Marvel's Iron Fist Review: 3 Ups And 7 Downs

3. The Hand Are Still Boring

You've got to hand it to the people behind these Netflix Marvel series: they've taken a ninja death cult (!!!) and somehow made them incredibly dull.

Admittedly this isn't an issue unique to Iron Fist, because Daredevil's second season suffered from it as well, though at least there it had plenty of other strong elements to paper over the flaws. The weakness of the Hand on the show stands out just as much, if not even more here, which doesn't bode too well for The Defenders (where they'll be involved yet again).

As a group of skilled fighters, they're too easily defeated to feel like they pose any sort of threat. Daredevil and Elektra dealt with vast swathes of them, and here Danny, Colleen, and Davos don't have too many issues either. As a shadowy organisation who need to be stopped, there's still too little we know about why exactly that is, given so far it's amounted to little more than drug crime.

The Hand have their, erm, hands everywhere, or so it seems, but so far that's not great for this universe. Iron Fist has to do a lot of heavy lifting in that regard, making them seem like big villains here but keeping plenty back for The Defenders, and it falls flatly in the middle.