Iron Fist Season 2 Is a Story with Themes of Privilege and Self-Care

(Full spoilers for Iron Fist season 2 below.)

All of the Marvel-Netflix shows before Iron Fist had some sort of hook — Daredevil had Catholicism and Matt Murdock’s career as an attorney; Jessica Jones tackled sex, consent, and trauma; Luke Cage depicted local city politics and race relations. On the other hand, season one of Iron Fist was barely about anything.

Season two of Iron Fist is a completely different show, with finally something to say.

The first time we see Danny Rand in non-vigilante mode, it is in a position we don’t expect him to be: he is working an honest job, doing hard, physical labor carrying boxes for a moving company. He is discreet and anonymous, wearing a hoodie and avoiding attention. Danny is acknowledging his privilege, something he was accosted by Luke Cage in The Defenders for not doing so.

Danny’s “brother” Ward Meachum doesn’t quite understand Danny’s explanation, but he relents — we’ll get to him in a bit.

Here we see a Danny Rand actively trying to give back to the community with honest, hard work — as we do with Colleen Wing. Having hung up her katana due to her fear of committing violence, Colleen is now volunteering at a community center. Previously in season one, she taught youths self-defense, fighting in discreet cage matches to fund her classes. Now she aids the community in a more public and less illicit manner.

The dilemma that Danny eventually faces is that he is giving too much. He becomes obsessive in his mission to protect the city, now carrying the burden that Matt Murdock presumably killed himself carrying before him. Colleen is the only person in his life able to ground him, keeping him from overextending himself, and teaching him how to control his emotions.

To some degree, Danny is too far gone in his self-righteous battle. As a result, the Iron Fist becomes his own drug.

Unlike his fortune, and unlike his white privilege, the Iron Fist is one of the things that Danny Rand does not inherit, but rather earns. This is where Danny’s other “brother” Davos comes into play. See, Davos believes the Iron Fist to be a birthright of his, an entitlement — when he sees an outsider, a “boy who fell from the sky,” earn it instead, he conjures up a plan to steal back what he believes to be rightfully his.

We have Danny, who wins the Iron Fist in ritual combat, but is internally damaging himself with his obsession to use the Fist in his never-ending quest to squash crime. Davos is not too dissimilar, desiring the power because of his belief that he would do better with it, and that his form of violent justice is purer.

It turns out that regardless if one is “worthy” of the Iron Fist, it was neither of theirs to begin with. Probably the biggest turn of events in the season is Colleen Wing becoming the new Iron Fist, and an even bigger revelation is that one of her ancestors, the “Pirate queen in K’un Lun,” could have very well been the first person to wield the Fist.

Truly, the birthright is Colleen’s.

Danny’s decision to help Colleen obtain and inherit the Iron Fist has a lot of implications — it is Danny finally being self-aware of his own addiction, acknowledging the strength of Colleen’s character, and upon the discovery of Colleen’s lineage, an opportunity to not only discover more about the Asian-based culture that he immersed himself in, but also about his own destiny and purpose.

I haven’t made it a secret that I believe that an Asian-American Iron Fist would have been the best approach for this series — I’ve talked much about it in both written word and in podcast form. It’s difficult to tell whether or not Colleen becoming the new Iron Fist was an intentional way to “correct” this, but the journey that Danny is going as a result of this development is promising in potentially righting some wrongs.

Danny understands that even though he wants the Iron Fist, it isn’t his. He no longer has the burden of risking life and limb for others on a daily basis — he is now fighting for his own answers. He doesn’t need to move boxes in an act to prove himself, he just needs to practice self-care and self-reflection. With that, it’s fitting that Ward is his travel companion.

In several ways, the plight of Ward Meachum is parallel to Danny’s. He too suffers a drug problem — quite literally. While his Narcotics Anonymous meetings are a mechanism to cope with it, Ward struggles the entire season to accept help. It makes sense that Ward was confused by Danny’s blue-collar career change at the beginning of season 2 — despite his character growth from the first season, the concept of helping others was alien to him.

It takes a series of self-destructive episodes for Ward to learn any of this, with his sponsor (and lover) Bethany caught in the mix. It isn’t until after Ward relapses with his addiction, and learns that Bethany is pregnant with his child, that he makes a major shift. Flowers in hand, he states his desire to Bethany to help take care of their child together — he wants to prove himself a better person.

She says no — and her reasoning makes sense. Ward doesn’t know how to take care of himself, so how can he be expected to take care of others yet? The same goes for Danny — how can he protect a whole city when he’s essentially hurting himself every day on the job?

This season of Iron Fist seems to go out of its way to do everything that the first season could not do, especially when it comes to character development. Every major character in this show goes through a period of self-reflection: Joy questions what she truly wants — a new start for her future or revenge due to her past? And Mary Walker has a more literal version of her struggle, with her two alters of Mary and Walker having contradicting desires and ideas of self-care.

Iron Fist season 2 is about the difference between “want” and “need.” Danny and Davos both want the Fist, but what they really needed were their own self-evaluations on where their destiny truly lies. Colleen just wants to help people like normal, but she has to claim her birthright and use the Fist, as she’s the best person to do so. Ward wants to retreat to his substances, then decides to be a supportive father, but first, he needs to learn how to best take care of himself. All of these characters have the need to ground themselves in reality by the end of the story.

With all the talk from former showrunner Scott Buck about Iron Fist and Inhumans needed to be “grounded,” it is ironic that this more mythic season, sans Buck, is still “grounded” in an entirely different sense.

Originally published at marvelnewsdesk.com on September 19, 2018.