Tear Jerker / Iron Fist (2017)

Season 1

Episode 1 - Snow Gives Way

• The flashbacks we get to the plane crash that killed the Rands are bad enough in their own right, but what really drives the point home is seeing the effect they have on Danny. Typically he's a rather upbeat fellow with a focused center, but even as soon as being kicked out of his company's building he looks like he's physically suppressing the urge to lash out. It's clear that there are some long-standing issues that his time in K'un L'un did nothing to help.
• Young Ward's bullying of young Danny becomes this when Fridge Brilliance settles in. Now, it becomes clear that he isn't taunting Danny for being his parent's pet, he is burning with jealousy of Danny getting from his parents thousand times the affection he's pining for from his own father.
  • It doesn't even need the fridge, just seeing Ward hating Danny and being such a douchebag to him even despite his own sister trying to talk him down is enough.
  • When Danny mentions this treatment, Ward has the gall to gaslight him by denying it.
• Joy betraying Danny by spiking his coffee so he can sent into a mental hospital.

Episode 2 - Shadow Hawk Takes Flight

• Joy's reaction to finding the M&Ms that she sent Danny returned. She now realizes it really is Danny and breaks down in tears.
• Danny unable to convince the doctor at the psychiatric ward that he is a sane person. While the doctor believes that he is Danny Rand, he is skeptical of everything else and thinks he is mentally ill.

Episode 3 - Rolling Thunder Cannon Punch

• Joy saying Danny is not their brother and they don't want him there when Danny goes to the restaurant Joy and Ward eat at to confront Ward over having every single record, medical or otherwise, destroyed of Danny.
• Colleen being forced to fight in cage matches to pay the upkeep for her dojo. It is not only hypocritical, as she called one of her students out on doing the same thing, but it is a disgrace to her own code.
• At first she holds Danny at mace-point... but as he continues to spill out details about her past at his father's company, Jeri has to blink back tears. Danny's father gave her her first job and she never forgot that, nor the little boy that used to play in her office. Fifteen years later, she still maintains flowers at the family's memorial. Fuck you, Jessica Jones, Jeri Hogarth isn't a shark.

Episode 4 - Eight Diagram Dragon Palm

• The look on Danny's face when he realizes it was Ward who pushed him out the window.
• Even as evil as he is, Harold is deeply upset that he cannot be allowed to meet his daughter Joy. It has been years since he died and he knows she misses him.

Episode 5 - Under Leaf Pluck Lotus

• The whole subplot about the Rand chemical plant and the cancer patients living near it.
  • First there's the meeting where Joy insists the company passed the inspection and is compliant to regulations and if the people still did get sick due to the plant that's because the regulations are too lenient. One of the women in the room starts to cry.
  • Joy afterwards questions whether Rand is on the good side of the affair because, with Harold going through cancer, she knows exactly how the families of those people feel.
  • Then there's the woman who cried approaching Danny (encouraged by the story of Danny putting his foot down on the pricing of a live-saving drug), showing him the picture of her son who has cancer.
  • Then it turns out the woman's lawyers made a record of the talk she had with Danny and are planning to blackmail Rand into settling.
• The chemist, Radovan being forced to work in a truck with his daughter hostage. And now that he's been taken, he fears they will kill her.

Episode 6 - Immortal Emerges from Cave

• Danny is threatened by Gao with an ultimatum: withdraw from the tournament or the chemist's daughter dies. He reluctantly accepts, and then learns that Gao was involved in the death of his parents. Worse still, he is conflicted over whether he did the right thing or not, as his sensei Lei-Kung taught him to only focus on destroying the enemy. As he walks out, a vision of Lei-Kung is seen looking at him disapprovingly leaving Danny to ask what he should do. It is quite clear that ever since leaving K'un-Lun, he has become torn between his duty as the Iron Fist and his regular civilian life.
• Ward, after discovering the kind of world that Danny and his father have brought him into, lapses into depression, taking the same drug the Hand is selling, even breaking his hand so he can get medicine, all in an effort to stay sane.

Episode 7 - Felling with Tree Routes

• Radovan is recaptured and forced to divulge his formula to the Hand before being executed, and Danny learns that Gao has gone to the place he and his family were flying to when the plane crashed. That's one way to hit the Trauma Button.
• Ward is really put through the wringer: to start, he finds that Harold has killed two Hand agents in the apartment and is then ordered to deal with them. After dumping the corpses in a lake, Ward has had enough and desperately tries to leave the city... only to find that his secret account of money he embezzled has been cleaned out. He returns to confront Harold who mocks him for his carelessness and punches him in the stomach when Ward insults him. All this pushes Ward over the edge, causing him to violently stab his father to death.
  • A subtler one, is Ward telling his father that his death was the last time he was happy. In other words, he hated his father that much, and Harold probably didn't even realize it.

Episode 8 - The Blessing of Many Fractures

• Ward blaming Harold's death on Danny, which causes the latter to feel guilt when he shouldn't.
  • Ward himself is traumatized by his actions, so much so that he doesn't even care that he and his sister stand to lose everything. It's also sad for Joy, as she has watched her brother's health deteriorating day by day... the same way she watched her father dying in the hospital.
• Danny and Colleen telling each other how they lost their respective parents when they were children. While it's a nice moment to see them opening up to each other, it's also a reminder that Danny and Colleen both had very rough childhoods.
• Danny's anxiety attack during the plane trip, when Claire tries to reassure him he replies that she used the same words his mom said before being thrown out of the plane.

Episode 9 - The Mistress of All Agonies

• Kyle's unexpected murder. But when you think about it, It really showed that Harold actually cared for him. He found out Kyle wanted ice cream so he bought all of that ice cream for him. He killed him, sure, but the Triad boss said that he goes after those closest to him first. Kyle was really close to him. He was the one he was with all day, and even if he didn't show it, he cared. Kyle was the only one left who actually cared about him, too. Even more is how he reacted after Kyle's death. First he was acting in rage but then he expected him to wake up. He's immortal and for a moment he expected Kyle to be. Then he realizes what he's done and just mourns it, lying down next to him. Secretly, Kyle was like a son to him, and he had just "taken his child and roasted him over a fire".
  • On that note, Ward's horrified reaction to discovering his father alive again. In desperation to look for a way to permanently kill him, he learns from the Hatchet Men of the story. Then he ends up in the same place he put Danny in.

Episode 10 - Black Tiger Steals Heart

• The breakdown of Danny and Colleen's relationship. After Danny discovers that Colleen is part of the Hand and has been lying all along, he refuses to listen her, calls her BS when she has the gall to say it was only Gao who was bad in the organization and similar to Foggy finding out about Matt being the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, questions if their relationship was even true, even going as far as asking if Bokuto told her to sleep with Danny.
  Colleen: Danny, this is my family.
  Danny: And my family are dead because of your family.
  Colleen: You're not listening. That was Gao.
  Danny: I am listening. Everything you're saying is bullshit. And coming from someone that I thought I could trust.
• Harold's reunion with Joy. While it is nice to see him showing love towards his daughter, he then ends up putting her into the same position that drove Ward mad.

Episode 11 - Lead Horse Back to Stable

• After Colleen is unable to convince Danny to listen to her side of the story, Bakuto sentences her to death for failing to tell him that she found Danny, with the implication that they were going to drain her for the same purposes Nobu was doing. Colleen is forced to fight off her own students to escape. The combined trauma of Danny rejecting her, Bakuto betraying her, fighting her own students, and learning the Awful Truth of the Hand sends Colleen so far past the Despair Event Horizon that she attacks Danny in an attempted Suicide by Cop when he finds her escaping the compound. Fortunately, Danny's in a more forgiving mood this time.
  Danny: I'm not here to hurt you!
  Colleen: Why not?! You're the destroyer of the Hand! I am the Hand! SO LIGHT UP YOUR DAMN FIST AND DESTROY ME!

Episode 12 - Bar The Big Boss

• Harold's intended Last Words before Bakuto plans to decapitate him: he calls Ward the biggest disappointment of his life, and apologizing to Joy for favoring Ward over her, while telling Joy to never trust Ward again.
• The fight between Danny and Davos after the latter kills Bakuto. Saying that Danny is a failure as the Iron Fist, Davos says that the two monks who found Danny should have left him to die, which proves to be the Last Straw. Danny and Davos come to blows, with Danny becoming so angry he unconsciously summons the Iron Fist.
  Danny: I wish you could understand.
  Davos: I never will.

Episode 13 - Dragon Plays With Fire

• Danny learning that Harold was responsible for the plane crash that killed his parents. Danny himself is in tears that the man he saw as a second father would hurt him so much.
  • Likewise, when Danny tells Ward the truth, Ward doesn't even doubt that it's what really happened. After all the abuse Ward has suffered, it's not too much of a stretch for Ward to accept that his father would do this.
• Danny tells Colleen and Claire that he always thought that maybe his mother survived when she was sucked out of the plane. For years he would try to escape K'un-Lun to try to find her, but a blizzard was preventing him. Still, he always thought he could hear her shouting his name.
• Joy learning that Harold framed Danny for the drug smuggling. Joy instantly realizes that Ward was right about their father being a monster. Meanwhile, all Harold wanted was to be reunited with his children, but his greed overwhelmed him, and it cost him what was really important: Ward and Joy.
• At the end of the episode, Davos approaches Joy about killing Danny, believing that the friend they both knew is long gone. What's worse is that Joy is actually considering it. Joy was originally overjoyed to learn that Danny was alive, and now it seems she wants to kill him. Meanwhile, Davos was Danny's sworn brother and best friend, but is such a Knight Templar that he believes that Danny has failed as the Iron Fist and must die for it.
• Danny is taking Colleen to K'un Lun as he promised, they're close, he's keeping her spirits up by talking about food and how they will make it just in time for afternoon kung fu practice... then they turn a corner, and find the pass, along with the dead bodies of warrior monks. The building itself, however, has gone missing. When Davos was insisting there was nobody left to protect the pass, he was not kidding, and because of Danny's absence, K'un Lun fell.

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Season 2

Episode 5 - Heart of the Dragon

• Sure, Davos may be the villain of this season, but seeing his mother renounce him as her son because he failed to live up to her high expectations and become the next Iron Fist can still be quite unsettling.
• Danny learns of Joy's betrayal and her role in helping Davos get the powers of the Iron First. Which makes this the second time, after Harold, that someone he loved and trusted stabbed him in the back.

Episode 6 - The Dragon Dies at Dawn

• Ward telling Joy about the abuse he suffered at Harold's hands and how so many times he wanted to tell Joy but couldn't.

Episode 10 - A Duel of Iron

• Ward's speech at the AA meeting about how alone he feels and how he has no idea who he is or wants to be.