Daredevil is good for The Defenders, Jessica Jones is all geared up. There was still two more series that Marvel had to set up in order to get there. One of which was about the super-strength man with unbreakable skin.
Luke Cage is about...well...Luke Cage. A silent African-American man living in Harlem who works as a cleaner at Pop's Barbershop, as well as a dishwasher at Harlem's Paradise, a local nightclub owned by Cornell "Cottomouth" Stokes. Cage used to be the an inmate at Seagate named Carl Lucas. Lucas was subjected to a deadly experiment during his incarceration by Dr. Noah Burnstien. The experiment "backfires" and Lucas is tortured in his acid bath. He wakes up after a bit and breaks free of his captivity. Realizing he's got unbreakable skin now as well as super strength, "Carl Lucas" breaks out of Seagate by literally punching the wall down and becomes "Luke Cage".
Anywho, like I said, Cage works as a dishwasher at Harlem's paradise, but one night he fills in as a bartender for Dante, who's actually shooting up a deal between Stokes and Domingo Colon with two other boys named Shameek and Chico Diaz. Shameek kills Dante after he panics and together the two go into hiding. With help from "Shades" Alvarez, who works for Stokes' supplier Diamondback, Stokes tracks and kills Shameek and retrieves his share of the money. Stokes' men also support his cousin Mariah Dillard, a councilwoman, and demand contributions to her cause from Luke Cage's landlords. Cage fights them off, deflecting their bullets and tossing them aside like common childhood ragdolls, but their payment for his actions.
In order to get to the hiding Chico, Pop gets gunned down in a mob hit at the barbershop, forcing Cage to go on a manhunt for the men who did it. The mob hit also served to get Chico's stolen money back to Cottonmouth, who throws the hitman off of the roof to teach him a lesson for killing Pops, whom Cottonmouth mourns. Cage finds out from a regular barbershop customer, Bobby Fish, that Pop's barbershop is facing closure due to unpaid bills, and Cage decides to take Stokes' money to cover the debt and re-open the shop. He visits Chico in hospital and learns that Stokes' plans to move all of his money to Crispus Attucks during a crisis. Cage begins targeting Stokes' business, framing Colon. Stokes moves all his money to Crispus Attucks in response, and Cage attacks the complex while Dillard is out, taking out her guards and stealing a small share of the money to give to Fish. Knight and Scarfe arrive soon to impound the rest of the money. Chico approaches Scarfe, offering to testify against Stokes and revealing that it was Cage who attacked the complex. Scarfe, who is actually on Stokes' payroll, kills Chico and tells Stokes about Cage. Stokes goes to the restaurant where Cage is living and fires a missile at the building.
At this point you're probably wondering how far up the ladder goes in this criminal organization. I have trouble following it myself. I know the character known as Willis "Diamondback" Stryker, is at the top of the ladder, who also just happens to be Cage's half-brother. So it's a whole Judge Dredd scenario, only better. So far as I know, Diamondback becomes only the second character in the Marvel Netflix universe to actually have his proper comic book getup, the other of course being Daredevil. His final fight with Luke Cage at the end of the show is pretty great and nearly goes the whole damn episode. Obviously, the show needed some time to tie loose ends up. Still though, it's pretty sweet to watch.
Some point during the show, they introduce what's called the "Judas" bullet, the only bullet in production that can pierce Luke Cage's skin. What makes it so special? Well one, you shoot the bullet into the person, and then they bleed for a bit, then the bullet bursts and the person practically explodes. It's also made of Chitauri metal. That's right, the alien race that attacks New York City at the end of The Avengers? The event that literally every Marvel movie and TV show relentlessly references? Those alien vehicles and weapons have their metal melted down and made into bullets. These are the only bullets that can harm Cage, and he spends a whole two, two-and-a-half episodes injured with Chitauri bullets in his chest and stomach. There's a crazy episode where Claire Temple (again played by Rosario Dawson in her fourth outing in the Netflix Marvel series) and Dr. Noah Burnstein to submerge Cage into a vat of boiling acid to weaken Luke's unbreakable skin to allow Claire to remove fragments of the Chitauri bullet. Some cool stuff right there.
I like the inclusion of "Brett" from Pulp Fiction, as detective Scarfe. He turns to be a traitorous snake-in-the-grass bastard in both that movie and in this show as he reveals he's on Cottonmouth's payroll who kills Chico and tells Cottonmouth to fire a missile into Luke Cage's apartment building. I also really enjoyed the character of Misty Knight, the NYPD detective who grew up in Harlem that knows the streets and investigations Cottonmouth, Diamondback, "Shades" Alvarez and others at the same time Luke is smashing their heads in. She does good as the "intrepid" support of the show to support Luke Cage's superhuman presence, and her and Cage even boink in the first twenty minutes of the show, so that's a plus. Crazy how these Marvel shows are starting off getting our attention like that.
We have the secondary main villain of the show in Mariah Dillard, played by Alfre Woodward, of Star Trek: First Contact variety. She is a New York City councilwoman and the cousin of Cottonmouth, who funds her political stuff with his gun running shenanigans. Both of them are also the grandchildren of Harlem crime lord "Mama" Mabel Stokes. Though Mariah attempts to avoid involvement in Cottonmouth's affairs, his obsession with Luke Cage ultimately ruins her political campaign. Cottonmouth condescendingly calls Mariah "Black Mariah" in one of their many on-screen arguments, which provokes her into throwing a martini glass at him (it's also a killer reference to her actual name in the comic book). After Cottonmouth is arrested for killing Scarfe, Mariah beats him to death with a microphone stand when he accuses her of seducing her uncle Pete. So...that ultimately comes out of nowhere. With help from Shades, Mariah blames Cottonmouth's death on Luke Cage. After Diamondback is arrested, Mariah redirects the blame of Cottonmouth's death on him while saying Luke's real name on television, enabling the United States Marshals Service to show up and arrest Luke. Federal marshals arrive to arrest Cage for his escape from Seagate. Claire kisses him before he leaves promising to call "a skilled lawyer she knows" (Holy Daredevil reference) to help him out. After it's all done, Misty Knight goes undercover in the club again. Claire considers taking up self-defense lessons. As Stryker recovers in hospital, Burstein visits him secretly. By the end of the season, Mariah runs Harlem's criminal underworld out of Harlem's Paradise while entering into a relationship with Shades. So I guess you can say things in Harlem aren't looking so well. Can't wait to see how they explain how Luke ends up back in Harlem for The Defenders.
Luke Cage is a very slow-paced show, and part of it serves the plot and some of it doesn't. Luke obviously has super strength and unbreakable skin, so it's going to be hard to get conflict into the story. Superman comic books ran into the same problem when Superman blew out a star like a candle. Not even joking, that happened. With Luke Cage, they come up with very creative reasons and tricky plot points to keep it interesting. The parts where Luke isn't ripping doors off of cars and using them as battering rams, deflecting bullets, mashing people into a thick paste, and basically being a walking badass, are the slow parts. There's some cool parts that aren't Luke Cage-related, but it still feels slow at times. It suffers from the "Yeah he wasn't a huge character, but Marvel had to make this show to make sure he had enough character development to make sense in the future crossover" disease. Iron Fist suffers from it too, much bigger than this one, but we'll get to that. Overall, it's still a great show, and so far Cage is my second-favorite Defender behind Daredevil, of course. So I recommend it.
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