Iron Fist season 2 is now here, and like each of the Marvel Netflix series, it manages to sneak in some nice connections to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, in a somewhat surprising twist, Iron Fist ties a major character origin to the game-changing events of Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War, forming one of the stronger and more direct connections between the MCU TV and Movie divisions.
Read below for the breakdown of how Iron Fist season 2 connects to Avengers 2 and Captain America 3 – but obviously, MAJOR SPOILERS will be discussed.
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Iron Fist season 2 introduces a new character named Mary Walker (Alice Eve), who Marvel Comics know is an alias for split-personality assassin, Typhoid Mary. In Iron Fist season 2 Mary gets a slow-burn reveal, in which we learn that she has two distinct personalities, one as “Mary,” a meek and friendly artist who befriends Danny and Colleen – and “Walker,” the former special forces operative now working as a freelancer, who is hired by Joy Meachum and Davos to watch Danny Rand.
After “Mary” and “Walker” butt heads over what to do about Danny, they get stuck in the middle of the conflict between Danny and Davos, which begins to trigger repressed memories in her head. Later on in the season, Walker gets Ward Meachum to dig up her buried military file, in exchange for saving Joy from Davos. That file reveals an origin story which is connected to some of major shifts in the MCU playing field.
As we learn, Walker’s special forces unit had a disastrous mission in Sokovia that went F.U.B.A.R. and ended up with all of them being captured. The Sokovians were extremely brutal, torturing their POWs and mutilating them with knives, as well as repeatedly raping Walker, who they were saving for last, while systematically executing her squad. Trapped in a hole and left to the punishment of a the elements, Walker suffered some kind of mental break during a bad thunderstorm, resulting in her split personalities. One of those personalities then broke loose and murdered the entire camp of Sokovians, calling in for reinforcements to extract a bloody and confused Walker from the site, with no memory of the slaughter.
What’s left unclear in the story is exactly when Mary Walker’s unit was deployed in Sokovia. What happened to Walker’s unit sounds like it could have occurred before Age of Ultron, and could easily be the work of EKO Scorpion, Helmut Zemo’s Sokovian covert kill squad. Zemo demonstrated a penchant for the kind of psychological torture that Mary describes, and it would be poetic if Zemo’s cruelty created a monster like Typhoid Mary. At the same time, Sokovia was rocked (pun) after the Ultron’s attack, and the political instability and humanitarian crisis would easily require a US special ops squad to be deployed to maintain peace or affect regime change. The remnants of EKO Scorpion could still be behind Mary’s capture – even if Zemo had already defected by then.
What do you think of Iron Fist’s Avengers and Captain America connection to Typhoid Mary’s origin? Let us know in the comments!
Iron Fist season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.
Avengers: Infinity War is now available as a digital download and on Blu-ray and DVD. Ant-Man and the Wasp is now playing in theaters. Upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019; Avengers 4 on May 3, 2019; Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5th, 2019. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has been delayed indefinitely.
