Iron Fist 1.06: “Immortal Emerges From Cage”
Time to quit your day jobs because Madame Gao needs you. A call to arms heads out to Scythe, The Bride of Nine Spiders and the Veznikovs setting up a string of boss battles for Danny to overcome as he searches for the chemist’s daughter.
In perhaps the oddest pairing of the series, Danny and Ward form a mini-Scooby gang to solve daytime mysteries. That’s a fairly light-hearted way for me to say they find a head on a pike while searching for the links between Rand Enterprises and The Hand.
Ward is the Word
Furthering Ward’s mental distress, his Lady Macbeth “Out damn spot” moment showcases the seams pulling. What grip he held on himself is loosening fast, and it’s clearly coming to a head. Ward is currently struggling through the most interesting arc on Iron Fist. I think the folks making the show realized this as well, as his scenes are given the most intriguing cinematography so far.
Finish Him or Her!
The challenges The Hand places before Danny are mostly set-up for him to embrace teachings of his K’un Lun mentor, Lei Kung. Tests feeling as 90’s as it can get with themed baddies on each tier of the ladder. Like the original Mortal Kombat (which also doesn’t have great fighting) meets the MCU.
The Veznikovs lead off with their butcher boy bit, The Bride of Nine Spiders weaves a web of seduction and Scythe…uses blades. It hit me hard that Scythe’s karaoke of A-Ha’s “Take On Me” would have been perfectly staged for David Tennant’s Kilgrave. It’s a prime moment for the terrifying balance of charisma and psychotic he portrayed on Jessica Jones. It worked OK here for Scythe, it would have worked wonders with Kilgrave.
While Danny is fighting his way through the ranks, Claire and Colleen visit an all-too-familiar hospital in order to treat The Chemist. From there it’s essentially a different version of the hospital scenes from Daredevil season 2 which teeters on the edge of OK and regurgitated.
I suppose the moral of the story in Immortal Emerges From Cage is that Danny is learning that there is no such thing as honor without fault in the real world. It’s an interesting idea that took a long time to reach.
Head to the next page for a review of Iron Fist 1.07: “Felling Tree with Roots”