11 Simple Fixes That Would Have Saved Marvel's Iron Fist

10. Pick A Villain

One thing the Netflix Marvel shows have done very well, even better than most of the movies, is introduce an array of complex, charismatic, and terrifying villains.

Daredevil has Vincent D'onofrio's Wilson Fisk, Jessica Jones had David Tennant's Kilgrave, and Luke Cage had Mahershala Ali's Cornell Stokes. It's no surprise that Daredevil Season 2 was weaker without Fisk, or that Cage got worse after killing off Cottonmouth.

It's an area Iron Fist struggles with a lot. The main problem is that there's a lack of clear villain: it's Joy and Ward, then it's Gao, then Bakuto, then Harold - who's been twirling his moustache in the background all this time - then sets up Davos and Joy (with Gao back in the mix too) for the future).

The show would've been stronger had it picked a villain and stuck with it. There's no guarantee any of them would've been strong enough, but it would've given them a better chance to carry the main villain arc and develop across the course of the show. Based on performance Davos may have been the best suited, because Sacha Dhawan is excellent (but doesn't come into it early enough), but there's enough in David Wenham's performance to suggest he could've handled it too with some different material and a lot more focus, rather than just sitting around pretending not to be dead and killing people over ice cream.