#arrative arc in season 5 one way

[daresplaining]

MCU Danny Rand Week: Day 5

A Favorite Episode

Iron Fist Season 1, Episode 10: “Black Tiger Steals Heart”

    Another challenging category because we have so many favorites, but this is one of the most pivotal and powerfully-executed episodes of Iron Fist. It introduces some major characters, reinvents an antagonist that, up until this point, had not been handled all that well in this universe (”Handled”. Hah! Sorry...), and does a beautiful job of cranking up the pain of the show’s already brutal emotional rollercoaster. And as an added bonus... it contains not one, but two Iron Fists.   

    Danny is in a downward spiral moving into the end of Episode 9. His already chaotic life is shattering around him, he is getting closer and closer to the root of his repressed trauma, and Colleen has nearly been killed by the Hand. Thus, the beginning of Episode 10 comes as an emotional respite-- both for Danny and Colleen, and also for the viewer. The bright, gentle color palette of the first chunk of the episode reinforces the calm that comes with the idea that for the moment, our heroes are getting a well-earned break. 

    We are also given a little more of Colleen’s backstory, in that she is bringing Danny “home”. While her past remained largely undeveloped in this first season, we learn enough to know that she owes a lot to this safe haven, which both tells us about her and gives us an extra reason to trust in the safety of the place. The astute viewer might wonder about why everyone-- including Colleen-- is wearing various combinations of black and red (the same colors as the Hand ninjas’ uniforms in Daredevil!), but the overall good vibe of these early scenes serves to keep any suspicion in the background.

    It’s a small detail, but Danny learning to recharge his chi is one of our favorite scenes in the whole show. It’s great to see him this content, and it’s a beautiful bit of acting and cinematography-- as well as a vital bonding moment between Danny and our new pal Bakuto.

    Bakuto was one of the major triumphs of Iron Fist and The Defenders, and we will miss him. He existed briefly in the comics, as a young, volatile Hand leader who clashed with Matt in the Daredevil arc leading up to “Shadowland”. He was around for a few issues before being killed. The Bakuto developed in Iron Fist is a far more interesting (and, personality-wise, completely different) version of the character. His soft-spoken, friendly, insanely charismatic nature makes him instantly trustworthy. We are also compelled to take Colleen at her word. This is someone she loves-- clearly, he’s a good person. We also love the fact that Bakuto’s physical appearance, mannerisms, and even speech patterns are very similar to Danny’s-- another subconscious suggestion that we should trust this guy. 

    This comment stuck out to us as important the first time we watched the show, and now, with what we learned about Bakuto’s K’un-Lun connections in The Defenders, it makes perfect sense. It’s a great detail for Danny to pick up on... a little thread tying the Hand to K’un-Lun. 

    This also explains how Bakuto is able to offer Danny exactly what he longs for-- further Iron Fist training. Having left K’un-Lun prematurely (and been lied to a bit while he was there, as we learn in The Defenders) he is still a weak Iron Fist. Bakuto offers to fix this. He offers Danny information, and fulfillment, and purpose, and... this:    

    While his identity is left a mystery, and the Iron Fist legacy is not explored this season beyond being mentioned, the costume makes clear that this is the MCU version of Orson Randall, the Iron Fist who directly preceded Danny in the comics. How awesome is that? We don’t know if this Orson suffered/is suffering the same chaotic life as his comics counterpart, but we would kill to see more of him. As it stands, not only is this a glorious scene for all the comics fans in the audience, it’s also a powerful moment for Danny, who has never seen another Iron Fist before and is nearly brought to tears.               

    While Bakuto’s suspicious knowledge of Iron Fist techniques and general obsession with Immortal Weapons makes a bit more sense in light of what we learned in The Defenders, we still can’t resist speculating about the missing Book of the Iron Fist plot point from the comics, and the other stuff in Bakuto’s safe...

    What are you hiding in there, buddy?       

    After offering Danny everything he has been searching for, the cracks at the edges of paradise begin to come through. Bakuto spies on Danny’s phone call with Harold, and is then confronted by Colleen. This interaction proves that Danny is being kept in the dark, and Colleen’s discomfort suggests that maybe, in fact, Bakuto doesn’t have Danny’s best interests at heart.

    Danny, meanwhile, runs into Darryl in another of our favorite scenes in the show. Darryl (who was originally in Luke Cage, for anyone who missed that connection) is a great character-- similar to Hope Schlottman and Cole Miller in his status as an innocent kid dragged into a horrible situation. He is instantly sympathetic, and his little sparring match with Danny in this scene is delightful.  

    Danny gives him the benefit of the doubt, too, because he’s Danny. And he executes some perfect defensive fighting. It’s a really fun interaction, included to add maximum pain to their less-than-fun interaction at the end of the episode.

    Danny sneaks into the containment building and spends a few significant seconds staring at a mystery person in a bed. Who is this? Is it Orson? This is one of the biggest mysteries of Season 1 for us and we hope to see it resolved in Season 2.

    Danny and Gao have a fascinating relationship. While she is as irreverent as she come-- that’s part of her charm, in fact-- she exhibits a compelling degree of respect for Danny, and helps him on a number of occasions. But of course, she is also extremely manipulative and may be behaving in this way in order to serve her own needs. It is impossible to read Gao’s motivations, but in this episode, with the Bakuto situation becoming uncertain, she is particularly suspect-- and neither Danny nor the viewer can be sure what side she’s actually on. Bakuto insists she is lying, but we now have a reason to not trust what he has to say.     

    And most importantly, she is the one to reveal to Danny that the compound is Hand-run, a revelation which both saves Danny and screws with Bakuto’s plans. Until this point, we had very little sense of the Hand’s recruitment process. In Daredevil we saw them kidnapping children to harvest their blood, and were shown crowds of identity-less ninjas, but had no indication of what appeal the organization might have for its members. This is what makes this reveal so effective-- the fact that Bakuto’s faction is so different from anything we’ve seen before. For the first time, it becomes clear why people-- good people, even-- might be drawn into the Hand. This adds depth and realism to a group that previously in the Netflix-verse had been two-dimensional, and makes them extra sinister and creepy. 

    This is followed by Danny’s fight with Colleen, which confirms the worst. He’d thought he was safe. Now he is learning that the one person he really trusts isn’t even who she said she was. The pain of this fight is made extra powerful when placed alongside the perfect lightness and tranquility of their relationship early in the episode.  

    This fight does several things (in addition to hurting the viewer). First, it benefits from dramatic irony. To the viewer, Colleen seems to be the voice of reason because we have seen what Danny has not: that she felt bad about lying, wanted to tell him the truth, but was prevented from doing so. We have also just been shown how dangerous it is to believe appearances, and we trust Colleen’s testimony of her time with the Hand, and her long-held devotion to Bakuto’s faction, enough to assume that maybe she is right. But at the same time, we understand Danny’s horror on an emotional level. This is not the first time he has been stabbed in the back by someone he thought he could trust, and it is hitting at the core of his pain: his parents, who-- he believes at this point-- were murdered by the Hand. The worst kind of fight is the one where both sides have a point, and neither is able to budge. 

    It also explores a theme set up earlier in the episode, in which Danny tells Bakuto that most people are only interested in using him, as the Iron Fist, for their own purposes. As we later learn, one of those people is... Bakuto. During the fight, Colleen directly addresses this theme, solidifying the fact that she isn’t trying to manipulate him in this way and that she cares about him as a person. Danny is too upset to acknowledge the significance of this statement, but the viewer is informed enough to recognize its importance.   

    With this, night falls and the tone of the episode shifts. Instead of the bright, colorful, inviting color palette of the daytime scenes, we are plunged into sinister low lighting, mirroring the shattering of the Hand compound’s happy illusion and the bleakness of Danny’s situation.   

    He is isolated, unable to trust anyone around him, and his discovery of Bakuto’s surveillance room-- bringing with it a hint of just how much the Hand have been meddling in his life-- is just one more psychological punch in the face. 

    This is the point at which Davos shows up. We wrote a post about him the other day, but it’s always worth reiterating how great his introduction is in this episode. Danny has lost one friend and gained another, and their side-by-side tag-team is one of the greatest fights in a great fight-filled show. 

    But even this can’t save Danny from having a bit more of his world ripped away. The horror and confusion resulting from the emotional switch-backs inflicted upon him this episode disrupt his chi and prevent him from using the Iron Fist. He has now lost one of his closest friends and his future as the Iron Fist all in one go. Any hope he might have possessed when first arriving at the compound has been destroyed, and he is left with nothing.      

    To add even more pain, Colleen has not stopped trusting Danny, and is caught between two sides, both of whom she cares about. She risks her life to help Danny, turning on her family. The least she can do is help him and Davos escape to prevent both parties from killing each other, but this is a decision that impacts her arc for the rest of the show. At the very least, Danny sees that she has helped her before being dragged out the door.   

    We are then left with another little plot thread that we’d hoped would return in The Defenders, but didn’t. Having been forced to fight Danny for real, and getting seriously injured by Davos in the process, Darryl is now perfectly set up to enter a new stage of his own story. While it has not yet been carried out on-screen, the idea of Darryl further devoting himself to the Hand and becoming an enemy to Colleen and Danny is painful enough for the moment.  

    Having started the episode on an emotional high, Danny ends it at his lowest possible point. He has lost everything he had on Earth, and is faced with the shame of returning to K’un-Lun as a failed Iron Fist. Everything he’d hoped to achieve has been destroyed. 

    And on top of that, just to make everything that much worse, he’s bleeding out.  

    A great end to a great episode. We didn’t even touch on the excellent Meachum plot-points explored in “Black Tiger Steals Heart”, but Danny’s trauma is compelling enough on its own.