I just finished rewatching Luke Cage. The first season was still very good although not as good as the first time I watched it. I had a few minor gripes regarding killing off Cottonmouth (I think the show had a pretty significant decline once he was off screen) and the depiction of Diamondback (he came off a little too….goofy for lack of a better word). There was a lot to like about the season though. The show did a great job of making Harlem feel like a unique place, with a host of interesting characters and landmark locations, but still with enough ties to the MCU that it didn’t feel like a separate entity. The show was able to feel black in a way that felt organic and unforced in a way that the Black Panther movie didn’t. Part of the reason for that was because of the dynamic between Luke Cage and the Harlem community as a whole. How he interacted with the various members of the community. Whether it was the criminals, random pedestrians on the street, or the old heads in the barber shop, the interactions all felt natural. Mike Colter did a fantastic job as Luke Cage. Luke Cage is a super strong, unstoppable force of nature, but he still managed to be extremely likeable and endearing without coming off as phony. Overall, I’d say the first season was a success, but the second season had a few things that bothered me that I felt like held the show back.
One thing that bothered me is something that started in season one with the death of Cottonmouth, which is the Mariah Dillard/Stokes character. She was a major character in season one, and her role increased once Cottonmouth was out of the picture, becoming one of the main antagonists of the show. Let me start by saying I think Mariah was played very well by Alfre Woodard, but I feel like she wasn’t built up as a force that could hang with Luke Cage. This is due to the writing. To be a good villain, you have to come across as a force to be reckoned with. Even if the antagonist can’t be physically imposing to the protagonist, there are other ways to show your power. In stories like this, where the protagonist has overwhelming power, there may be one or more antagonists to rival the protagonist in either physicality, or someone who uses their cunning, overwhelming riches, and/or established social status to pose a more psychological threat. An example of this is Superman with Doomsday who rivaled him physically and Lex Luthor who used his cunning, and money, to pose a different kind of threat. Other examples include Batman with the Joker and Bane, and even in Game of Thrones, the protagonists had to contend with the white walkers and the Lannisters.
Mariah didn’t fully satisfy any of those roles as one of the main antagonists in Luke Cage. As a middle aged woman with no powers or special abilities, Mariah was never going to be seen as a physical match for Luke Cage. That being said, the show didn’t do a good job of emphasizing her cunning or social status either. While Mariah carried herself as a seasoned vet, this was not at all supported in the show. She made several….let’s just say questionable decisions in the show (such as selling her guns to the man who was trying to take her down). She was clearly a novice in the game, and everyone around her knew this, but she was still able to stay at the top despite the people who worked for her having no reason to respect or fear her. Not to mention the fact that she wasn’t even subtle about what she was doing. Luke Cage and Misty both knew what was up, and had sufficient motivation to want to stop her, and still couldn’t stop her for several months. Even going out of their way to protect her (???) from Bushmaster at a couple of different points. This made no sense to me because Mariah was far from innocent, and the war in the streets would be swiftly resolved with her death. The involvement of Luke Cage and the cops made things far messier than they needed to be.
That brings me to my next point. There seems to be a group that believes that the Marvel Netflix shows should have been less than the standard 13 episode format. I am not in that camp. I appreciate the slow burn storytelling approach that Marvel took with these shows. However this season actually felt kind of rushed. It seems like this season would have benefitted from being two separate seasons. The dynamic between Luke and Bushmaster definitely needed more time to develop. Sure Bushmaster jumped Luke, and tried to drown him, and who wouldn’t be upset at that? But the animosity between the two didn’t feel like it went with the flow of the story. It never felt like they hated each other really. In fact, they were pretty much on the same side. The scene near the end of the season where Bushmaster went on a rampage to try to kill Mariah felt kind of hollow and anticlimactic. At one point, Luke has all but incapacitated Bushmaster, and the show tries to play up the idea that Luke might choose to kill Bushmaster, but at no point did I feel like Luke was seriously considering that. I think the second season would be better off with Mariah behind bars from her transgressions in the first season. This would diminish the apparent incompetence of the protagonists while also eliminating the (extremely) unnecessary “conflicting emotions” schtick that the protagonists faced when it came to deciding to protect Mariah. They could also build up Bushmaster as a threat and have him and the Styers somehow get Mariah out of jail to establish that they are directly against both Mariah AND the beloved system that the protagonists claim to cherish. The next season could be what they were trying to create with this season, which was a three way deathmatch for the heart of Harlem. By this point the rivalry between Bushmaster and Luke, Luke and Mariah, and Mariah and Bushmaster would be fully established.
The last misstep I would like to address, is the direction they went in with Luke. Oh Luke, poor, beautiful, indestructible Luke. The season started with him being blown up and shot with a Judas bullet (which was shown to do major damage in season 1) to no effect. He then proceeded to bust out his infamous dab ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oBugfiBy58&t=2s ). This scene fully encapsulates what the Luke Cage character should be. He was cool, confident, and corny at the same time. The unbreakable, indestructible badass who’s a beacon of hope for all of Harlem. The darker, brooding side of Luke is something that I think hurt the show. Regardless of the current state of affairs surrounding his personal life, and Harlem as a whole, Luke should still be confident in his ability to make things better for the community. He’s just too supremely powerful to doubt what he can do, at least considering how Luke, and his opposition was framed in the show. It’s just not realistic. Mariah was never really a threat for Luke on any level, and while I thought Bushmaster was a very compelling villain, the show just made Luke appear too powerful. Once he came back from being paralyzed and drowned there was just no hope for Bushmaster. The show tried to make Luke appear indestructible while also trying to make him appear vulnerable, and it just never worked for me. The show would’ve benefitted from having Luke appear to be overconfident in his fights with Bushmaster, and then having that consistently cost him in those fights until he finally defeats him. Instead of him feeling he’s unable to protect Harlem from various criminals, he feels like he’s unable to defeat Bushmaster. That could then lead to him calling on Danny Rand to help him train to take down Bushmaster, which I think would have been cool. Especially considering the episode with the two of them together is one of the highlights of the show.
The ending showing that Luke takes over control of the club while also becoming a crime boss seemed way too abrupt. I can accept the fact that Mariah, who was all about “family first,” would give the club to Luke, a man who she hated, instead of her daughter once she figured out that Tilda was up to something shady. I think the show did a good enough job building up the idea that Luke was the only person that never let Mariah down.That being said, there was really nothing throughout the course of the show that indicates that Luke would go in that direction except a lazy bit of exposition near the end of the season finale. I feel like that character turn would have benefitted from an extra season to fully flesh out that story because it just felt like it came out of nowhere.
All in all Luke Cage season 2 was entertaining, but I don’t think it fully lived up to its potential.
Just some guy on the internet 