdens again.”

Civil War: Choosing Sides by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, David Aja, and Matt Hollingsworth

    This plot point has its origins in the comics. While Matt was in jail and then out of the country, Danny took over as Daredevil. He retained this identity all through the first superhero Civil War, and continued to preserve Daredevil’s presence in New York until Matt returned. We don’t expect Danny to actually put on the Daredevil costume in the show. He is not far enough along in his own identity quest to start fully taking on other peoples’. But he will be going out onto the streets as a superhero in the more traditional sense, forging new connections to his new city and facing all of the strange new challenges inherent in street-level crimefighting. In this way he will be building another duality into his identity, as both Iron Fist: Immortal Weapon and Iron Fist: NYC superhero. And this feels right. Danny has never had much of a civilian identity in the comics. We learned in Luke Cage that he is (unsurprisingly) not directly running Rand Enterprises. The identity questions in his life should mostly revolve around his fighting and his place within the Iron Fist legacy.    

    And that part of him will be under attack this season from an inevitable-yet-exciting source. Davos, just as in the comics, feels personal ownership of the Iron Fist identity. He is critical of Danny’s approach to the position, and is now coming to claim it for himself. Danny was robbed of the opportunity to prove himself in The Defenders, but here he will have another shot at it. He will be forced to defend his title, and to thereby reclaim it for himself. He initially acquired the chi of Shou-Lao with confused intentions. Now he will have a chance to do it again, clear-eyed and informed about what this life choice really means. This challenge will prompt Danny to prove-- to himself, to the world, maybe even to Davos-- why he is the right person to hold this position. After all of this time, and all of the twists and turns of his identity quest, this season should-- and hopefully will-- finally allow Danny reach his full potential as the Iron Fist. 

[daresplaining]

Iron Fist Countdown: 2 Days

Mary Walker/Typhoid Mary/Bloody Mary

    One of the neat aspects of any adaptation is the chance to experiment with new stories, character interpretations, and relationships. The Marvel Netflix shows have brought together many characters who don’t have any particular connection in the source material. Comics Jessica Jones and Patsy Walker aren’t much more than acquaintances. Comics Karen Page never met Frank Castle. But the shows have used this undeveloped territory to craft some fascinating new character dynamics. Thus, we’re extra excited that Typhoid Mary (and her various other personalities), while typically a Daredevil and Deadpool comics mainstay, will be making her MCU debut in Iron Fist Season 2!

    Mary first appeared in 1988, in Daredevil vol. 1 #254. Ann Nocenti, who created the character, intended for her to be a revolutionary amalgam of tropes. 

“As for where Typhoid came from, you'll have to ask the shrink I've as yet never gone to. I think I wanted to shatter the female stereotypes-- virgin, whore, bitch, ditz, feminist, girl scout, all-suffering mother, et al.-- into tiny fragments and yet keep all the pieces in the same little female bundle.”

    Mary is quite literally a character built of layers. She suffers from an exaggerated, comic book science version of multiple personality disorder, resulting in an unpleasant childhood of psychiatric testing. 

“Code name Typhoid Mary. One of the most fascinating cases in psychiatric history. Subject spent most of her life institutionalized, undergoing every known test-- yet she continues to baffle the entire scientific community. The child’s dual personality was first discovered in infancy. In the Mary persona, she is fragile, sickly, prone to epilepsy and other disorders. As Typhoid, she is utterly unapproachable, uncontrollable, a murderous little girl. Pure poison.”

Daredevil vol. 1 #254 by Ann Nocenti, John Romita Jr., and Christie Scheele

    This original version of the continuity suggests that she was born with at least two of her personalities. But later, J.M. Dematteis pulled a snippet from Frank Miller’s Man Without Fear origin retelling into the main continuity: an episode during Matt’s first vigilante outing in which he accidentally kills a sex worker. Joe Kelly then took that tidbit now made canon, and decided that the woman in question was Mary, and that this final act of violence committed against her by a man was what fractured her personality. (We’re not big fans of this change, but it is what it is.) 

    Either way, Mary is literally a multifaceted person, with each personality battling for control. As Mary Walker she is a sweet, naive, gentle person, who is horrified by any kind of violence. As Typhoid Mary she is gleefully violent, power-hungry, and wields her sexuality as a weapon to control the men around her. These two personalities hate each other, and they turn her body itself into a battleground. 

Mary: “Feels good to fluff out my hair, get that makeup off... Hot in here. Sweating... Do I have a fever...? Feel sick, do I look sick--? Oh! My hair... my face...!! I don’t look like myself... I look wild... It’s you! It’s that woman...! Oh, god, no-- have to warn myself...”

Typhoid: “Shut up you sniveling twit! Get back in there and shut up! Typhoid’s back on top!”

Daredevil vol. 1 #256 by Ann Nocenti, John Romita Jr., and Christie Scheele

    As if that weren’t enough, Typhoid also possesses an array of psychic powers, including telepathy, telekinesis, and-- most famously-- pyrokinesis. Mary doesn’t get any of these fun tricks.  

Typhoid: “Matthew, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for quite some time... Burn...”

Daredevil vol. 2 #46 by Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev, and Matt Hollingsworth

    Mary’s mental state evolves and fluctuates over time. For a while she has three identities: Mary Walker, Typhoid Mary, and an avenging angel named Bloody Mary, who hunts down and kills men who abuse women. 

Bloody Mary: “You beat two of them to their deaths! Did they ask for that? Did they beg you to kill them? For your crimes you will die!”

The Spectacular Spider-Man (1976) #214 by Ann Nocenti, James Fry, et al. 

    This arc even results in a short-lived, “healthy” all-encompassing identity who just calls herself Walker. But that is a rare occurrence, and in most modern comics Typhoid pretty much stays in control, opposing all attempts at recovery. Mental health is at the core of many of Mary’s stories, and she has been placed in therapy at various points, sometimes of her own free will but usually not. 

Matt: “I heard what you said. You’re not wrong about Mary. [...] Mary’s trapped in a revolving door of crime, jail, and misery. Her crimes are addressed-- but never her sickness.”

Wade: “What if... what if we had another option?”

Deadpool (2015) #13.1 by Gerry Duggan, Paco Diaz, and Israel Silva

    But she’s such a compelling character as she is that it’s unlikely any treatment will last long. It would be like permanently restoring Matt’s eyesight. Nobody wants that. 

    Given the trend toward groundedness in all of by these shows, we’re expecting Netflix Mary’s personalities to be taken down a notch, with more of an emphasis placed on the mental health angle. Alice Eve has had really evocative things to say about playing Mary, and about the degree to which she immersed herself in the chaos and violence and pain inherent in the character: 

“I’m not sure any of us are lucky enough to be completely mentally sane. Mental sanity is society’s construct so that we can all function together, but, you know, we all go to bed with our minds and we all know what they do to us. [...] So I just kind of swam in that deep ocean for a while and really let myself think the thoughts that mindfulness and meditation and all those things tell you not to, and embraced all the disorder in my mind, and enjoyed that, and felt that pain and lived that. [...] I like Marvel for being able to hinge these issues on this construct they have of exploded powers and exploded weaknesses, and make them big, like they feel to us inside.”

    But the multiple personalities will still be there, splitting Mary between gentleness and violence. The Iron Fist Twitter account has posted several images that seem to be messages Mary has left for herself: 

    Our big question is whether she’ll still have her psychic powers. We really, really hope so.

    As for how she will play into the events of the season, it’s still anyone’s guess. It seems that she encounters Danny and Colleen as Mary, while also running rampant as Typhoid. In the comics, her introductory arc follows her time as Wilson Fisk’s assassin/girlfriend. He instructs her to break Matt Murdock’s heart and then kill him, but she ends up falling in love with him along the way. This seems like an odd plotline to adapt to Iron Fist, so we’re expecting/hoping for something new. It’s also worth nothing that she bears a strong resemblance to Trish... and we’re wondering if they might end up being related in this universe. That would be a neat twist. 

    In any case, we can’t wait to see how she is involved in this story, and to watch her kick maximum butt. ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT!

[bookoftheironfist]

    Danny opens up to Joy (well... in a vague kind of way. He doesn’t mention the dragon this time) and to us, the eager fans, about why he became the Iron Fist. And the answer is... he doesn’t really know. And that’s okay! Because ultimately, his motivations for doing so are tied up in his trauma, which-- again-- he hasn’t managed to unpack yet. One of the key points of his character development in this show is figuring these things out. His analysis at this point is “I needed to be the Iron Fist because... I needed to be the Iron Fist” which is pretty much the explanation he has for why he came to New York. The real reason for both of those things is because he needed to cope with his lingering trauma about his parents’ deaths and didn’t know how else to do it.

    This lines up pretty closely with Danny’s motivations in the early comics and Living Weapon (which draws on a lot of themes from Marvel Premiere). When tiny Danny arrives in K’un-Lun in the comics he is filled with rage. He is angry that his parents are dead, he is angry that Harold got away with it, and he is angry that he, a nine-year-old in an impossible situation, could only stand by and do nothing. He wants vengeance. He wants to not feel powerless anymore. And lacking either a time machine or the ability to chase after Harold, he flings himself full-force into his kung fu training in K’un-Lun, taking it as far as he is able to go, constantly striving for more knowledge, more power. At this early stage in the continuity the Iron Fist legacy hadn’t been invented yet, and Danny is the first person to ever kill Shou-Lao. Obviously, there are major issues with this version of the story because of its “white savior”-y overtones, and this is why the introduction of the Iron Fist legacy is so dang important (and probably also why, in the show, the legacy was mentioned almost as soon as possible, in episode 2). In modern continuity, Danny is one of 66 (now 67, counting Pei) people to have acquired the chi of Shou-Lao over the centuries-- still highly impressive, as it should be, but also not super-duper unique. The process has also changed. In modern continuity, boys of a certain age are pretty much required to embark upon that path, even if they don’t end up making it the whole way. Thus, Danny didn’t actually do anything unusual as far as his training is concerned. But what matters is that he trains hard and strives hard initially as a coping mechanism-- which is clearly also the case in the show. 

    I also adore Danny’s emphasis here on how hard he worked, which is a very important point and is also thematic this season. This wasn’t just handed to him. A few episodes later Colleen asks why he was “chosen”, and he quickly corrects her. Here, he shoots down the ridiculous concept of “destiny”. He fought hard for this incredibly difficult thing, and achieved it, and though he is still trying to figure out his identity as the Iron Fist, it’s something he's proud of. This is also a parallel with Joy, who talks later in the show about fighting for and earning her job with the company. And it also feeds into the conflict with Davos, once he appears, since he claims that Danny was chosen. 

[bookoftheironfist]

    Heeey, Danny talked to Karen! I’m bummed this interaction happened off-screen. That must have been a great conversation.