#TWOOOOO DAYS! HOLY MOLEY!

[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!