Tuesday, 11 September 2018

Iron Fist S2 - Sep 11


Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. My upcoming week promises to be rather bad, so I actually cannot wait for next week’s Monday, because it will give me a reprieve. Go me. My life sucks. I hate it.

…Of course, on the other hand, there is the first-rate tennis player SeWi, who has it worse. To recap, she lost her match against her fellow tennis player N. Osaka, and apparently turned upon the game’s umpire when things did not go her way – and lost her temper. As a result, she is now fined almost 20 grand, (as I have heard), the tennis officials are backing the umpire, (so she now might need to apologize – or not), and there already are some rather crude and unpleasant caricatures of her, too, damaging her reputation further. Yeah, and she cannot blame her bad decision of D.C. and the president Donald either. Poor her. Really.

Mind you, as much as I believe that SeWi is in the wrong here, it must be admitted that the caricatures, (there were at least two different ones), were completely unnecessary, and probably made the already bad business worse. SeWi and her people are probably doing their best at damage control, and the caricatures are making their job harder. One may hate SeWi, (though why? She is not a politician, at least), but still, to go at her deliberately is not a good thing. Hate leads to the dark side, the Jedi said, and they should know: the SW/Disney merger was apparently completely in the dark, it remained in the dark regarding the SW fanbase, and now the merger became successful at alienating that fanbase: some of its’ members honestly do hate it, and will probably abandon it, a new cartoon series or not.

This brings us to another merger – that of Netflix/Marvel. More precisely, ‘Iron Fist’ S2 was aired. How did it go?

It worked. The Netflix/Marvel combo took criticisms of ‘Iron Fist’ S1 and did their best to fix them. So far, it seems that their strategy is to take an ever-increasing amount of ‘Iron Fist’ comic elements and introduce them to ‘Iron Fist’ in particular (and maybe to ‘The Defenders’ in general). Yay?

Very much so. This is, after all, what all of the Marvel shows are about – to give their audiences the Marvel experience that the various comics (and novels) cannot. Otherwise, what is the point? There are plenty of non-Marvel TV shows, (some are not even in related to DC or other comic universes either), so to counter them a Marvel show, (TV, online, etc.,) has to use, well, Marvel elements. Moreover, it worked. Go them.

Anything else? Not really. ‘Iron Fist’ S2 shows that the Netflix/Marvel shows are diversifying and are going beyond the NYC city limits, at least partially. ‘Iron Fist’, the comic and the online series, for better or for worse, is caught between USA and Asia, and it needs to balance between these two landmasses to succeed.

…One may ask, if ‘Luke Cage’ is not similarly caught between USA and Africa. It is not – ‘Luke Cage’ is solidly Afro-American, with the emphasis on American, and while he – and Misty Knight, and a few others – can always come to Africa, especially to Wakanda, on request of their good friend king T’Challa aka the Black Panther, their homeland is still USA. (Seriously, this is what happened in one ‘Black Panther’ comic series: at one point in time a group of super-villains, including – a version of the Fenris twins, tried to take over Wakanda by fermenting internal political unrest, so the Black Panther realized: this is bigger than me and my family, and so he got his posse, which included Ororo/Storm, Misty Knight, and – Luke Cage, aside from other characters, and defeated the villains…eventually).

…Yes indeed ‘The Gifted’ S2 is returning to TV on Tuesday, September 25th. I must admit - this is good news, and the current trailer is already exciting; the lines are drawn: the Mutant Underground vs. the Hellfire Club and Lorna is, potentially, the wild card. Magneto was never a member of the Hellfire Club, the Cuckoos have lied to get Lorna in, and if she ever finds out, the results will be explosive: Magneto was powerful, but never subtle, and Lorna seems to have inherited that. She will not be happy to have been lied to, that is for sure.

On the other hand, ‘The Gifted’ S2 trailers seem to imply that the Hellfire Club will undergo some sort of an W&H (from AtS) moment, which involves an internal coup. If done right, it will be a game changer, but to do that, ‘the old guard’ who will be killed off should be established first, otherwise the coup’s impact will be diminished.

…Yes, this all takes place in different Marvel universes: ‘The Gifted’ takes place in a separate universe – Earth-TRN674, while ‘Iron Fist’ – on Earth-199999. I have no life, (but this week, and especially the weekend still suck). Of course, it would make a cool crossover, but we will have to wait for someone to write it, so for now, we have to watch ‘Iron Fist’, and wait for ‘The Gifted’ S2, and also – for ‘Daredevil’ S3, which is also in the works. Unlike ‘Iron Fist’, ‘Daredevil’ so far takes places only in NYC, so for now, ‘The Defenders’ focus will be shifting back to NYC, leaving the rest of the world for the Avengers or whoever.

Yes, it does not appear that Thanos’ cosmic snap has affected the Netflix corner of MCU, (and as it was hinted at ‘C&D’ S1 finale, ‘Rands’ & ‘Starks’ share the universe – and Roxxon, and ‘C&D’ are also a part of that universe. However, some kinks are still needed to be worked out – so good luck with that.

This is it for now, see you all soon.

No comments:

Post a Comment