Iron Fist was bad. And Iron Fist is a character rooted in a lot of super icky tropes designed to make white characters the lead in stories that maybe shouldn’t be about them. Comics of the ’70s looked at the kung fu movie craze and created a blond-haired savior character as a reaction. This is even more annoying because Marvel already had a marital arts superhero, the Chinese crime-fighter Shang-Chi. Iron Fist, who debuted a year after Shang-Chi, quickly surpassed Shang-Chi in prominence and that hasn’t changed in the following four decades.

That doesn’t mean the martial arts character Marvel stuck by is all bad; creators have made Danny Rand a three-dimensional character, and his frequent partnership with Luke Cage has been used to tackle issues of race and privilege. But still, it’s a fact that Marvel Studios has been reluctant to update any of their titular heroes for modern audiences, even if they’re more than willing to make their supporting characters reflect the times. An Asian-American Iron Fist could have had the same boy billionaire privilege and experienced the same culture shock of getting stranded in K’un-Lun, and Netflix’s Iron Fist would have shook all the white savior gunk off the character (a character that has long been one of my faves).

None of that happened. Marvel stuck with canon and cast Finn Jones, a guy that looks a lot like the 2D Iron Fist of the ’70s. Making matters worse was Marvel’s Iron Fist itself, a show so dull and upsetting that it made me forget all the controversy surrounding Jones’ casting. The live-action Danny Rand didn’t make sense, he wasn’t impressive, he was regularly annoying, and the show seemed to be clueless as to how to use him. In fact, Iron Fist often felt like a supporting player in a very dry, basic cable boardroom drama–one that includes a scene where someone gets bludgeoned to death with an ice cream scoop. No thanks!

That’s why, of all the Defenders in The Defenders, Danny Rand surprised me the most. The Defenders doesn’t make the casting of a white actor in a tired white savior role defensible, but it at least made the Danny Rand we got work–which is infinitely more than Iron Fist did.

The thing is, Danny Rand is a goofy, privileged jerk–and I say that as someone that loves him. His definitive comic series, The Immortal Iron Fist by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, and David Aja, knew this and positioned him as such. More recently, writers like Brian Michael Bendis (who writes the Defenders comic) and David F. Walker (who recently wrapped a run on Power Man & Iron Fist) heightened those character traits. They made all of Danny’s problems work by not shying away from them.

A major problem with Iron Fist was that, well, it starred Iron Fist. It put Danny, impetuous, whiny, arrogant Danny, in the lead. Shows can make characters like that work (that’s what Peak TV is all about!), but it takes a lot of care. Iron Fist never exercised that care; it continually made it seem like everything Danny did was right, that he was the show’s unwavering moral center. That’s not Danny. In Defenders, Danny finally gets checked in every way possible. People wince every time he calls himself “The Immortal Iron Fist,” Luke Cage calls him out on all that privilege, and the show wisely repositions Danny as–surprisingly–the comic relief.

You actually get to watch Defenders figure out how to use Iron Fist in the first four episodes. The mini-series starts with Danny and Colleen’s intercontinental mission, and the few scenes of just the two of them have a lot of Iron Fist’s tonal funkiness. Jones’ intense, hushed delivery is totally at odds with his boyish charm and impatient energy. And Colleen ain’t gonna call him out on that, because she’s super into him for some reason! I mean, there’s a scene where Danny walks into Rand Industries and basically asks a worker to Google “The Hand.” It’s ridiculous.

But with The Defenders, we get a show that is in on the joke. Whereas almost no one in Iron Fist batted an eye at him constantly going on about punching dragons, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones give him the side-eye he has deserved since he debuted as a barefoot, wandering weirdo.

In episode three, Luke and Danny have a tense conversation, and I finally–finally–understood Iron Fist’s role. Mike Colter is every bit a leading man; he’s got a strong presence and, as a character, Luke is both charismatic and morally strong. You believe him, you love him. Next to Luke, Danny physically looks small and immature–which is absolutely perfect, considering that Danny’s an emotionally stunted guy who spent 15 years developing his chi at the expense of his social skills.

And then Luke and Danny talk about the thing that was never really addressed in Iron Fist. Luke tells Danny, “The difference is I’m not some billionaire white boy who takes justice into his own hands and slams a black kid against the wall because of his personal vendetta.” Danny says his money doesn’t define him, and Luke has to tell him that the kid he was about to pummel (who only took a job with the Hand because he needed cash to live) is in a jail cell right now–a place Luke knows all too well. Iron Fist is all about the “big picture” because the “big picture” involves him, but Defenders isn’t just about him. It’s also about Luke Cage, the hero of Harlem and the champion of the underprivileged. Iron Fist needs that P.O.V. to bounce off of, so we can get great lines like this one from Luke: “You may think you earned your strength, but you had power the day you were born.”

With the weight of being the main character off of his shoulders and Defenders totally aware (in a way Iron Fist never was) of just how privileged this character is, Danny is finally framed in a way that makes him work. He’s moody, stubborn, a bit pompous, all heart and no head. That is, without a doubt, the Danny Rand of the comics, finally on screen. And when the four Defenders finally get together and hide out in a Chinese restaurant, it’s Danny who somehow becomes the comic relief.

His jaw drops when he sees Jessica lift furniture like it’s no big deal, he admits that putting on a tie was step one in his plan to fight the Hand, he delivers exposition while excitedly scarfing down pork dumplings, he shrugs for the camera like a chi-powered Jim Halpert, and is so generally doofy that Jones asks if he’s on lithium. And when he tells the gang that he just handed his black card over to the restaurant owner and agreed to pay six months’ rent, the reaction is priceless.

If you don’t like Iron Fist, then The Defenders gives you plenty of potential screengrabs and GIFs to express that dislike.

Iron Fist’s major problems, the problems inherent in the character as he was created back in 1974, are still present. Defenders doesn’t solve those problems. What Defenders does is put Iron Fist in his place, as a character and also as a member of the larger Netflix-verse. I can only hope the lessons learned during this mini-series carry over into Iron Fist Season Two, and this version of Danny–one who is stupidly fallible and possesses puppy-dog levels of eagerness–comes back. Because Season Two’s gonna have Simone Missick in it, and if anyone can keep Iron Fist in check, it’s Misty Knight.

Where to stream Marvel's The Defenders