Claire is reading a letter from Luke, smiling and sighing, when Danny calls. GHe gets her voicemail and tells her she needs to leave her mom’s place and get somewhere safe. His warning comes too late as she is almost immediately grabbed from behind by an unseen assailant. Danny arrives at the penthouse and sees Harold’s blood on the carpet, then hears someone enter the Penthouse. Claire turns to see her assailant is actually Colleen shushing her, then pointing to the door, which they jam up with a chair. Danny finds Ward is the one entering the penthouse, and Ward plays dumb. Danny thinks Harold’s obvious death is his fault for standing up to Gao, and Ward is perfectly content to let him believe so. He chastises Danny for thinking he could take down a worldwide drug empire by himself and Danny swears he won’t let Gao hurt anyone else. Ward doesn’t care what Danny does as long as he stays away from him and Joy, calling Danny a cancer. Danny leaves and Ward is lucky Danny didn’t notice the big ass bottle of bleach he brought with him that he starts cleaning up the blood with. Opening credits.
Danny is showing Claire and Colleen a sattelite view of the factory in China where Gao is going and where his father WAS going when the plane crashed. Claire is the voice of reason and suggests it’s a trap Gao’s mindgames are leading him into. Danny apologizes for dragging them into his fight, but Colleen says it’s their fight now. They try to tell Claire to go underground but she says she’s going too. She says the Hand thrives on fear and after they came into her home and her hospital and killed her friend she refuses to be scared. Danny doesn’t know what he’ll do with Gao when he catches her.
Lawrence, the sleazy greedy old black guy on the board, smarms and condescends at Ward and Joy with vile glee as he holds their belongings hostage until they sign their termination agreements. His offer is $100 million each, the exact amount they offered Danny to disappear. He smug snakes at them like a cartoon supervillain and says they have only themselves to blame. Joy says he won’t be so smug when she’s on the other side of the table. She tells him Danny may have cost the company a few dollars but made up for it in great pr. Lawrence says they both have to sign or they get nothing while Ward zones out staring at some blood on his sleeve. Joy asks for a moment alone with Ward and chastises him for accepting this deal without consulting her. She’s shocked he isn’t fighting this bullshit but he just wants to disappear somewhere and raise horses and stop living the life Harold wanted. Joy laments how hard she as a woman had to work to get taken seriously and earn the respect of her peers and she doesn’t want to give it up. She asks Ward to at least consider fighting if she can come up with a good strategy, and he agrees if she’ll do the same about accepting the settlement.
Danny and the girls are on a private jet and some turbulence freaks him out. Claire helps him calm down and teases him about the obvious thing between him and Colleen, telling him he has the “got laid” glow about him. He asks her if she has anyone. She says yes but he’s “presently unavailable”. She asks Danny if he’ll do anything stupid like kill Gao if it turns out she killed his parents with the plane crash. He says he has the discipline to refrain but if he did it would only be fulfilling his duty as the Iron Fist. Claire shows some very out of character naivete given all she’s been through and plays the “killing is wrong no matter the reason” card, but Colleen, whom they both assumed was asleep, asks Claire if she’d feel that way if it were her parents that had been murdered, which pretty effectively shuts Claire up for a moment, but Claire quotes the eye for an eye thing from the bible, and annoyingly brings up Ghandi who, if you know the actual history rather than the Ben Kingsley movie, is possibly the worst example she could use. More turbulence freaks Danny out again and Claire tries to get him to talk about the crash to focus on something besides the panic.He sees visions of his dead father in the snow, with monks standing over him. Claire asks him to focus on how safe the monks made him feel, and as the turbulence fades he finally calms down.
Ward walks into Lawrence’s office. Lawrence is annoyed he got in. Ward offers to take a mere $30 million if Lawrence will give him severence independant of Joy and offers him $500 grand to grease the wheels. Lawrence chastises him for falling apart, but tells him there’s no money to take as Joy went behind his back and rejected the offer. He condescendingly laments how Ward and Joy used to look out for each other and how sad it is to see them at odds. Ward leaves.
Danny and Colleen are spying on the warehouse in China from a distance and Danny is frustrated and impatient. Colleen tells Danny about her mom’s death and how distant her dad was. She tells him how she watched her mother die and didn’t know it until years later when she was old enough to understand her mom was sick. They bond over their shared grief. Claire wakes up from a nap in the back of the car and asks if anything’s happened. Danny gives her a rundown of guard and worker activity. Danny is about to go nab a guard and beat info out of him but Colleen has a better idea. She pulls an Oblivion and gives a beggar money for info.He says anyone seeking info on Gao is a fool, but he’d be a bigger one if he gave it. She convinces him she can stop Gao and he says to ask her questions.
Ward accosts Joy as she’s walking her rottweiler, yelling at her for rejecting the settlement behind his back despite having just tried to go behind hers and sell her out. She says she did it to protect him and she knows how to get their jobs back. Ward assumes she means using Danny and his corporate reform crusader image and how stupid and idea that is, and she just calmly lets him rant, gets out her smartphone, and shows it to him. He asks what she’s showing him. She says it’s a way back. He looks at a bunch of photos of board members in compromising situations, which she’s been compiling for some time. He’s both shocked and impressed by her foresight, realizing she’s been gathering this info for awhile and sitting on it for such an occasion. He asks why she never clued him in and she gets emotional and says because he’s put up a wall and shut her out and she loves him and wants to be there for him. He says he can’t drop that wall. She says he’s always been the person she most admired. He says she’s admired an image, not who he really is. He says he’s done with lies. He says she deserves the truth, and he’s going to tell her everything.
Colleen gives Claire and Danny the info that the beggar gave her, and Danny decides to set fire to the warehouse once the enslaved workers leave for the day. His plan is to smoke Gao out. I’m mildly amused that the security guards are all carrying Chinese Officer Swords rather than guns. Once in the factory, Colleen asks him why the drugs have the same symbol as his chest tattoo minus the wings, and he says Gao stole it as an insult. She asks if he really plans to capture Gao. He says if she killed his parents he’ll rip her apart. Claire teases him about how it’s his fault she’s out of control. Claire sees Gao arrive and honks the ghorn to warn them. They hide and Claire drives away to get safe. Danny trails Gao while Colleen encounters a female guard and a sword duel ensues sttttraight out of Crouching Tiger. The guard disarms Colleen but Claire drives back in and throws Colleen her sword and she dispatches the guard. Claireis miffed at how often someone tries to kill her of late and they both wonder where Danny is.
On that note, Danny is trying to bribe the barely conscious drunk guarding the door Gao went through to go away so he can follow Gao, and I think Danny is about to get a lesson in drunken monkey when he asks the man, who calls himself the defender of the Hand, how his master would feel about him being piss drunk, and he says his master insisted upon it. Yeah we’re about to get a Jackie Chan moment here. So far this is the best fight scene in the whole series, and surprisingly the Drunken Monkey style isn’t being played for comic relief. There IS comedy in this scene, but it’s subtle, and less in the drunken fighting style and more in the way the drunk guy is schooling Danny like a first year white belt. The fight style itself is actually being sold here as frighteningly effect and deceptively dangerous. Despite serving the Hand, the drunk guy chastises Danny, saying that while he has kept his vow to serve the Hand with honour even if the Hand is unworthy of that loyalty, Danny has betrayed his vow as the Iron Fist by caring about vengeance more than duty. Danny loses it at this What The Hell Hero speech and pummels the guy bloody and unconscious just as Claire and Colleen find him and stop him from killing the guy. Danny is a little freaked by what he’s done as Claire checks on him.
Ward is at the penthouse building about to show Joy the truth when he hallucinates blood pouring from the elevator and the walls. He wusses out and tries to leave and when Joy insists he tell her what’s going on, and he lies and says he was going to ask her for money and that her pedestalizing him is pathetic.
Gao pops up and tries to mindfuck Danny again.She offers to teach him to use his anger and gloats, fully believing she’s in control here. She tells Danny she’ll grant the ladies a quick death if he submits to her. He refuses, saying he’d rather die than submit. Gao, arrogant as ever, still assuming she’s fully in control, says she can’t allow him to die just yet and orders her goons to kill the women. Claire says she wishes she’d never come to China. Danny says that’s fair. The goons attack and Danny and Colleen dispactch them, but realize their weapons were coated with poison. Danny realizes that Gao did indeed kill his parents by poisoning the pilots of the plane, and Iron Fists the wall behind her but refrains from killing her. He takes her prisoner and they all leave. End of episode.
See you soon for Episode 9!
