“Iron Fist” picks up the pace in its final two episodes, bringing Danny, The Hand, and the Meachums all to the same place as Bakuto tries to use Harold, Joy, and Ward to get to Danny. Danny and Davos team up with Colleen to take Bakuto’s faction of The Hand down, but it doesn’t go as planned. Along the way, the audience is treated to a few small Easter Eggs in “Bar the Big Boss.”
Warning: This list of Easter eggs contains spoilers for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If you aren’t caught up, you have been warned!
Harold accepts his fate
While it’s not The Hand who wants to kill Harold in the comics, but Danny himself, the scene is similar.
Harold is the one responsible for the death of Danny’s parents, and when Danny finally finds himself in the position to get revenge, Harold is ready to accept his fate, just as he plans on accepting Bakuto’s sword in “Bar the Big Boss.’ The difference there is that when Danny decides not to kill him, another mysterious ninja comes along and does it for him later. Here, Harold gets away, at least for now.
Bakuto’s death
Given how the episode ends, we don’t actually know if Bakuto is dead or if he’ll be revived by The Hand, but Colleen’s fight with him is not all that different from how the comic book character meets his end on the page. Of course, the two characters don’t even know one another in the comics, so it’s a different heroine who fights him - Angela del Toro.
Angela del Toro AKA White Tiger has previously gotten a shout out on “Jessica Jones” as a detective Jessica knows. Claire’s weapons of choice during her fight scenes actually seem like a shout out to the character as well. Maybe we’ll be seeing her in the Netflix pipeline.
In the comic book fight, Bakuto is the one who ends up with the broken sword though, not Angela as Colleen does here.
He also gets stabbed in the stomach by his enemy, just as Colleen stabs him. There isn’t a knife to the heart by a third party though, so there are a few differences to make the scene the show’s own.
Cut off the head of the snake
The idea of cutting off the head of the snake in order to stop an evil enterprise isn’t a new one.
It’s a relatively common phrase. When you’re part of the Marvel universe though, if your character starts to say something like “cut off the head,” the immediate thought is that “two more take its place,” thanks to Hydra being the big bad for so much of Marvel.
That might be an intentional nod since The Hand appears to be standing in for Hydra in the case of one particular comic book storyline. In the comics the Crane Mother (who many fans believe might be Gao) secretly helped Hydra in their quest to infiltrate K’un-Lun. With Hydra already being disposed of in the MCU, The Hand is filling that particular role here instead - especially since Davos keeps reminding the audience that the way into the mystical city is open, with no one there guarding the gate.
The DEA is after Danny
As the episode ends with Danny and Colleen on the run from DEA agents we don’t know exactly what will come into play here, but I’d be willing to bet it will tie into Madame Gao’s heroine enterprise somehow. Has Danny been falsely implicated as the manufacturer of her heroin? Perhaps.
In the comics, it wasn’t the Iron Fist who got into trouble for drugs, but the original Power Man (AKA Carl Lucas AKA Luke Cage). The friends would later become a crime fighting duo, but it was Iron Fist who helped clear Power Man’s name when the latter was imprisoned for supposedly dealing drugs.
Up next
“Iron Fist” comes to its conclusion in “Dragon Plays With Fire” as everything finally comes to a head.
Danny finally learns the truth about the deaths of his parents, not to metion just why the DEA is after him. We also get quite a few callbacks to the comics and other MCU properties to close out the first season.
