SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.
I think I have some sort of understanding of Joy as a character and why she’s so contradictory. She does actually care about things and have a heart, she’s just good at compartmentalising her feelings and pushing down her conscience when she’s doing something that’s not exactly right or ethical, but is in the best interest of Rand Enterprises. Like with the lawsuit concerning their plant and the fifteen cases of cancer that sprung up among the residents in the area surrounding it. She knows that the right thing to do would be to help those families, but Rand isn’t legally responsible (not that that’s been proven yet), so to settle with them would be unwise. It was especially difficult for her to do what she did because of Harold and his cancer battle.
I didn’t like how the sad, cancer mother cornered Danny and set him up in order to blackmail Rand. She had a moral leg to stand on and I sympathised with her before that. I firmly sided with Ward in not settling the case, although Joy and the other members of the board had valid arguments (that I agreed with) as to why they should have. I really wanted to see what Danny would have said if he’d attended the meeting, but he was busy elsewhere.
I feel like Ward really should have consulted with Harold about the lawsuit. Harold may not be the best of persons, but his input there would have been valuable. That was not the time to act out and be defiant toward his father. The lawsuit is a great threat to Rand and even more so since the video with Danny leaked. His refusing to settle probably was an extension of his defiance.
I didn’t think anything of Ward keeping the heroin in his desk after his “meeting” with Danny, besides it maybe being found in his desk and him getting into trouble for that. I wouldn’t have thought that he had a substance abuse problem. He does drink a lot of bourbon, though.
Following up on the package that had been sent to him by the triad in the last episode, Danny tries to find proof that The Hand is using Rand Enterprises to smuggle heroin when Ward doesn’t believe him. Danny is now actively pursuing The Hand, trying to get them out of Rand and defeating them on the whole.
For his first outing as a vigilante/(super)hero, I thought that Danny did pretty well. Taking along Colleen as back up instead of going alone was a good move. It was smart of him to take a phone and record what was going on with the shipment at the pier. I thought that he’d take a photo and set off the flash, though, since he’s new to smart phone technology.
Like, Colleen, I was skeptical of Danny’s assertion that the shipment was the heroin that The Hand was smuggling. Once he found the chemist, Randovan, it made sense why they had shipped so much equipment and not the heroin itself.
When Claire showed up in the episode, I expected either Colleen or Danny to get hurt; there’s not need for Night Nurse in an episode unless someone gets gravely injured. Instead, it was Randovan that she had to tend to. I held my breath thinking that she may just suggest calling up one of her other superhero friends, to help Danny take on The Hand, when she told him that he couldn’t do it alone. I knew that wouldn’t happen, because this isn’t The Defenders, but still.
Unfortunately, The Hand knows that the Iron Fist is in New York and in pursuit of them. Danny no longer has the element of surprise. Now they’re going to go after him. I don’t believe that what they want with Rand is as simple as just drug smuggling. It has to be a part of whatever their plan for Elektra/Black Sky is.
Random thoughts:
- They have a heroin addict on hand to test new drugs?
- Claire!
- Ward flipping off Harold in his office was hilarious.
- Too bad Danny doesn’t know that Claire can help with this…
- They bought the pier to smuggle drugs?
- Is this nunchaku display supposed to be impressive?
- Does Danny have a driver’s licence now?
- Is Claire going to be the one to bring together The Defenders?
All 13 episodes of Iron Fist are currently available for streaming on Netflix.
Danny didn’t know that The Hand is real and active, so that explains why, up until now, he hasn’t been concerned about them. Luckily – and not so luckily – for him, they’ve infiltrated Rand Enterprises; the very corporation he owns and has been struggling to take his place in since he returned to New York.
His affections toward Danny were part of that as well and I believe Ward when he said that the only person Harold cares about is himself. Danny should heed his warning (but I know that he won’t), although, I do think that Ward said that out of jealousy. It’s been clear that he and his father have a contentious relationship and that he favours Joy. I’m sure that seeing Harold be so affectionate with Danny, who is not his son, rubbed Ward the wrong way even if he knows that it was a lie.
Victor White is a second generation Barbadian living in Sweden and a competitive freeskiier. This past weekend, he made history as the first Barbadian to compete in the World Ski Championships and is perhaps the first Barbadian to compete in any international winter sports competition. He took a few moments from his hectic schedule as a competitive athlete, to speak to Zeitgeist about his life and career as a freeskiier.
Did you represent Barbados in those other international competitions?
How is the World Ski Championships going for you so far?
Every now and then this show manages to make Rumpelstiltskin sympathetic. I love him when he’s at his best and I despise him when he’s at his worst. He is usually at his best when he is trying to fulfill his duty as a father and in this week’s episode we got to see him in the past and the present with both his sons; Gideon and Bae.
Back in the Enchanted Forest after the First Ogre Wars, Rumple tried to give up using dark magic for Bae. He did well with it too and Bae was very good at motivating him and convincing him that he could be a hero without it. Rumple even entrusted him with his dagger when they went to defeat Grendel. But Beowulf, because of jealousy or fear or hatred or all three, kidnapped and killed some of the towns people in order to lure Rumple into a trap and frame him for their deaths, berating and thus angering Bae when they try to stop him.
The good news about Robin 2.0 is that he didn’t want Regina’s potions for some nefarious reason and isn’t actually a bad guy. The bad news is that he wanted to use it to break the protection spell on Storybrooke and run away from Regina, with the help of Zelena. This episode killed my dreams of an Outlaw Queen rekindling. Especially since Robin is supposed to be her true love. I so want Regina to get her happy ending and it seems to be drifting further and further away from her. It had to hurt her when he said that he wanted to get away from her because her comparing him to Robin 1.0 wasn’t enabling him to start over.
Going to Jeri Hogarth was the smartest thing thing that Danny has done so far. Lawyering up is the way to go and the best way to deal with Ward and Joy, who’ve been such dicks to Danny so far. Ward, I understand, but Joy is just confusing.
Like bribing Patel with a liver for his sick nephew so that they could buy his pier. She stole an organ. The deed was vaguely altruistic, but the fact remains that that was very unethical and underhanded. That is something that I would have expected from Ward, not from her. I gave her the benefit of the doubt in the last episode, but until she proves otherwise she’s just as bad, if not worse, than Ward. He doesn’t seem to care about anything, but she does.
The question is whether or not The Hand knows that he’s the Iron Fist. They know that Danny Rand is back because they paid Harold a visit and punished him for leaving his tower, but do they know that Danny is the Iron Fist? Do they even know what the Iron Fist is and what that means for them? I’m going to lean toward “no” on the first question since they didn’t press Harold about Danny. I’m honestly impressed that they didn’t know why he left. Either that or they just wanted him to tell them himself; test him and see if he would lie. He did lie but, they don’t know that.
Marnie was even more of a pain this week. The selfishness, selfcentredness, arrogance, vanity and narcissism of that girl is beyond measure. I realise that a lot of those words mean the same thing, but with Marnie, it’s so bad it needs emphasising.
Marnie wasn’t the only one to find out about the baby news this week; Hannah finally told Adam in a fit of anger when he followed her down the street, begging her to watch the film he made about them. I wish she had more of a moment with him in which we could really get his reaction. I really wanted to see how he would take it and he was, understandably, shocked (he echoed Marnie’s sentiments about Hannah not telling Paul-Louis). It seems the writers cared more about Jessa’s reception of the news, however.
Now that Hannah’s changed her mind about now telling Paul-Louis, I hope that the fact that she couldn’t reach him the first time she called doesn’t dissuade her from doing it. It really is the fair thing to do by letting him know. As her father said, though, it’s her choice whether or not she tells him, depending on what she thinks is best for the baby. We’ll see if she actually tells him and if he steps up as a father.
Danny is the main character, but I still don’t really care about him yet except for wanting him to definitively prove that he’s Danny. Which he did do in this episode (both Joy and Harold believe him now, as well as his psychiatrist), so there isn’t much for me to care about concerning him right now – besides seeing how his story ties into Harold’s.
Maybe that’s why Ward was being such an ass and questioning his father about keeping Danny safe? His response to his father confirming that he is in fact Danny and asking him to be moved to a safe house confused me. I know he never really liked Danny, but his immediately jumping to the conclusion that his father wanted to have him killed and the fact that he was so cool about it was surprising to me. Like him or not, Danny was someone he grew up with so I would think he’d care. Plus, he seemed so much more upset about the fact that his father doesn’t want Danny killed. Like a child whining because he couldn’t get his way.
I liked that Colleen refused to help Danny at first, instead of doing the typical thing of a character who barely interacted with the main character for ten minutes rushing to their aid. She and Danny barely had any kind of meaningful interaction, so her desire to help him there would have been unjustified. As far as she’d known based on her encounters with him, he was just some crazy homeless dude and being in a mental hospital was exactly what he needed. It made more sense that Ward’s hard push to bribe her would make her curious enough to speak to Danny.
Eve successfully made it to “the other place”, an alternate dimension ruled by wessen who do not woge. Nick joins her shortly thereafter when Monroe and Rosalee return home and find evidence of her departure. I was expecting “the other place” to look like the swirling, black chaos in the mirror, but I suppose that’s just what the portal looks like. I’m a bit confused, though, because now I’m wondering if this is where Eve would have ended up had she not survived the death grip. The environment there looked the same as the portal to “the other place.”
I was very happy that Nick and Eve got their heart to heart, in the same way that she had with Adalind. It was about time that it happened. There was no real closure in their relationship. It never occurred to me that Nick felt guilty about everything that happened to Juliette and Eve and blamed himself for it. Besides Nick, she is probably the one character who has been through the most.
I did not at all see that coming. I don’t think anyone would have. She’s a child. In all honesty, I don’t see what the point of all of her power is if her only role in this is as a breeder. I’m curious as to why the Zerstörer went after Eve if it’s Diana that he wants. It could want them for separate reasons, I suppose, but ultimately use them both in order to reach the same goal. Eve definitely has a part to play in all of this; she did carve symbols into the walls of the tunnels.