14 Lessons We Hope Marvel Learned From Iron Fist

Netflix’s Marvel universe started off with a bang when Daredevil came out. Drew Goddard, who has a long list of successful projects under his belt—he wrote the screenplays for The Martian and World War Z and wrote and directed The Cabin in the Woods—ran the show. Fast-forward to the introductory season of the last Defender and we’re given Scott Buck of Tremors 4 fame. Was it Tremors 4 that earned him the gig, which has a 32% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes and doesn’t even have an actual RT score because it was a straight-to-video movie? Is that what qualified him? Maybe it was his work as the executive producer for the last three seasons of Dexter, the worst seasons of the once-popular Showtime program with one of the most hated endings in recent television history. An ending for which Scott Buck was largely responsible. How did Netflix start with such a high-level talent and end with… not that? The Netflix Marvel properties were hugely popular; you’d think the showrunners would only become more and more A-list, not less so.

The Defenders is in the hands of Daredevil Season 2 showrunners Marco Ramirez and Doug Petrie who have already proven that they can’t balance a litany of characters very well, given that every other character simply paled in comparison to Frank Castle. Good thing they won’t have many characters to juggle in the team-up season… 

We get it, he’s conflicted. But how conflicted, exactly? Because at times it seems he’s quite certain what he wants to be. Other times, not so much. He wants to run the company. But he wants to be the Iron Fist. Sure, it’s reasonable that he’s conflicted, but that conflict needs to be consistent. He can’t be an all-in businessman on one day and the vanquisher of the Hand the next. And he’s supposed to be this Buddhist saint who has no need for material things, but it appears that he drives a $215,000 Aston Martin DB11, which they explain away with the fact that he liked to race donkey carts back in K’un-Lun. There is just too much inconsistency with the character of Danny Rand that falls on the heads of the writers, not just the actor.

Danny is caught on camera punching a hole in a wall to escape a psychiatric facility, and no one brings it up ever again. At the facility, a patient tried to kill Danny and then was appointed Danny’s tour guide. There’s no way to do a DNA test to prove Danny is a Rand because his family is dead, and their medical records were physically stored in one place, making them surprisingly easy to wipe from the face of the earth. Danny can drive. The ongoing issue of not including the other Defenders persists—it’s one thing when the Marvel Cinematic Universe struggles with this when it’s a literal universe, but there are two other people available in New York City that Claire personally knows who are never brought in as backup. Harold Meachum returns to his company after being dead for 15 years, and no one questions it, even though one of the executives just "killed himself" inside the building, but mostly because of the whole being-dead-for-15-years thing. Colleen’s dojo is virtually demolished in episode 12 by the DEA that Harold somehow convinces to raid a dojo in an attempt to catch Danny Rand who has somehow become a wanted man but don't worry, because the dojo is in tip-top shape in episode 13. The list goes on and on and on and on to the point of becoming comical. The writers almost had to actively try to make a show that made such little sense. 

Joy Meachum struggled with her morality the entire season, trying to balance being a successful businessperson and not hurting others in the process if possible. When she comes to understand that's not really possible, and she starts to question herself. She shows real growth in the season, finally getting to a place that we think she might start making moral decisions. She was always purer than Ward, and yet he somehow ends up redeeming himself while she takes a nosedive in the other direction.

At the very end of the last episode, we see her plotting with Davos to kill Danny. Huh? I know her daddy was killed again, but Danny didn’t even do that, and we also got the sense that she recognized how much a monster he was. So Danny jeopardized the business, but she was coming to understand the pitfalls of giant corporations. Her desire to see Danny dead is just a complete departure, and we weren’t given any evidence to support the notion that she would want that. Long story short, if you spend an entire season establishing a character, you simply cannot make that character do a 180 in their last scene.

Is it established in the source material that Danny Rand is kind of an idiot? No. Then why is he straight-up dumb in this show? His decision-making skills are laughable: he tries to reach the executive level of a high-powered company while bare-footed, and then fights the security guards, as if that will make them more willing to trust him; he tells his psychiatrist that he’s an immortal living weapon when he’s trying to convince him that he’s not crazy; he breaks into Joy Meachum’s house and frickin’ tells her about it! Ahhhh! What is happening?! If the writers were trying to convince us that he just doesn’t understand the social norms of America (despite being 13 when he left), then he shouldn’t have understood anything, including his inexplicable driving capabilities. There’s a difference between cultural unfamiliarity and plain stupidity—the latter was on full display with Danny.

Finn Jones only knows how to frown, apparently. He held one face for the entire season—it’s probably one he made too much as a kid and it got stuck that way. His mom warned him. Not her fault.

Jones had no authority; this was very evident in the scene where he takes over a class in Colleen’s dojo to teach the students discipline and just looks like a caricature in so doing. At times it was hard to tell if Danny lacked focus and discipline or if Finn Jones just couldn’t properly convey those attributes. It’s too bad because there were some really great performances. Colleen, Joy, and Ward were all intriguing characters portrayed with something called “skill” by Jessica Henwick, Jessica Stroup, and Jess— Tom Pelphrey, respectively. Hopefully, with Jones not being the focal point in The Defenders (although there's some speculation that he sort of is) they can avoid this same issue.