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daresplaining · 8 years ago

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So proud of Danny in the Defenders... He was my favorite. His fights were a huge improvement from his show, I loved them all! What do you think about Danny this season?

Danny was a rockstar in this show. As Daredevil bloggers, we’re contractually obligated to say that Matt was our favorite… but well… we loved every second of Danny’s journey, and the wait for Season 2 is going to be very long indeed. We really enjoyed the fights in Iron Fist, but we agree that they were awesome in The Defenders– particularly with the addition of those glorious Luke/Danny tag-teams! If you don’t mind, we’re going to take this as an excuse to do a deep dive into Danny’s Defenders arc.

(First: his haircut is excellent. We liked the longer hair too, but this would be much easier to uh… *cough* fit under a mask. Eh, Marvel?)

In some of the earliest pre-Defenders interviews, Finn mentioned that Danny would be the one member of the team who really knew what was going on, and would be a driving force behind the team-up– and this ended up being very much the case. Of all the protagonists, Danny comes into this fight with the most pain and the most context and the biggest personal investment in achieving victory. Matt lost someone he loved to the Hand, and we’re certainly not disregarding that grief, but Danny lost his entire home– or at least, he believes he did– and he blames himself.

The question of whether K’un-Lun has actually been destroyed is toyed with throughout The Defenders, and while we likely won’t find out the truth until Iron Fist Season 2, the important factor here is what Danny believes. His character arc in his solo show followed his desperate struggle to sort out his identity– as Danny Rand in the first five episodes, as Iron Fist in the next five, and as a balance of both in the final three– and now, he views this time spent in conflict as having cost him everything. We know, of course, that this was beyond his control, and so it’s upsetting to watch him get tortured anew by guilt. We can compare his nightmare about K’un-Lun in Defenders Episode 1 to his relentless PTSD-fueled flashbacks to the plane crash in Iron Fist. The trauma of watching his parents die, while obviously not gone, has been superseded by the trauma of losing his adopted family and home. And once again, just as he did as a ten-year-old, he is reacting to compensate for this loss. We see at the beginning of The Defenders that his life and purpose have become simplified and focused. He is no longer questioning. He is no longer conflicted. He no longer believes he can afford to be. He has one goal, to the exclusion of all else. He’s the Iron Fist, and he’s taking down the Hand no matter what.

(A whole separate post could be written on the contexts in which he introduces himself as Danny vs. as Iron Fist, but we’ll get back to that.)

Another side effect of this new sense of purpose is isolation. Danny needs to complete his mission himself, and doesn’t want anyone else to get hurt. Colleen, as someone who has been on this journey with him for a long time at this point, and who has her own self-imposed mission to destroy the Hand, is the only ally he wants. As Colleen points out later in the show, Danny is on a subconscious search for a family. But having lost his last two, and having been betrayed by nearly everyone since first returning to New York, he starts the show hesitant about the idea of acquiring new allies. Colleen, in contrast, is eager for help and sees this isolation as a problem. With Danny cutting himself off from the rest of the world, he is becoming locked in a spiral of depression and putting himself in danger. It’s interesting to then watch them reverse positions on this topic as the show progresses.

This mission leads to Danny and Colleen’s discovery of the Chaste stronghold in NYC, a hint of their connection to K’un-Lun, and– most importantly– the fact that they too have been wiped out. Yet another failure, in what is now looking more and more to Danny like a battle he is destined to lose. This is the absolute worst possible moment Luke could have strolled into his life and started protecting someone working for the Hand.

Luke is defending a suffering kid from what looks like a random assault. Danny is fighting someone he assumes is a Hand warrior, possibly the very person who slaughtered the Chaste. He is out for blood– and Luke does nothing but unknowingly exacerbate the situation.

(Oh no.)

(OH NO!)

The sheer size of the misunderstandings in Luke and Danny’s early interactions makes them painful to watch, but also great character moments. This fight, for Danny, is an embodiment of his entire battle with the Hand so far: seemingly futile, and exposing just how weak and ineffective he is. Nothing he tries works, and the enemy just. Keeps. Coming. Not only that, but Luke is standing in the way of his one hope for finding answers: Cole. All things considered, it’s a testament to Danny’s self-control that it takes him as long as it does to wallop his future BFF with the Iron Fist.

While we’re on the subject of Danny in this fight, we wanted to take a second to highlight this badassery:

Danny’s agility and untouchability is a trademark of his fighting style in the comics, and it’s his usual strategy for fighting big bruisers like Luke, so we loved seeing it showcased here (and we wish he’d used it more)!

Luke: “Your playin’ jack-rabbit ain’t gonna save you forever, punk!”

Power Man #48 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, and Francoise Mouly

Once Claire vouches for Luke not being Hand, Danny agrees to meet with him– and while obviously wary at first (again: Danny has had a terrible history of trusting people he shouldn’t), he warms up to Luke amazingly quickly. He clearly respects and admires Luke for what he’s heard about him from Claire, and for his fighting ability– and yes, probably also because of True Love™ (platonic or otherwise, depending on how you personally read this relationship). The writers know what the fans want, after all.

(Ed Brisson, the writer for the current Iron Fist series, once referred to their dynamic as (to paraphrase) “the guy with the most powerful punch, and the guy who can take that punch”, so we appreciate this exchange. We’re gonna try really hard to not veer too far into Heroes for Hire Happy Land in this post, since we’re focusing specifically on Danny, but this seemed worth pointing out. There will be plenty of time for Heroes for Hire Happy Land later…)

This scene also introduces something we see several times in the show, usually with Luke– which is Danny’s eagerness to share the details of his origin story. He becomes noticeably happier when talking about K’un-Lun and acquiring his powers, and it’s really endearing.

(D’aw. That’s how we feel about Shou-Lao too, Danny.)

One of our favorite exchanges in the entire show, in fact, is in Episode 6: when Luke makes fun of Danny for this, then realizes he’s hurt him, feels bad, and offers to sincerely engage. Danny’s relief and gratitude is palpable and it’s a great moment in their budding friendship. In fact (and we’ll get back to this), it’s possibly the most important moment between them from Danny’s perspective– proof that, despite the betrayal of trying to keep him out of the war, Luke does actually care about him. It’s a small gesture, but a powerful one, since Danny doesn’t have many people like that in his life anymore.

Also, as far as we can remember, Danny never actually mentioned shoving his hands into Shou-Lao’s heart in Iron Fist, so we love that that detail was included here. It’s important! And yes… it hurt like heck.

Danny: “I plunged my hands into it, as hard as I could, again and again. You can’t imagine how that hurt… It was hotter than any furnace, but after ten years of preparation– after all the others who’d tried and failed– how could I stop?”

Power Man and Iron Fist vol. 1 #75 by Mary Jo Duffy, Kerry Gammill, and Christie Scheele

Anyway, we read this urge several different ways. First, Danny is really proud of being the Iron Fist– and he should be. The guy singlehandedly killed a dragon, and being K’un-Lun’s Immortal Weapon is a huge honor. He talks again and again, in both Iron Fist and in The Defenders, about how this was something he earned through hard work and dedication. It’s his greatest accomplishment– something that has defined his life. This also means that it’s key to understanding who he is. Danny is finally able to fully embraced his identity and status as the Iron Fist, as we discussed earlier, meaning that he now sees this as the most important fact about him. He wants new people to understand him, and telling them his origin story is a quick and easy way to get at the core of who he sees himself to be at this point. It’s also proof of his credentials. He’s the Iron Fist– he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to this magic ninja stuff. It’s telling that during the team’s first conversation at the restaurant, Danny seems to expect Matt to know about the Iron Fist legacy as well, since he has prior knowledge of the Hand. (Joke’s on you, Danny– Matt failed his Chaste training.)

Most importantly: it’s something he just doesn’t get to talk about much, since he doesn’t have many friends (yet!) and most people don’t believe him. And it’s heartbreaking for his life and title and home to be continually scoffed at, but he keeps trying anyway. Now that he thinks he’ll never see K’un-Lun again, he is probably extra desperate to reflect on happy memories of his time there. Since he returned to New York, the only person who has sincerely been interested in connecting with him in this way is Colleen. He needs more friends he can chat with about kung fu and dragons! He needs more people in his life who actually care about him as a person!

And finally, of course, it’s for anyone who didn’t watch the previous Marvel Netflix shows– but that’s beside the point.

This scene also, of course, gives us Luke and Danny’s other fight– which is even more painful than the physical one. We could pick this apart line by line, since it is loaded with nuance, but it boils down to Luke fundamentally misunderstanding the situation. The points he makes to Danny make perfect sense based on his personal background and the extent of his knowledge. They’re excellent, socially relevant points. However, they betray a lack of awareness of what’s actually going on in the show, and the fact that Luke doesn’t know anything about Danny yet. And Danny is blindsided by his accusations, since they’re so far removed from the real situation.

Danny spent most of his life without money, then had a fortune he wasn’t interested in unceremoniously dumped on him, so this whole conversation is understandably surreal for him. He sees the Hand bearing down on New York and threatening the only other home he has, while Luke just sees a kid whose life is in danger and whose family is suffering, and these personal investments in the situation cloud their abilities to see each other’s perspectives. And boy, does that hurt to watch. This is also the introduction of Danny’s main role within the team-up: as someone who understands the Hand better than any of the others, and tries to keep all of their individual agendas from getting in the way of what really matters.

It’s also key to point out the difference between Colleen (who also worked for the Hand) and Cole. Danny now understands, via Colleen, how the Hand can sucker good people into joining them by not revealing their sinister deeds until ensuring loyalty. Colleen was with the Hand for years, yet had no idea her faction was involved in criminal activity. But Cole was right in there, disposing of dead bodies. Danny has every reason to assume he had at least some sense of how bad his bosses were.

…And this is the point where Danny finally snaps, which is no big surprise. It cuts right into his own feelings of guilt. But Luke would have no way of knowing how out of line this is.

This is an upsetting scene for H4H fans (one of us had to take a minute to calm down during our first watch-through), but it’s also a key turning point in Danny’s Defenders character arc. Having hit a wall in his battle with the Hand, Luke’s comments provide him with a fresh perspective on the situation– and a new idea about how to continue the fight. He realizes, in fact, that he needs to reach outside of his Iron Fist identity, to which he has so tightly clung since the beginning of the show, and make use of his Rand resources.

As Colleen rightly points out, and despite whatever “entitled rich kid” stereotype Luke might have imagined, this is not his world, and he is stepping way out of his comfort zone. But he goes for it anyway, his fighting spirit renewed. He even makes the ultimate sacrifice and puts on a suit and tie!

(Get ‘em, Danny!)

Having spent so long trying to reconcile his two identities, this is a hugely important moment– in which Danny uses his civilian identity as a weapon to further his mission as Iron Fist.

Danny: “I need to face this as Danny Rand. I’ll need every asset of my father’s most precious gift to me… this mighty, undying corporation… and every last dollar of its lifeblood… and all the power that buys. You want a war, Hydra? Fine. You’ve got it.”

Immortal Iron Fist #3 by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, David Aja, et al.

As we hope he learns in future seasons through his continued exploration of the Iron Fist legacy, all Iron Fists (at least, in the comics) are unique, and their lives, careers, and even power-sets are shaped by their individual differences. There isn’t a set template for being the Iron Fist, and it is possible– necessary, even– to be an Immortal Weapon without losing every other part of your identity. Danny has gone from negotiating the two sides of his life and being buffeted by the chaos this generates, to zeroing in on his fight with the Hand to the exclusion of everything else– and this moment is a great step in what will hopefully be a journey toward a comfortable middle ground. Yes, the writers needed to get him to Midland Circle so he could take part in the team-up, but it’s also a cool character moment. Also, look at that smirk. You go, Danny.

But all of this aside, Colleen is right, Danny is not a businessman. And he knows it. However, he also knows how to approach combat, and is very good at acting confident, as we saw in his fights in Iron Fist. It’s clear he’s faking his way through his business-y speech to the board at Midland Circle, but that’s not the point. This is his official declaration of war. He needs the Hand to know that the Iron Fist is coming after them, and he needs them to think he has the upper hand. By strolling right into the center of their operation, he is metaphorically giving them the finger and letting them think he doesn’t feel threatened by them.

At the same time, he is placing himself in a position of weakness. For the first time since the beginning of the show, he is completely isolated– and for the first time, he is confronted face-to-face with the reality of what, exactly, he’s up against.

Alexandra shows up to derail him, belittle him, and emotionally destabilize him. She goes in for some space invasion and forced physical contact to assert dominance (she does the same thing in the restaurant, and to Elektra). Heck, she even sits right up on the conference table to throw in a little additional disrespect. And she meets Danny’s declaration with one of her own: that the Hand doesn’t feel threatened by him either. Danny doesn’t back down, of course, but once again the Hand is presenting a serious challenge to him – and this time he’s facing them all by himself.

We are sadly no longer able to make GIFs from Netflix (and kudos to the GIF wizards who still manage it), but Danny is so angry here that he’s twitching. The core members of the Hand use the apparent destruction of K’un-Lun as a psychological weapon against him throughout the show, and each time it’s heartbreaking to watch him fight to keep his composure. It’s a testament to his self-control that he manages it here– though the emotional turmoil stemming from this, alongside everything else Alexandra throws at him in this scene (her blasé attitude, the fact that she doesn’t want to kill him yet, the fact that she’s killed previous Iron Fists…), may be why he experiences a chi malfunction right before Luke arrives.

Team-up stories are always going to undermine the power of individual characters’ narratives. Were this Danny’s solo show, he would likely have found a way out of this situation on his own, and it would have been awesome. But then we wouldn’t have gotten this:

(Chi blockage: cured!) …so we’re not complaining. As it stands, the effectiveness of this team-up convinces Danny that maybe acquiring more allies isn’t such a bad idea.

Tracking the Hand all over the world didn’t work, searching for the Chaste didn’t work, confronting their leaders and attacking their “legal” base of operations didn’t work… Now, Danny eagerly throws himself into a new strategy that seems like it might yield results. It’s heartening to see that in the midst of all of his pain and frustration, he still maintains that characteristic optimism. Just because all previous efforts have failed doesn’t mean this one will, and he is positively chipper throughout his early interactions with the other three. He believes that now, at last, he has found a way to beat the Hand, and thus his hope is restored. It’s a relief for him to have more allies to rely on, and he is fascinated to run into other superpowered warriors, awed by them, and eager to work alongside them.

(These are only a few examples, of course– Danny is perpetually geeking out over the other three throughout the show.) Despite his history of betrayal and his previous belief that he couldn’t get others involved, he sets his heart on this team-up and almost instantly attaches himself to Luke, Jessica, and Matt. He doesn’t even get involved in the argument about Matt hiding his face– he trusts him anyway (neat detail: he doesn’t even look at Matt’s face post-reveal until after Matt introduces himself). It’s enough for him, in this moment, that he’s found a group of friends who are able and willing to fight the Hand alongside him. He verbally defends their honor to Alexandra, and (big surprise) is smitten with Luke in particular.

Now that the situation has escalated and Luke sees what’s really going on, and after their effortlessly badass partnership at Midland Circle, the two of them have put aside their grievances. Now, Danny goes into the same hi-I’m-going-to-keep-talking-to-you-until-you-become-my-friend mode with Luke that he did with Colleen when he first met her.

Luke in turn provides Danny with protection and moral support later in this scene, when Alexandra starts getting aggressive. Danny is still subconsciously looking for a family, and in addition to their ability to kick serious ninja butt, these guys seem to him like prime candidates.

The restaurant scene is an emotional high point for Danny for another reason as well: Stick.

We had high hopes for Danny and Stick’s interactions, and all of them were met. Stick exhibits a respect for Danny’s rank (moreso than we were expecting, in fact, but not too much– he’s still Stick, after all) that is in neat contrast with his interactions with everyone else. Danny, in turn, is delighted to meet someone of Stick’s calibre who– most importantly– has information! Not only that, but Stick is connected to K’un-Lun in a positive way, which automatically puts him at the top of Danny’s list of people to hang out with.

This, however, is coupled with Danny’s renewed feelings of distress about how much information was withheld from him while he was in K’un-Lun (which is also true in the comics. This is mostly due to 616 K’un-Lun’s massive amount of political intrigue, which we’re dying for the show to cover). The fact that the Chaste existed to work alongside the Iron Fist, and Danny didn’t know about them, and now most of them are dead, is a killer bombshell for Stick to drop on him at this moment. Danny is therefore desperate to learn everything he possibly can to make up for this intel gap, and is eager to hear what Stick has to say.

We enjoy the contrast here with Matt– and the fact that Danny gets annoyed at Matt’s disrespect and dismissal of Stick’s intel. Danny has finally found someone who knows what’s going on and who is just as invested in this fight as he is, not to mention someone with a personal connection to his home, and dammit, he wants to listen!

Danny’s delight in his new allies does not last, of course, and it ends the minute he is transformed into the show’s MacGuffin (thing for the protagonists and antagonists to fight over). With the revelation that the Hand need the Iron Fist in their possession in order to achieve their aims, the team tries to do the absolute worst thing that could possibly be done to Danny in this context: prevent him from fighting.

(Exhibit A: A rare image of Luke Cage telling Danny Rand to calm down. Only a handful of these exist in the world, so take a good look. We’ve talked before about the temperament switch in this version of the dynamic duo, and this summarizes that change perfectly. It’s fascinating, and we can’t wait to see how it plays out as their friendship continues to develop. When they do Good Cop/Bad Cop… will Danny be the Bad Cop? How wild would that be?!)

This is a brilliant narrative wrench to throw into Danny’s story arc, since it’s pretty close to his worst nightmare. The only meaning he has in life right now, the only way he will ever be able to reconcile the pain Iron Fist Season 1 left him with, the only way he will be able to avenge K’un-Lun, is to take down the Hand. He is a warrior, this is his job, the enemy is winning, and his friends want to prevent him from fighting. He’d probably prefer it if Stick just tried to kill him, instead of being locked up and rendered helpless. The emotional horror of being blocked from fulfilling his mission is coupled with the frustration that comes with the fact that he is right and the audience knows it. The Hand want him on their side or out of the fight completely. Danny, more than anyone there other than Stick, knows how sneaky and deceptive and manipulative the Hand can be, and now he sees their influence tearing his dream team apart, and these people he thought were his allies are refusing to listen to him. He sees his hopes for victory unraveling in front of him, and nothing he says makes any difference! We’d start punching too! We’re getting stressed and frustrated just writing about it!

Plus, Danny is being betrayed by people he thought he could trust… AGAIN. Still reeling from the series of massive betrayals he suffered through in his solo show, his willingness to trust in the good intentions of the people around him is once more coming back to hit him in the face. A good chunk of the anger and frustration he experiences in this scene is likely aimed toward himself, for once again becoming emotionally attached to the wrong people. Of course, the others are acting in what they think are Danny’s best interests, but given all of these factors, there’s no way Danny doesn’t see this as yet another betrayal.

This is the face of a guy who has lost everything, has just been stabbed in the back for the hundredth time, has at maximum two people in his life he can trust… maybe two-and-a-half, and who just had to chi punch someone he cares about. A serious contender for most heartbreaking moment in the show.

And of course– big surprise– this ends up being a mistake. Tying him up and trying to hide him only makes it easier for the Hand to get their hands on him. To add injury to more injury, Stick is killed in the process (R.I.P. gone too soon), and Luke is poisoned– two things Danny was rendered powerless to prevent. This leads into his third, and possibly most interesting, confrontation with Alexandra.

After dangling the image of K’un-Lun’s ruins in front of Danny throughout the entire show, Alexandra now switches tactics and reveals her own emotional connections to his lost home. This comes alongside her cryptic assertion that Danny “saw what [he] wanted to see” when he returned to K’un-Lun. “Wanted” seems like a strange word to use in this situation (”expected” would make more sense), but once Danny discovered that the Hand was real during his solo show, and after all of Davos’s warnings, there was unquestionably a part of him that feared he’d return to find it gone. This, alongside the Hand leaders’ sincere desire to go back to the city themselves, makes a pretty strong case for it having not actually been destroyed. We likely won’t learn the truth until Season 2 of Iron Fist, but the hope is there. Danny, for his part, remains seemingly unaffected by this attempt at a personal connection. He doesn’t trust anything the Hand have to say, and probably assumes Alexandra is just messing with him. He has become too jaded to hope that he’s wrong about K’un-Lun, and too angry to care if the Hand share his love of the city. They’re evil jerks regardless, and now that he’s in their grasp, he can’t afford any moment of weakness or shred of doubt.

After Alexandra’s premature death (hopefully this means no one will call Matt “the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen” ever again!), Danny falls into Elektra’s hands and the two weapons finally get their rematch. We wrote a post about the fact that Danny never lost any of his physical fights in Iron Fist, and so getting beaten by Elektra in the beginning of The Defenders likely left a big impression on him. We were hoping the Black Sky might end up being an Immortal Weapon, and while this was neither confirmed nor denied, she is still essentially treated like one by the Hand. This creates some fascinating parallels and contrasts between Elektra and Danny.

Danny, via his emotional connection to K’un-Lun and the strong sense of duty he finally has the capacity for since sorting out his identity tangle, is a willing weapon. He serves and honors his city because he loves it and knows how much he owes to it (stay tuned for the Matt parallel!). Elektra, via her history of negative experiences with servitude and her desire for control of her own destiny, is an unwilling weapon. Her status as a tool of the Hand is a prison she was forced into, and from which she has finally managed to escape. She sees Danny’s loyalty as weakness; he sees her rebellion as unfaithfulness. At the same time, Danny completely supports people betraying the Hand, so his comments about her lack of loyalty may just be attempts to get under her skin. Only having his experiences to go on, he doesn’t understand that this wouldn’t bother her– just as Elektra doesn’t understand that Danny has no desire to be “free” of his masters the way she does. In this moment, neck-deep in his mission and standing in the presence of something created by another Iron Fist, his loyalty and resolve are stronger than ever.

*Ahem*

(They made “Sweet Christmas” work. They could’ve let Danny keep his K’un-Lun expletives. Come on.)

A solid argument could be made that Danny actually could read the writing on the door, but just didn’t want to reveal that information to Elektra. The idea of an Iron Fist writing an important message in a K’un-Lun-specific dialect brings to mind Book of the Iron Fist from the comics, which is written in a language only Iron Fists can read. However, we also know that Gao was able to decipher the door, and Danny being unable to would tie into the continuing theme of his getting left in the dark by his masters in K’un-Lun.

(This is just a really nice shot.)

When her attempts to relate to Danny and win him to her side fail, Elektra falls back on the same old tactics everyone else has been using against him– his weak spot regarding K’un-Lun.

Having been taunted about this throughout the entire show, again and again fighting to keep his emotions in check, and feeling no closer to avenging the city… Danny finally snaps. At this point in his story arc, after everything he has been through, he is more emotionally raw than ever. The framing of this moment almost makes it seem as though he summons the Iron Fist without thinking about it– which indicates a dangerous loss of control, and is something that usually only happens in extreme situations.

Danny: “My hand–?! It’s glowing, the power of my chi surging thru my body… almost as if my instincts have realized what my mind has not–”

Iron Fist vol. 1 #11 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, and D. Garfield

The final battle with the Hand is, for us, the weakest part of Danny’s Defenders arc, in which his story suffers for the sake of facilitating the team-up. After all of his defeats, face-to-face with the Hand, defending K’un-Lun’s legacy and standing in the skeleton of a freaking dragon, Danny should have been the one to finally triumph and take them down. Instead, he gets rescued, and isn’t even involved in blowing up Midland Circle. Danny has earned the right to spearhead this victory, and that right is taken away from him. As it stands, his mission to find closure and cement his status as the Iron Fist will have to wait until his solo show.

By the end of The Defenders, however, Danny has achieved one of his goals: he has started to build a new family for himself. His one-on-one bonding scene with Luke while tied up, and fighting side-by-side with all three of them, cleared up his residual anger about their getting him into this situation in the first place and proved that these are people he could actually have a future with. This bond is strengthened by the fact that Matt, in what Danny understands to be his dying moments, entrusts him with an important mission.

Of all of the protagonists, Danny is the least emotionally connected to New York City. Yes, he was born there, but it’s not his home. Believing K’un-Lun to be gone, he is now adrift. Like Colleen, he is looking for an anchor, and with the Hand threatening NYC, he was able to somewhat transfer his feelings of duty over to this new city now facing the same fate.

He sees Matt give his life to save his home– something he understands all too well– and through observing that love and spending the show fighting for New York himself, Danny starts to forge a connection to it. He respects Matt’s sacrifice, and in having Matt’s mission transferred to him, he is given something new he can devote himself to. His final shot, silhouetted on a rooftop and wearing an outfit reminiscent of his current costume in the comics, mirrors Matt’s standard hero pose. We’ve talked before about Iron Fist as a “professional” hero– someone whose job just happens to align with that lifestyle. The first time Danny is referred to as a superhero in the comics, he’s shocked, in fact, because this had never occurred to him. The same is true of MCU Danny, which makes it extra exciting that he has now– to a degree that we can only guess at the moment– taken over Matt’s role as a superhero.

This should not derail his continuing identity quest. Being the Iron Fist is at the core of who he is, and in many ways, his origin story is far from over. For this reason, we doubt that he will actually become Daredevil, as he did for a while in the comics. But with the Hand having been taken down, a new place to call home (at least until the K’un-Lun situation is sorted out), budding friendships (and possibly a future partnership with Luke?!), Danny’s life is looking, overall, much better than it was at the beginning of the show.

We cannot wait to see where he goes from here.

#Defenders spoilers #radical-bears #Netflix Defenders #Iron Fist #Danny Rand #Asks #Commentary

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