Hero for Hire (Except Not Really)

After appearing in Jessica Jones: Season One, it was clear that Luke Cage (as played by Mike Colter) would get his own spin-off show in the larger NetflixOriginally started as a disc-by-mail service, Netflix has grown to be one of the largest media companies in the world (and one of the most valued internet companies as well). With a constant slate of new internet streaming-based programming that updates all the time, Netflix has redefined what it means to watch TV and films (as well as how to do it). Marvel universe. Colter was a charismatic star, and Netflix has designs on making a full, Avengers-style universe for their television properties. Luke was the next character they could launch, and he would aid in the lead up to The Defenders once Netflix had all its ducks in a row. The streaming network just needed to make sure his show was good.

And… it sort of wasn’t. The thing with Luke Cage: Season One is that the idea of it is pretty good. Luke ends up in Harlem, fighting bad guys and fighting for the little guy, all while a strong Blaxploitation plays throughout the season. It’s a different vibe from the other Netflix shows we’d already gotten, and in a small, tightly focused season it really could have worked. But Netflix at the time was dedicated to making 13-episode seasons, no matter how much story a creator had plotted, and Luke Cage is the first of the Netflix Marvel shows that really feels like it drowns under the weight of all those episodes.

To try and make the season work, the story is functionally broken up into two halves. In fairness, Daredevil: Season Two tried the same thing, focusing first on The PunisherAn anti-hero who was never meant to be a hero in the same way as the Avengers, the Punisher has taken on his own life in pop-culture, but that doesn't change the troubling qualities to his characterization. before switching over to a story about Elektra and The Hand. It didn’t exactly work on that show and, as evidenced by Luke Cage, it really also didn’t work here. The season as a whole would have been better if we could have gotten a tight six episode run of one story, focused on one villain, before we cut for a time and then did a second volume later with a different story focused on a different villain. Luke Cage mashes it all together, stumbling in the process as it tries to shift gears, and the whole season ends up falling apart right when it needs to build to its climax instead. Nothing says wasted potential quite like the first season of Luke Cage.

After leaving the Upper West Side of Jessica Jones, Luke (Colter) ends up in Harlem, working for Henry "Pop" Hunter (Frankie Faison) at Pop's Barbershop. Luke works under the table, not wanting to draw a paycheck or bring attention to himself, all because he’s actually Carl Lucas, an escaped convict from Georgia who very much never wants to go back to prison. Trouble, though, seems to find a way towards Luke, and despite his best efforts, it’s pretty clear that his real identity will come out eventually, forcing him to run again.

That trouble comes in the form of Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes (Mahershala Ali), a Harlem gangster running the show out of his nightclub, Harlem’s Paradise. Cornell wants to expand his gangster empire, but it comes at the expense of someone Luke knows, a kid that gets caught in the criminal crossfire. This catches Luke’s ire such that, despite his desire to stay hidden, he can’t help but lash out against Cottonmouth, fighting to bring his criminal empire down. But even when one bad guy is taken out, the vacuum has to get filled, and if Cornell is removed from the board, someone worse could take his place, blowing Luke’s whole world apart…

The season is at its best when it’s Luke against Cottonmouth. This is in large part due to the fact that Colter and Ali are two heavies that command the screen, and you can feel the rippling energy between them any time they face off against each other. Cornell is the perfect kind of villain for Luke, smart, slimy, and willing to do whatever it takes to win, all while Luke has morals and tries to work, rightly or not, within some kind of system. Neither trusts the cops, but Luke isn’t willing to kill while Cornell has no issue with it. The series sets itself up to build to the inevitable confrontation between the two, and you desperately want to know what happens next when that crescendo finally hits.

The first big mistake the series makes is that it never reaches that showdown. Halfway in Cornell is killed, not by Luke but by his cousin, Councilwoman Mariah Stokes-Dillard (Alfre Woodard). Cornell says something very hurtful to his cousin, and she brutally beats him to death in retaliation. This would posit Mariah as the new villain for Luke to battle against, but the series not only doesn’t really have a good handle on her character, it also never actually lets her take the proper villain role for the series, which leaves everything we were building to in the first half the season feel like an afterthought for what comes next.

At about the midpoint the series then switches over to a new villain, Willis Stryker / Diamondback (Erik LaRay Harvey), and this character is a terrible fit for the series that we’d been watching up to this point. Part of the problem is that Stryker, as played by Harvey, is a cartoonish villain who feels out of place in the darker world of the show. He wanders around, blustering, eating the scenery while he prays and rants and raves. In comparison to the quiet cool of Cornel, Stryker feels like he comes from a completely different (and much worse) project.

The other problem is that Stryker doesn’t have any real connection to the storyline up to that point. It’s like if you pulled the king off the playing fiend in chess and replaced it with a G.I. Joe figure. Sure, you can move it around the board, but he just doesn’t fit the narrative that was already in place. Stryker is connected to Luke, not to Cornell (in anything more than a passing, “you work for me,” kind of way), and that connection becomes the whole plot for the second half of the series, yanking it in a much worse direction.

Stryker, as we learn, is Luke’s half brother, a detail Luke only figures out late in the season. He’s also the man that framed Carl, getting him thrown in prison, and he just so happens to be a kingpin operating one of the criminal gangs in New York. It’s a lot of coincidences already, that then build to Stryker gaining (via tech) super-powers so he can further frame Luke for crimes, only to then take Luke on, mano-a-mano, in a fight for Harlem in the last episode of the season. And it just doesn’t work.

Partly this is due to the fact that the show boils its whole story down to Luke functionally fighting a variation of himself, a tired trope in superhero storytelling that was already well abused over in the ArrowverseWhen it was announced that the CW was creating a show based on the Green Arrow, people laughed. The CW? Really? Was it going to be teen-oriented like everything else on the network and be called "Arrow High"? And yet that one show, Arrow has spawned three spin-offs, various related shows and given DC a successful shared universe, the Arrowverse on TV and streaming.. But, again, this also drains off all the work the series was putting in up to that point. What started as a cool and interesting Blaxploitation crime drama turns into a cartoonish superhero yarn, and the two halves do not work together. Anyone interested in the first half would feel betrayed by the second half, while that second half isn’t interesting enough to work on its own. The two halves are two very different shows, and only one of them is actually interesting.

Luke Cage needed more time in development, but it really also needed the freedom to tell a shorter, more focused story than the one we got. A six-episode arc about Luke going up against Cottonmouth, with him defeating the criminal organization before Mariah kills her cousin and takes over as the queen-pin would have been interesting on its own. A follow up season focusing solely on Luke vs. Stryker might have also worked, with more time to develop the brother-v-brother relationship in full. But crammed together into one season it just doesn’t work. The back half feels so different, and its pace is so terrible, that it drags the whole enterprise down.

There are parts of Luke Cage I really like. The first half is solid, with good storytelling, great atmosphere, and a solid soundtrack to back it all up. Colter is fantastic in the role when he’s given something solid to do, and that first half delivers for him. It’s just that the second half really betrays all the work the first half did, and it ruins what started off as a brilliant superhero drama. Luke Cage could have worked, but it falls apart right when it needed to get truly interesting.