Sorry for another long hiatus between episodes. I did use some of my time wisely, and watched both seasons of Daredevil and rewatched Iron Fist. So, as of this episode, I’ve only seen the pilot of Luke Cage, but have seen all of the other 3 Defenders’ shows.
Let’s see what those crazy kids are up to now.
Hell’s Kitchen is reeling from the earthquake at the end of episode 1. Matt is perched on top of a building, listening for trouble. He hears a robbery go wrong when the store owner pulls out a gun. Matt leaps into action to stop anyone from being gravely injured. He punches out the store owner to save the young looters, saying, “They’re just kids!” “Who are you?” the owner asks when Matt’s finished with him. Matt looks like he’s not sure himself, and doesn’t answer.
Trish’s talk show is discussing the quake, which has been measured as a shallow 4.6 magnitude tremor centered in Hell’s Kitchen. New Yorkers are spooked. Anything that seems like it could be an attack is going to agitate people.
Jane from Brooklyn, who is a geologist, calls in to say that the quake wasn’t really a quake. She doesn’t know what it was, but the facts don’t add up. The station cuts off the call.
Police Captain Strieber and Misty Knight arrive at the apartment Jessica Jones was investigating. She’s reported the C4 and every federal, state and local law enforcement agency possible is getting in on the investigation. Misty and Jessica meet briefly and have a stare down before Jessica leaves, swiping some C4 on her way out.
Colleen determines that the dojo has survived the earthquake intact while Danny takes a nap meditates. Danny’s chi is high maintenance.
Colleen has been thinking. Thank God. She gave that up in Iron Fist when she fell for Danny. Since Danny rarely thinks, it left a definite intelligence void amongst the good guys. Now Colleen is through the honeymoon stage of their relationship and ready to return to her pre-Danny level of superior intelligence. Things should go more smoothly for the two of them after this.
She thinks they should be on the lookout for allies and form a team. The man they found in Cambodia sent them back to NYC, so their must be something here for them.
Colleen lays out the clues she’s figured out from the dead man. She’s determined that his weapon was rare, and has found a weapons maker in NYC who might know something about it. They agree to check out the weapons maker, and reaffirm their trust in each other, if no one else.
Matt washes the blood from his hands and gets angry with himself. He “stares” at his Daredevil costume, fighting temptation. Foggy calls and breaks his trance.
Claire is patching up wounds on a front stoop. Luke helps with clean up by moving giant blocks of concrete, dropping one next to where Claire is working. Show off. The impact kicks dust up all over the person she’s just told to keep their wound clean. 🤦🏻♀️
Luke wants to go to the local criminal bar to get info on the operation that local kids are dying for. Claire tips him off that there’s a new criminal bar in town that the cool kids go to these days.
Alexandra is at a private concert, just for her. She makes regular, large donations to the symphony, and seems to have known Beethoven and Brahms personally. Gao interrupts to tell Alexandra that their project has met a stumbling block in the form of an impenetrable wall. Alexandra deduces that the elders of K’un Lun would’ve put up a more serious barrier if they really meant to keep the others out. This is a locked door, not a wall. The key is the most sacred, precious thing to the elders of K’un Lun, currently a guy with curly blonde hair.
Jessica researches the company that hired the architect who had the C4. The company has been passed around through shell companies for more than 200 years. Jessica asks the records librarian how to get records from before 1820, but Hogarth appears and warns her off of the case. Hogarth tries to make it sound like this is to protect Jessica, but it’s obvious she’s more worried about herself and the firm.
Matt and Foggy meet at Josie’s, their old haunt. Foggy stopped going to Josie’s when he moved uptown to work for Hogarth. He’s seeing their law school classmate Marcy and has thoroughly sold out. Next he asks about Matt and Karen’s relationship, and notes that Matt clearly slipped in his Vigilantes Anonymous 12 step program, based on the state of his hands. Matt’s had enough and tries to leave.
Foggy stops him and explains that he’s just trying to help. He has a pile of cases that Matt can do pro bono to keep himself occupied, instead of going out as Daredevil. Matt is skeptical, but agrees to try.
Luke finds Turk, our friendly neighborhood arms dealer, at the bar. He roughs Turk up in the name of coercing answers out of him, with a little property damage for good measure. The lesson of the Sokovia Accords has not reached Hell’s Kitchen.
Defenders, nobody likes unnecessary property damage. You’re just lucky that Netflix can’t afford William Hurt, or Thunderbolt Ross would be all over your *sses already.
Colleen and Danny find the weapons maker’s workshop. Colleen starts geeking out over the weapons. They find blood stains and follow the trail to a training room full of bodies. The bodies are still warm. There are signs that one person was dragged out. There’s a painting of K’un Lun in the training room. We all agree that these are members of the Chaste and it’s Stick’s workshop, yes?
Luke goes to the address that Turk gave him, and sees the man who Turk described: African, all in white, with a white hat. White Hat loads a bunch of kids into a van, including the kid that Luke means to protect, Cole. Luke had started to tell Misty what was going on, but hangs up when he sees Cole. He’s determined to keep Cole out of trouble with the law.
Hogarth puts Foggy on Jessica Jones guard duty, which is something I might actually pay to see.
Jessica returns to her apartment to find Malcolm being held at gunpoint by the missing architect. Electra arrives to try to kill the architect, but he shoots himself in the head first, saying, “You can’t have this,” as he points to his head. Wonder what secrets he had stored there. Electra leaves, ignoring Jessica’s attempts to follow and fight her.
Misty Knight is, of course, at the bottom of the stairs, waiting to capture Jessica. Misty’s job in this series is to get in the way of the Defenders, and never quite figure out what’s really going on.
Danny’s still trying to figure out the painting of K’un Lun when White Hat’s crew arrives, dressed in hazmat gear. They’re carrying canisters of a toxic chemical and sprayers to disperse it on the bodies. Colleen and Danny pick a fight with the cleaners, in amongst the bodies and the toxic spray.
Danny catches Cole and tries to question him, but Luke finds them and intervenes. Both Luke and Danny are supremely overconfident during the ensuing fight. Each is confused when the other’s power best’s them momentarily. Luke, especially, seems to have become very sure that he’s unbeatable over the course of his TV series, so it’s satisfying to see Danny slow him down with the Iron Fist.
Meanwhile, the police show up and arrest Cole, who’s been forgotten about by Luke and Danny in their petty fight. Colleen grabs Danny and gets him out before he gets arrested too, because who knows what crimes he’s still wanted for. Luke sinks back into the shadows and watches as Cole is driven away.
We shift to Alexandra and her prisoner, because obviously this all comes back to the Hand. The prisoner is hooded and tied to a post. She calls him old friend and says there’s no point in secrecy, removing his hood. It’s Stick, Matt/Daredevil’s and Electra’s erstwhile mentor and father figure.
Misty has Jessica in an interrogation room while she blames Jessica for everything that’s gone wrong in the city in the last week, and threatens to arrest Jessica and all of her friends unless Jessica fully cooperates. Jessica tries to explain that this situation is beyond the abilities of the police, but the police never listen to that excuse. Matt bursts into the room and tells Jessica to stop talking. He’s now Jessica’s attorney. Jessica looks confused. Misty is unimpressed.
Watching Matt try to guard Jessica will be almost as much fun as watching Foggy try to keep up with her would have been.
Was that chemical going to dissolve the bodies where they lay on the bare floor? That sounds like a terrible thing for Colleen, who’s a regular human, to be breathing. Danny and Luke can probably heal from anything, but she can’t.
Can we have an Iron Fist season where Colleen is an apprentice swordmaker? We all want to know more about how they’re made, don’t we? Someone’s got to be the next weapons master.
Turk is the worst arms dealer and secret keeper ever.
The faux earthquake was only 300 feet deep, according to Trish’s call-in geologist, too shallow to be a real quake. What is the Hand trying to blast out of the ground? The Defenders desperately need a mad scientist on the team, to figure out a way to scan for things like this. Surely Danny could rent a scientist and some equipment for a while. Or pay some of the Rand scientists some overtime to help out.
Metawitches 
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