Iron Fist Countdown: 9 Days
Danny Rand’s Continuing Identity Quest
Over the past year-and-a-half (our time) Danny has been fighting his way through one of the most complex and emotional character arcs in the Netflix MCU. In the first season of his solo show, he had all aspects of his identity scrutinized and ripped apart by the people around him, by circumstances, and by the turmoil of his own repressed trauma. One of the most dangerous villains in that show was Danny’s own internal strife, and its biggest mystery was his motivation for leaving his home– a mystery he could not solve until he had worked through the layers of grief and rage surrounding his parents’ deaths. Upon returning to Earth, Danny had to figure out what it meant to be Danny Rand. Through his fight with the Hand and his struggle to figure out why he left K’un-Lun, Danny had to figure out what it meant to be the Iron Fist. And due to the changes in his origin story, MCU Danny didn’t have an easy target to blame for his parents’ death, and thus struggled with how to find closure and thereby reconcile the confusion and conflict in his life. By the end of that show he’d gained hard-earned answers: what happened to his parents, why he abandoned his home, how to move forward, and how to be the Iron Fist without also losing himself.
And then the unthinkable happened: while Danny fought the Hand in New York, K’un-Lun was (seemingly…) attacked, kicking off the events of The Defenders (a.k.a. Iron Fist Season 1.5). Danny’s attempts at finding a comfortable balance of being the Iron Fist on his own terms were smothered by a new flood of grief and rage– this time for his lost home. Blaming himself, he seized his role as the city’s Immortal Weapon with a vengeance, determined to prove himself and make the Hand pay. He saw his previous identity questions as the root of his failure, and so he tossed them aside entirely.
In the end, Danny’s Defenders arc was weakened by the fact that he wasn’t the one to take down the Hand. He didn’t get the satisfaction of having his vengeance, and he didn’t get the chance to prove himself and come into his own as the Iron Fist, and we found that extremely frustrating. But he didn’t come out of that show empty-handed either.
In Luke Cage Season 2 we saw a happier, more optimistic Danny in the process of healing. In The Defenders he’d found a new supportive community– most notably, in Luke– and through these friendships he started to become emotionally settled in New York City. No feeling longer quite as lost and hopeless, he was able to step back for a minute from all of his personal issues and just enjoy hanging out with a friend. His conversations with Luke also revealed that somehow, in between shows, he’d seemingly learned that K’un-Lun hadn’t been destroyed after all. Thus, with that weight off his shoulders, we saw him relax into a more comfortable sense of his self and identity.
The Defenders also left him with a mission– a way of still acting as the Iron Fist while on Earth. With his “dying” words, Matt Murdock made Danny promise to protect New York. Thus, Danny was given the motivation to take on a new identity: that of a superhero. In the upcoming season of Iron Fist we will get to see how he negotiates this new melding of his Earth- and K’un-Lun-based identities.
“I am Danny Rand. The Immortal Iron Fist. I made a promise to Matt Murdock to wear his mask… I’ve fought this war in his place… And I’ll continue to. But I haven’t forgotten who I am… and soon it will be time to carry my own burdens again.”
Civil War: Choosing Sides by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, David Aja, and Matt Hollingsworth
This plot point has its origins in the comics. While Matt was in jail and then out of the country, Danny took over as Daredevil. He retained this identity all through the first superhero Civil War, and continued to preserve Daredevil’s presence in New York until Matt returned. We don’t expect Danny to actually put on the Daredevil costume in the show. He is not far enough along in his own identity quest to start fully taking on other peoples’. But he will be going out onto the streets as a superhero in the more traditional sense, forging new connections to his new city and facing all of the strange new challenges inherent in street-level crimefighting. In this way he will be building another duality into his identity, as both Iron Fist: Immortal Weapon and Iron Fist: NYC superhero. And this feels right. Danny has never had much of a civilian identity in the comics. We learned in Luke Cage that he is (unsurprisingly) not directly running Rand Enterprises. The identity questions in his life should mostly revolve around his fighting and his place within the Iron Fist legacy.
And that part of him will be under attack this season from an inevitable-yet-exciting source. Davos, just as in the comics, feels personal ownership of the Iron Fist identity. He is critical of Danny’s approach to the position, and is now coming to claim it for himself. Danny was robbed of the opportunity to prove himself in The Defenders, but here he will have another shot at it. He will be forced to defend his title, and to thereby reclaim it for himself. He initially acquired the chi of Shou-Lao with confused intentions. Now he will have a chance to do it again, clear-eyed and informed about what this life choice really means. This challenge will prompt Danny to prove– to himself, to the world, maybe even to Davos– why he is the right person to hold this position. After all of this time, and all of the twists and turns of his identity quest, this season should– and hopefully will– finally allow Danny reach his full potential as the Iron Fist.
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