After the Breaking Bad 10th Anniversary panel wrapped up in Hall H around 5:30pm on Thursday, July 19 at San Diego Comic-Con 2018, I headed over to Room 6A to try to get into the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend panel. Meanwhile, Josh opted to go back to our hotel room to relax for the evening.
I knew it was a longshot, especially with the panel starting at 5:45pm and being in a room with relatively small seating capacity of 1,040, but thought I would try anyway. Oddly, I noticed a large number of guys in line for 6A, but then I realized it was because the Clerks panel was the next panel in the room. Anyway, so a few minutes after 5:45pm, staff came around and told us that the room was completely full for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but that we could stay in line for Clerks if we wanted to.
This is where my plan B kicked in, and why it’s important to have backup plans. Upon hearing this information, I left the line and headed over to Ballroom 20 for the Iron Fist panel which would be starting at 6:00pm. The line went outside, but was moving quickly.
As I walked into the panel a couple minutes after it started, Jeph Loeb was giving the spiel about how we were going to see a lot of never-before-seen footage, and how we shouldn’t record it. Then they showed the trailer for Season 2 of Iron Fist, which was the first time it had been shown. It is now available online, and you can watch it below:
Loeb reiterated what was revealed at the end of the trailer: that Season 2 of Iron Fist premieres September 7.
He then brought out the panelists: new showrunner Raven Metzner, fight coordinator Clayton Barber, guest cast member Simone Missick (Misty Knight from Luke Cage), and returning cast members Jessica Henwick (Colleen) and Finn Jones (Danny).
Metzner recalled the excitement he felt from sitting in the audience at the Defenders panel at Comic-Con last year, which made him want to work on Iron Fist. He told us how this season is filmed in downtown New York and Chinatown.
We then got to see the first of many clips we would see during this panel, which are not available online. Of course, these clips highlighted the fight scenes orchestrated by Clayton Barber.
In this first clip, Danny faces off against some opponents in an armored truck, who open fire at him, but he is able to block the bullets with the truck’s door. Ultimately, Danny punches the ground with the Iron Fist, which knocks them all down.
Loeb pointed out that it was actually Finn Jones for the entire scene, and there was no stunt guy. Jones recalled how cold it was when they filmed that scene — about -15 degrees Celsius. He spoke about how hard Clayton Barber worked them this season, and thanked him for believing in them.
Barber, who has previously worked on Creed and Black Panther, talked about how he has been excited that action is becoming more “punk rock” and that he pulled inspiration from various international elements. However, when Barber first came on, he wanted to make sure that the cast members were “up to the task,” and they were, so in the end, they got a really good result.
We learned that David Dobkin, who directed a few episodes of Into the Badlands, directed the first episode of Season 2 of Iron Fist.
Loeb rolled another clip. In this second clip, Danny and Colleen are at the Chinese restaurant, and there’s a problem. While Colleen fights in the kitchen, Danny tries distract the other invaders who have come in through the front by talking to them. Of course, the talking doesn’t work, so fighting breaks out.
Jessica Henwick spoke about how they are “recalibrating” Colleen, pointing out everything she has lost, and now she is trying to find out who she is without that. However, “you don’t want to make her mad,” she warned. But the most interesting thing for Colleen is the introduction of the Daughters of the Dragon, which is Colleen and Misty Knight teaming up. On cue, there was a clip waiting for us to see this team up. It was an action packed scene of the two of them working together.
Loeb revealed that Simone Missick’s character, Misty Knight, has a problem as a detective, which has brought her to Chinatown: with these two “Defenders of the neighborhood,” it gets in her way, so she has to come straighten it out, and “ass-kicking ensues.” Henwick commented that Colleen and Misty both bring out a side to the other that you don’t get to see otherwise, pointing out that the two of them have a similar sense of humor.
Missick compared Colleen’s appearance on Season 2 of Luke Cage, where she essentially told Misty to pick herself up off the ground, to Misty’s appearance in this season of Iron Fist, as Colleen is in the same sort of head space, not knowing where she fits, and Misty is there to tell Colleen to pick herself up. She went on to say that “there is no B.S. between these two,” pointing out that it’s not like they’re sitting on the couch talking about Colleen’s relationship with Danny.
If Metzner had his way, he would do every Iron Fist story that he could possibly do. One topic that he wanted to address was where Danny comes from. As a comics fan, the idea of K’un Lun always intrigued him, especially the various pieces of mythology. So he wanted to be inside of K’un Lun, rather than just seeing the “snowy peaks.” Therefore, he wanted to show what happened there in Danny’s past.
We then watched another clip. In this one, Danny is inside of K’un Lun, wearing the iconic yellow Iron Fist mask from the comics — which the crowd cheered upon seeing. Davos is also wearing the mask. Danny and Davos are linked together with a long sheet of narrow yellow fabric, and they are about to fight. It is announced only these two warriors have remained unbeaten, but only one can face the dragon, and that neither shall leave until one of them yields or dies. The fight just barely begins, but that’s all we get to see. The teaser below is not what we saw, but it does contain flashbacks of some of what we saw.
Jeph Loeb then announced that Alice Eve (Star Trek: Into Darkness, She’s Out of My League) would be joining the cast this season, and she came out and joined the panelists on stage. As for what character she would be playing, Metzer teased that this character would have two knives — machetes, to be more precise. Eve said that her character was very violent, but the reason she took the role was because she got to play someone with multiple personalities. This tipped off some of the audience, and someone shouted out the correct answer. Eve had said the first person to guess correctly would win a kiss, so she called the young man up on stage and indeed gave him a kiss on the cheek! So which character is she playing? Typhoid Mary.
In the accompanying clip, Misty and Colleen stop by Joy Meachum’s apartment in an effort to find Mary Walker (Typhoid Mary). Joy tries to resist, but they barge in and demand for Mary to show herself. Joy insists that no one is there, but Mary is in fact there and a fight breaks out. Mary only stops when Joy orders, “Enough!”
Eve praised Barber for teaching her how to fight and that “discipline is a path to success.” Barber had told her that you can do it if you do it enough. Barber added, “I believe that was, ‘You must learn to have a relationship with pain.’ ” Eve recalled, “Yeah, sometimes I cried!” As for her relationship with the knives: “They’re my babies,” she said.
Because Sasha Dhawan, who plays Davos, was unable to make it to the panel, he sent over a special video for us to watch. Dhawan apologized for not being there, but teased some info about the upcoming season, which would have unexpected turns and introduce us to unexpected characters. He then introduced a clip that contained a secret he’s had to keep for over a year. In the clip, Davos goes into a nightclub and tells his opponents “I’m here to tell you the Triad War is over.” They get into a fight, which ends with him punching someone with a glowing fist — the Iron Fist!?
The panel started to wrap up, with the panelists taking a selfie with the audience in the background, and then a group photo facing the audience. However, Jeph Loeb warned the audience that we didn’t want to leave during this photo taking process, that we were going to want to stay until the very end.
Our reward for staying? We got to see the rest of that K’un Lun fight scene between Danny and Davos. It was quite an extended clip, and I’ll just say that it was a close fight that got quite bloody.
At the very end, Jeph Loeb called up a young woman on stage who had camped out since 7pm the night before in order to see this panel, and gave her a special jacket.
After the Iron Fist panel wrapped up, I headed out to the Fandom party! Stay tuned for my article on that.
You can view more of our photos from Marvel’s Iron Fist panel at SDCC 2018 below:
