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This New ‘Iron Fist’ Villain Had A Different Defender Nemesis In Marvel Comics
Spoilers for Iron Fist Season 2, Episodes 1-6. The Iron Fist has no trouble finding enemies, but Iron Fist Season 2 features the first ever paid enemy of Danny Rand. Mary Walker (Alice Eve), who is in the employ of Joy Meachum, is playing the long con with Danny, seemingly exploiting her own dissociative identity disorder to get close to the Immortal Iron Fist. While the show introduces the mysterious gun-for-hire as that name, fans of the Marvel comics that introduced Iron Fist to the world may recognize her as the comics supervillian Typhoid Mary. However, while Typhoid Mary is a staple of Marvel comics, her appearance in Iron Fist Season 2 marks the most significant conflict between the character and Iron Fist ever. She's a new nemesis in the series, but the two are not even associated with each other in the comics.
While she's making her introduction in Iron Fist Typhoid Mary is primarily featured in the comics in conjunction with another Defender, the red devil of Hell's Kitchen himself, Matt Murdock. Her primary foe may have shifted in the television adaptation, but most of what makes Typhoid Mary herself is still in place. She's still a hired gun who gets paid to fight street-level superheroes in New York City and suffers from dissociative personality disorder, but her decades-long history in the comics takes the character to some unique places that might get left out of the Iron Fist portrayal of the character.
In the comics, Typhoid Mary categorizes her dissociative identity into three separate personalities. There is the quiet and timid Mary, the violent and confident Typhoid, and the sadistic Bloody Mary. Iron Fist Season 2 introduces Mary in the first episode, and introduced a personality that would be more akin to Typhoid soon after, but viewers should keep an eye our for the possibility of seeing the full-on evil Bloody Mary show up. While Typhoid is a consummate professional, Joy Meachum may regret having Bloody Mary on her payroll.
The Typhoid Mary seen in the comics also has some superpowers that don't seem to be present in Iron Fist. There, she has telekinesis and pyrokinesis, but the Mary of the show seems to just be an efficient fighter with no supernatural abilities. However, considering she's fighting a man whose fist has glowing power absorbed form a dragon heart, it wouldn't be entirely unbelievable for Typhoid Mary to utilize some abilities beyond utilizing kicks and punches.
Typhoid Mary's story goes to some pretty wild narratives, including a few run-ins with everyone from Spider-Man to Deadpool, romances with both Matt Murdock and Kingpin, and joining a mutant initiative under the name "Mutant Zero," and briefly fighting for the side of good before a mysterious fourth personality reveals that she was actually a bad guy all along. Some of Typhoid Mary's stories and abilities from the comics may not appear in Iron Fist, but it's clear that no matter what Typhoid Mary does or what she says, there's always a chance that her personalities could shift and completely upend the lives of those around her.