First off, this will not be an in-depth review of the second season of Iron Fist. As I watched the second season, I made some notes about some of the thoughts going through my mind. There will certainly be spoilers. I did not enjoy season one of the series, and neither did most people. I was dreading another Rosario Dawson appearance. Her character "jumped the shark" for me in season one of Iron Fist when after a few days/weeks/months of training she was able to go toe-to-toe with highly trained ninjas. And after the continuation of the poor acting job by Finn Jones in Defenders, I did not hold out much hope for season two. However, the appearance of Iron Fist in the second season of Luke Cage gave me a glimmer of hope. Unlike most people, I prefer the solo Iron Fist, as in the Immortal Iron Fist series by Matt Fraction, over the Power Man and Iron Fist team-up. But for TV, it looks like the team-up makes the character stronger. It was also not a good sign that even though I have watched every other Marvel Netflix series at least once, and some seasons three times, Netflix never bothered to advertise to me in my queue that the new season was about to start. It seems to me that Netflix has lost all faith in the series as well.

Episode 01 - Fury of the Iron Fist

We finally have a respectable fight scene out of Finn Jones. Clearly he is not a strong martial artist, but I at least felt like he had put in some time training after the first season. In season one, I felt like he was practicing Tai-Chi and not Kung-Fu.
In episode one, we are introduced to Mary. Those who were spoiled in advance knew right away this was supposed to be Typhoid Mary. I was not impressed by here first scene. I really felt like she was playing the character as Harley Quinn.
Overall, the first episode, really the first several, were slow moving. But, I felt like it was an improvement over season one.

Episode 02 - The City's Not For Burning

One thing I did differently this season was read the episode titles before I watched the episode. I thought we would get to see Typhoid Mary's powers at work in episode two. Unfortunately, that did not happen.
For whatever reason, Danny is clearly hitting on Mary, even though his is supposed to be madly in love with Colleen. This really seemed off to me. Danny is sometimes a womanizer in the #comics, but this version of the character was not being played that way.
Again, we get a few decent fight sequences, and they finally introduce the Iron Fist mask. However, both Danny and Davos are wearing the same mask in their flashback fight sequence, and the masks look terrible.

Episode 03 - This Deadly Secret

The episodes are still moving along slowly, but still better than the first season.
We learn Joy Meachum is bankrolling Mary to spy on Mary and that Mary is in fact the mysterious Walker we have been hearing about.(No real surprise)
And, we get Danny in a mask again, but this time, the mask covers the lower half of his face. WHY? If he is going to wear a mask, let him wear his traditional mask.

Episode 04 - Target Iron Fist

In this episode, Mary finally starts to feel like a legitimate threat; Still no powers, though.
Hooray, we get an appearance from Misty Knight. My first thought on seeing her show up was that maybe we will not have to put of with Claire any this season. I also like the idea of getting the Daughters of the Dragon together. Also in this episode we see Davos remove the tattoo from a deceased Iron Fist. This harkens back to the Matt Fraction Immortal Iron Fist series establishing the legacy of the Iron Fist.

Episode 05 - Heart of the Dragon

We get Davos in a mask, but he is wearing yellow mask. Not sure why they could not put him in a green or purple mask, but they chose to use the same color. It was just a little thing, but it bugged me.
Davos manages to steal the power of the Iron Fist from Danny. At this point, I am starting to think they can give the Iron Fist power to someone else and write Finn Jones out of the series. I would be OK with that. He has been better in season two so far, but still not up to the level of any of the other title characters from the other series.
I also noticed my first Easter Egg in this episode. The police call for a super-powered individual is 616, which is of course the area code for New York, and the main Marvel Universe is often referred to as the Marvel-616.

Episode 06 - The Dragon Dies At Dawn

Surprise, surprise, Mary replaces Walker an inopportune moment. I am sure nobody saw that coming.
Davos immediately shows he is more adept with the Iron Fist as he is able to go two-fisted.
I was really glad to see Misty Knight stick around. Her and Colleen together are a pretty solid pair. I really feel like Simone Missick brought out a better performance from Jessica Henwick.
The fight scenes with the Daughters of the Dragon and Typhoid Mary are much better than any of the Iron Fist fight scenes.

Episode 07 - Morning of the Mindstorm

Not much to say about this episode other than the fact the Colleen is training Danny? Really? Danny has been training in K'un L'un but Colleen is wiping the floor with him. I know he is injured, but this was a big stretch in my mind.

Episode 08 - Citadel on the Edge of Vengeance

Ok, Colleen still training Danny. You already know what I think about that.
Danny suggests that when they take back the Iron Fist that she should have it instead of him. I would be 100% OK with that.

Episode 09 - War Without End

So, season three of Iron Fist could be all about the Daughters of the Dragon. This would almost certainly be better than what we have so far, and the best parts of season two do not include Danny.
Still no powers from Mary. :( She is basically just a female Punisher in this story.
We do get a nice Turk appearance. I like seeing Turk throughout the Marvel Netflix series.
OK, they are still talking about Colleen getting the Iron Fist. At this point I was suspecting that they were going to have to kill her off to force Danny to take the power back, but I was still holding out hope to see Colleen with the Iron Fist. I was a bit surprised to see Colleen with the Iron Fist at the end of the episode. I immediately wondered how long that would last.

Episode 10 - A Duel of Iron

And Colleen's fist is gone, so literally about 30 seconds of screen time. However, by the end of the episode Colleen ends up with the power of the Iron Fist. I was more than a bit surprised.
We also learned that Mary has a third personality. Since we never saw the powered Typhoid Mary in this series, maybe this third personality is the powered version of the character.
Then I realized, that this season of Iron Fist was only ten episodes.
At the end of episode ten we get a bit of an epilogue where we see Danny again has the power of the Iron Fist, and he is able to channel the power into guns, ala Orson Randall in Matt Fraction's series. We also know that Danny was out searching for Orson Randall as well. I am all for adapting portions of the Matt Fraction written #comics to the Netflix series, but doing so might further distance those expecting a good Kung Fu series. But there is some hope for season three.
We also get our first post-credits scene in a Marvel Netflix series with a teaser for the quickly upcoming third season of Daredevil. I guess Netflix knew in advance that Iron Fist was not going to be enough to tide over the Marvel fan for very long.

Conclusion

While season two of Iron Fist was very mediocre, it was still an improvement over the first season. If they focus less on Finn Jones and more on the Daughters of the Dragon, or recast Danny Rand, then there is some hope for season three. Overall, I grade season two of Iron Fist as Very Good (4.0). For those unfamiliar with the comic grading scale, that is a scale up to 10, so not really very good. :) And if you would like to hear more about season two of Netflix, subscribe to our podcast Campus Comics Cast on your favorite app. We will be discussing this season in an upcoming episode.