7 Things Iron Fist Season 2 MUST Learn From Luke Cage Season 2
5. Make The Villains As Vulnerable As The Heroes
Likewise, there is an unwritten golden rule to every superhero story: The hero is only as good as their villain.
Iron Fist Season 1 sported a wealth of villains. But none of them were particularly interesting, so audiences found it hard to care about anything that they did. And that meant that the overall stakes didn't amount to much either.
By contrast, Luke Cage's villains were fleshed out to a fault, so much so that their emotional instability transformed Season 2 into a neatly crafted soap opera. Mariah Dillard's twisted ideology was so intracate that she almost stole the show altogther.
But her overall performance was only equal Bushmaster. For all his head-chopping, eyeball-stabbing antics, Bushmaster was shown to have great love for his people, his heritage and for the principles of justice in general. This was emphasised so passionately that by the end of the series, audiences were led to forget he was ever a villain in the first place.
To become fully invested in a wicked character, one must see more than the villinous outlet. The human being underneath needs to shine through with almost unstable potency. Only then will viewers be fully entranced regardless of the outcome.