Favorite Characters: Davos (Iron Fist)

I didn’t get a chance to see Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 this past weekend (argh!), so today’s Marvelous Wednesday will be one more Iron Fist post.  In general, my policy is always to sit up and take notice when a former History Boy shows up on my screen, so I would’ve been glad to see Sacha Dhawan in Iron Fist anyway, but his character is, for me, another good point on the show.  Davos’s appearance in the second half of the season really helped me make it through to the finale (a few Davos-related spoilers.)

We hear about Davos long before we see him.  A friend of Danny’s from K’un-Lun, his name pops up now and then in Danny’s anecdotes about living in the mystical realm of heaven, and it’s clear that they were close.  To hear Danny tell it, they grew up together, training and working their butts off but also letting off steam and getting into some lighthearted trouble every so often.  When the grown-up Davos first appears on the scene, he’s mysterious enough that I wasn’t necessarily sure who he was, but hearing his name, I wasn’t surprised.

Through Davos, we get our best look at K’un-Lun.  Not just from the (brief) flashbacks we get of him and Danny there.  No – from who Davos is and how he acts.  Seeing him interact with Danny, as well as other characters, I finally feel like I have an idea of what K’un-Lun is about.  Davos is absolutely devoted to his home and trained hard for the chance to become an Iron Fist.  As he explains it, he was hurt when Danny was chosen instead of him, but he was able to put those feelings aside in the name of wanting what’s best for K’un-Lun.  However, he also ably demonstrates how poorly the monks at K’un-Lun equip their charges to deal with their emotions.  Davos’s feelings of disappointment and envy aren’t gone, just pushed down, and when Danny leaves K’un-Lun to return to New York – not only neglecting his duty to guard the city, but seemingly tossing aside the sacred mantle that Davos would’ve given everything to take up – it all comes rising back up.

For my money, Davos’s mini-arc might be the best-written of the season.  His character isn’t a slamdunk on all fronts (I don’t get the point of his callousness in his first appearance, before we know who he is,) but he really works for me as a friend sliding toward antagonism.  I get how deeply betrayed he feels by Danny leaving, and I understand how Danny’s apparent abandonment of K’un-Lun could make him lose it.  For him, it’s like Danny breezed into K’un-Lun as a tourist and “tried on” their way of life, seeing how he looked in it, and was somehow rewarded with K’un-Lun’s greatest honor.  When he grew bored of it, for all intents and purposes, he dropped it, leaving the city undefended and, to Davos, making light of the responsibility Davos prized so highly.  I completely get all that, and Davos sells me on the unhealthy ramifications of the “stay Zen at all costs” philosophy the monks taught him far more than Danny ever does (I don’t go out of my way to complain about Danny in every Iron Fist post I write; it just sort of happens.)

Finally, I like to see Davos trying to stay on top of things while clearly wrongfooted about being outside K’un-Lun for the first time in his life.  His confusion about commonplace New York things is good, both his wariness of most of what he encounters and his acquiescence to certain things he begrudgingly deems not a complete waste.  I could watch an entire episode of Claire introducing Davos to New York, easily.