New stats show Iron Fist to be the most divisive character in Netflix’s The Defenders. This isn’t entirely surprising, as Iron Fist season 1 has proven to be easily the most divisive season to date among fans of Marvel Studios’ Netflix offerings. Much of that criticism has fallen on the lead character himself, Danny Rand (Finn Jones), who many feel acts immature and obnoxious to the point where watching him itself becomes difficult.
Iron Fist season 1 was also a flop with critics, garnering far and away the worst reviews of any Marvel/Netflix project to date. Still, divisive or not, Iron Fist has his fans, and remains a big part of the Defenders-verse going forward. Unfortunately, it appears that - at least so far - Danny Rand remains a huge turnoff for many fans of Marvel’s street level NYC heroes.
As reported by ComicBook, the company Fizziology conducted a study on viewer responses to Netflix’s recently released Defenders miniseries, and the study found that while Iron Fist was second only to Daredevil as a social media conversation generator, that’s not necessarily a good thing. According to the study, talk concerning Iron Fist tended to lean toward him “ruining the show,” with some even joking about needing “to play a drinking game to get through his parts.”
That all said, Netflix seems to have heard the complaints regarding the characterization of Danny Rand, with new showrunner Raven Metzner set to take over for original showrunner Scott Buck for Iron Fist season 2. While producers have said that Buck’s exit from Iron Fist was simply due to him hopping over to ABC’s Inhumans, it seems too coincidental to think that the multiple months of fan bashing directed at the series had nothing to do with the decision to bring in new creative leadership for Iron Fist earlier this summer.
Without spoiling anything, anyone who has seen The Defenders knows that it leaves Iron Fist in a perfect position to step up and prove himself a hero in the caliber of Daredevil, Jessica, and Luke. Whether he’ll take up that challenge successfully remains to be seen, but chances are even the fans who don’t like him will tune in to find out.
More: How The Defenders Changes Iron Fist
The Defenders is now available on Netflix, with The Punisher arriving sometime this fall. Premiere dates for the new seasons of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist have not yet been announced.
Source: ComicBook
