Iron Fist S1:E3 Rolling Thunder Cannon Punch

Simple Synopsis

The third episode, explained.

Danny Rand, having just busted out of a mental institution, decides to break into Colleen’s dojo to hide out. Despite being exceptionally rude to her, Colleen agrees to allow him to stay for a while. His first order of business is to try to win Joy over to his side, despite her drugging him and putting him away. She offers him $100 million to buy out his shares of the company and disappear, but he throws an entitled fit and storms off. He tracks down Jeri Hogarth, a familiar character from the Jessica Jones series and conveniently a friend of the family that worked for his dad when he was young, and she agrees to represent him to regain control of his company.

Danny returns to the dojo and is kind of a dick to some kids, taking over one of Colleen’s classes despite her insisting that he not do that. Afterward Colleen gets on to one of the kids for being in an illegal fight club to earn money because it’s not the Bushido way. Meanwhile Joy essentially steals some kid’s liver for a guy to land a real estate deal.

Danny then tries to get proof of his identity by just walking into a hospital records area to try to get an x-ray from when he was a kid, so apparently the MCU doesn’t have medical records privacy laws at all. But he’s not the only one, one of Ward’s goons is already there, they fight and catch the place on fire, so way to burn down a hospital Iron Fist, good job. At least he saved some unknown lady? He’s pretty ticked and magically knows where Ward and Joy are having dinner, so he bursts in on them and throws a temper tantrum. Meanwhile Colleen goes out and joins the illegal fight club to fight for money, because the Bushido way doesn’t apply to her, or something. On the plus side this gives us one of the few mildly interesting fight scenes in a show that is supposedly about this highly skilled kung fu warrior.

Meanwhile meanwhile Harold is visited by the shadow of Madame Gao, a returning character from the Daredevil series, because we needed something interesting to happen. She’s not pleased that he left, and punishes him for going to see Danny.

The next day Danny and Jeri take a meeting with Ward and Joy to discuss the case, they make one more offer to make him shut up, but he manages to produce some proof of his identity. As they leave he gets suspicious of Ward and decides that a random phone call is not only worth tailing Ward, but worth scaling the side of a building to find out what he’s up to. Magic Iron Fist senses are apparently telling him it’s not just some random business meeting. Regardless, he jimmies open a window and some mystery person pushes him off the side of the building. The viewer’s hopes are raised briefly before they realize that this is only episode three and there’s literally zero chance that the title character will die.

TL;DR
Danny crashes with Colleen while trying to find proof of who he is and catches Ward being weird. Harold gets a visit from and angry Gao.