Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Iron Fist - Rolling Thunder Cannon Punch / Eight Diagram Dragon Palm


If the first two episodes of Iron Fist are about reintroducing Danny Rand (Finn Jones) to New York City, the second pair are about him reclaiming his family name. Free from the mental asylum (which apparently is fine, because no one ever peruses the escaped mental patient), but unable to claim his name from the Meechams, Danny hires Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss) to fight for 51% of the company his father built. This becomes increasingly hard with Ward's (Tom Pelphrey) cronies destroying ever piece of evidence that Danny ever existed. Netflix's TV universe continues to connect its shows only through supporting characters. Hogarth shows in a few episodes this season, and we'll soon be seeing a certain nurse as well.

These episodes open us a side-story for Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick) who uses her own skills along with the martial arts lesson from Danny to do some underground cage fighting. While the show comes back to this thread two or three times it eventually dies out without ever being fully developed. It's main purpose is to show how lost Colleen is which will play into her decisions concerning Danny and the Hand later in the season.

Thanks to a childhood ally, Danny gets control of his father's company as well as his name back. Although he's rather terrible in the board room, he does a fair job at the press conference dealing with his absence and short stay at a mental institution. While snooping around, Danny also discovers that Harold (David Wenham) is alive as the show begins to deal more directly with the concept of the Hand. The trio will form an alliance to take down the ninja organization who is using the pier recently acquired by the company for their new business (a thread that also eventually gets dropped as well). Danny will also have a run-in with the Tria, whose attempt to kidnap Joy (Jessica Stroup) leads to the show's biggest fight sequence yet which includes a battle in a descending elevator.

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