SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Marvel's The Defenders, available now on Netflix.


The Hand's interest in Hell's Kitchen real estate turned from relatively mundane to mind-blowingly mysterious when Matt Murdock and Elektra discovered an enormous hole at Midland Circle during the second season of Daredevil. What lay at the bottom of the pit, and how it fits into the ancient organization's plans for New York City, has nagged at fans of Marvel's Netflix dramas for more than a year. But with the arrival of The Defenders, we finally have the answer -- and it's not one that anyone guessed.

Seriously, don't even pretend you had this figured out.

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We've known for some time that construction site, now the location of Midland Circle Financial (a corporate front for the Hand), would be central to the plot of the miniseries. In fact, one of the earliest details revealed was that Matt Murdock, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Danny Rand first come together at that address. Something about it is so critical to her nearly inscrutable scheme that Sigourney Weaver's Alexandra is willing to risk exposure by speeding up excavation, triggering the earthquake that serves as the inciting incident of The Defenders.

As the story unfolds, we learn the Hand -- or, more specifically, its leader Alexandra -- has used the last of the organization's "resources" on resurrecting Elektra for as its ultimate weapon, the fabled Black Sky. Desperate to unearth more of a vaguely referenced "substance," presumably the powder mixed with copious amounts of human blood for the resurrection rite, the Hand is willing to destroy New York City to do it. "It's just a city," Madame Gao says with a not-quite-reassuring smile. "They rise, they fall." It's a small price to pay in exchanged for the continued immortality of the Hand's founders.

However, to get to this mysterious substance, located at the bottom the Midland Circle hole, requires the Iron Fist to "unlock" the door put in place by the masters of K'un-Lun. Through a series of events, some calculated but others entirely accidental, Danny Rand cracks that lock, triggering a city-wide blackout and revealing the answer to a year-old question: He awakes to find himself inside the fossilized skeleton of one of the dragons of K'un-Lun.

dragon fossil on the defenders

"These creatures once roamed the green valleys of my home," Gao tells Elektra, who marvels at the wondrous sight. "These fossils are all that remain ... the last known deposit on Earth."

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How the Dragon Fossil is Important to Iron Fist

Using power saws, the Hand's soldiers dismantle the ribs of the great creature, cutting them into discs for easy transportation, presumably to wherever this precious substance is extracted. "These beasts, they've given both us so much," Gao taunts to Danny Rand, "though even power great as yours pales in the face of eternal life." She refers to the substance as "the very essence of what made you."

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Outraged, Danny accuses her of desecrating Shou-Loa, the immortal dragon that powers K'un-Lun and grants the Iron Fist his abilities. "You punched him in the heart," Gao responds.

It's unclear exactly what Danny means by his accusation of "desecration." Sure, the Hand is digging up the remains of a dragon, and presumably have done so on numerous occasions over the centuries, explaining several "natural" disasters throughout history. But what lies at the bottom of the hole at Midland Circle obviously isn't Shou-Loa, whose glowing eyes were glimpsed in a flashback in Iron Fist. Perhaps Danny was speaking in a broader, metaphorical sense.

However, the revelation of the fossilized dragon skeleton is much more than the answer to a year-long riddle, or even an appropriately mystical explanation for what powers the Hand's resurrection ritual. It's a satisfying payoff. Many fans desperately hoped the first season of Iron Fist would depict if not the hero's traditional costume then his legendary battle with Shou-Lao the Undying. In the end, the received a peek at a costume worn by a previous Iron Fist, and those red eyes glowering from the darkness.

In The Defenders, Danny withstands a lot of abuse (much of it deserved), with even his newfound allies scoffing at the idea of an otherworldly city and its mystical dragon. But in the end, of course, Danny's stories are proved true, and in the process Marvel's Netflix dramas full embrace the magical elements of that world, and at least sort of give fans what they've longed for: an honest-to-goodness dragon, albeit, not an undying one.


Available now on Netflix, the eight-episode Defenders stars Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones, Mike Colter as Luke Cage, Finn Jones as Danny Rand, Elodie Yung as Elektra Natchios, Sigourney Weaver as Alexandra, Eka Darville as Malcolm Ducasse, Simone Missick as Misty Knight, Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page, Elden Henson as Foggy Nelson, Carrie-Anne Moss as Jeri Hogarth, Scott Glenn as Stick, Rachael Taylor as Trish Walker, Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple and Jessica Henwick as Colleen Wing.