One of the issues with pretty much all of Netflix’s Marvel offerings is an inability to come up with stories to fill thirteen episodes. The Punisher‘s inaugural season was the first one to really feel like it earned the whole baker’s dozen with its storyline, and Jessica Jones season two dealt with the problem by having several smaller plots instead of one big one.
Having finished the second season of Luke Cage, I look back and see a strong season with no draggy parts (which plagued season one) and no major missteps (like killing Cottonmouth and replacing him with Diamondback). It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it overall worked better than most.
(Check out my reviews of episodes 1-4 and of episodes 5-8.)
SPOILERS for the various Marvel Netflix shows in general and all of Luke Cage season 2 in particular
First of all, I want to talk about the first two episodes in the final third of the season, because they particularly stood out for me as individual episodes.
Episode 9, entitled “For Pete’s Sake,” is directed by the great Clark Johnson. Best known in front of the camera as Detective Meldrick Lewis on Homicide: Life on the Street, Johnson has become one of the finest TV directors extant. He lensed the pilot episodes of both The Wire and The Shield, the two best cop dramas of the 21st century, and he did an amazing job with this episode which has two conversations that have been building for the previous eight episodes as well as a superb action climax.
Cage and Misty are hiding Mariah, Tilda, and Reverend Lucas from Bushmaster, who has put out a bounty on their heads. This gives Cage and his dad a chance to finally have the talk that Claire spent several of the first few episodes bugging him to have, and Mariah finally comes out and tells Tilda the whole truth about her conception.
The former is fairly low-key, and not a hundred percent successful, but it’s sold on the power of Mike Colter and Reg E. Cathey’s respective charisma. (It’s also hard to get too worked up about it knowing that this was Cathey’s last role before he died. The season is dedicated to him at the end of episode 13.)
The latter, though, is where the episode sings. One of the themes of this season, beyond the ones I mentioned in my review of the season’s first third, is that of having everything slowly taken away from you and how you respond to it. It happens to Cage early on when he loses Claire and Fish. It happens to Shades when he’s forced to kill his best friend and everything falls apart. And it happens to Mariah as Bushmaster takes her money and support, the NYPD takes her freedom, and she herself drives away both Shades and Tilda. Mariah has danced on the line between her need to have her daughter in her life—originally done to improve her political career, though that was irreparably damaged by Bushmaster’s heads-on-spikes act at Family First!—and the truth, and the truth finally wins in a tour de force of pain and anger from Alfre Woodard, as for the second time in this series she re-lives her rape at the hands of her uncle. The last time, it ended with Cottonmouth’s death at her hands, and this time it ends with Mariah picking up a gun and firing her way out of the Rand facility when Bushmaster attacks.
That attack is beautifully done, the third-best choreographed fight scene this season, from Cage’s relaxed strength to Knight’s bionic-arm-aided badassitude to Mariah with a big fucking gun. Bushmaster learns where they’re hiding from Nandi, whose slide into corruption is a little too fast, but I like the fact that when she’s captured in episode 10, she’s chartering a private jet and dressed in a way nicer outfit than she’s ever worn at the precinct. Elsewhere in the same episode, Cage points out to Danny Rand that the real power is money, and that power corrupts Nandi something fierce. This isn’t Scarfe who’s been corrupt for ages, this is a working cop who’s had three million dollars dangled in front of her face and can’t pass it up.
That’s the B-plot of that tenth episode, though, while the A-plot of “The Main Ingredient” is the backdoor pilot for the Power Man & Iron Fist TV show I’ve been wanting since roughly 1982 or so. Colter and Finn Jones continue the excellent chemistry they showed in The Defenders, and I like the fact that the only person who seems actively committed to the notion of Rand, Jessica Jones, and Cage carrying on protecting the city in honor of Matt Murdock’s sacrifice is Rand.
What I especially love about “The Main Ingredient,” though, is that, for the first time since I watched Iron Fist’s first episode, I feel like I’m watching Iron Fist. Episode scripter Akela Cooper actually understands kung fu, and understands the character of Danny Rand as he’s been written in four-color form since 1973. I saw more knowledge of Zen teachings and martial arts philosophy in this hour of Luke Cage than in thirteen hours of Iron Fist’s first season. Plus, we’ve got the best fight scene this season as Cage and Rand take on the thugs at the grow-house. The whole thing is worth it for “patty-cake.” Can Cooper maybe show-run Iron Fist season two?
The best scene between the two is at the Carl Schurz Monument statue in Morningside Park when Rand tells him that there’s power in stillness. Cage comes back to that statue, with its magnificent view of Harlem, twice more during the series trying to take Rand’s advice—which was also Claire’s advice early on. Cage is less angry after punching a wall and losing Claire, but the anger’s still there, just bubbling more beneath the surface. Rand—providing verbal lessons the character showed no evidence of having learned himself in his own series, but whatever—reminds him that anger is the enemy of focus and he’ll never be able to make peace in Harlem if he can’t make peace with himself.
Best of all is that Rand came to check on Cage because Claire sent him. She doesn’t feel safe around him—seriously, she’d be justified in never coming near him again—but she does still love him and so sends Rand. (Really the only option among the other Defenders—no way she’d send Jones, they have too much baggage, and they all think Murdock is dead. Though I personally would rather she’d have called Colleen Wing, but that would deny us the Power Man & Iron Fist hits.)
Of course, by the top of episode 11, Rand has disappeared without explanation (beyond “we only hired Jones for one episode,” anyhow), and Cage is left on his own to stop Mariah and Bushmaster. But Cage tries to put Rand’s advice to good use, and he is more noticeably focused in the final three episodes.
However, among the three primary characters, it’s actually the other two besides Cage who need Rand’s advice more. Bushmaster’s anger toward the Stokes family—finally explicated in flashbacks in “The Creator,” as we learn that Mabel Stokes killed Bushmaster’s mother in a fire rather than give her a fair share of Harlem’s Paradise—leads him to take bigger and bigger chances with the nightshade-based cocktail that has combined with a vaccine from his youth (one that killed everyone else given it) to make him super-strong. While Cage and Knight are unable to actually stop Bushmaster, they do keep him from killing Mariah, and his crash from that leads to him stumbling, defeated, back to Jamaica.
It’s left to Tilda to deliver the final blow. She learns the truth about what the Stokes family did to Bushmaster, but more to the point, she finds out that Mariah herself shot everyone in Gwen’s and burned Bushmaster’s uncle Anansi to a crisp. Mariah, in fact, gloats to Tilda about it. That is the final straw for Tilda, and leads to her poisoning Mariah when she visits her in jail.
It’s also the final straw for Shades, but for a different reason. He’s not thrilled with the killing of innocents, and he’s right as far as that goes. Criminals killing criminals doesn’t get you much attention from the press or the police, but criminals killing innocents is a whole ‘nother thing. Mariah indiscriminately killed everyone in Gwen’s—including the domino-playing Greek chorus that I so adored from episode 3 (rest in peace, cranky old men)—and that’s a step too far for Shades.
But it’s only part of the problem. There was one survivor of that massacre, Bushmaster’s aunt, and Shades tracks her down, but can’t pull the trigger. Having to kill his best friend has broken him. He can’t be a gangster anymore, and he can’t be the chief advisor to royalty anymore, because Mariah has stopped taking his advice.
So he turns himself in, but even then he can’t get it right. He’s too in love with his lifestyle to be anything other than a dick when he’s making his statement, going so far as to alienate his lawyer (whose son was in Pop’s when Tone shot it up back in season one and is only alive because of Cage). That proves problematic for him, as Knight coerces him into going into Harlem’s Paradise wearing a wire (something a lawyer probably would’ve at least negotiated) and he’s later arrested because his deal was contingent on Mariah being convicted, a deal that evaporates after Mariah dies in prison at her daughter’s hands. (That’s the only misstep Mariah makes, as she’s just as powerful in prison as out of it, still manipulating things, still making herself the queen of all she surveys. And in the end, she gets in one final victory by bequeathing the club to the hero rather than her daughter, giving Cage power he probably won’t be able to handle and also denying her murderer, Tilda, her birthright.)
However, Shades is still, at heart, Harlem’s Wormtongue, adjoining himself to whoever he thinks will be the strongest—and by the end of season two, that’s Luke Cage, whom he urges to become Harlem’s king. Mariah has willed him Harlem’s Paradise, and Cage has managed to broker a peace among the various criminal empires looking for a piece of Harlem with Mariah out of the way. Both D.W. and Knight caution him against this, but Cage is counting on them to continue to keep him honest.
Will he find power in stillness as Rand advised, or will power corrupt him as it did Mariah and Cottonmouth and Bushmaster and even Nandi? Will being in bed with criminals make him into one?
These are all questions for season three. (For the record, if Annabella Sciorra is one of the big bads of season three as Rosalie Carbone, I’m totally on board with that as Sciorra is one of my favorite actors, one who is greatly underappreciated. The character originated in Punisher comics, so hey, we could get Frank Castle in season three!) Season two, however, gives us a fascinating story about family, about consequences, about anger, and about how you respond to everything being taken away from you. Sometimes you win (Knight thriving in her job and now with a badass bionic arm). Sometimes you lose (Bushmaster broken and retreating to Jamaica, Mariah dying in prison). And sometimes it rains (the jury’s still out on Cage’s new status quo).
So when the heck is season three gonna start? How about now?
(And seriously, guys, Daughters of the Dragon series. The second-best-choreographed fight scene this season is not enough…)
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be a guest at ConnectiCon XVI in Hartford, Connecticut this weekend. He’ll be at the Bard’s Tower booth selling and signing his work, and also might be on a panel or two. Come on by and say hi!
i came away feeling the exact same about the second and third acts of this series. Act II has been troubling for Marvel in all their series so far. They always have to add empty plots and stories to fill their pitchcount. For once it seemed they nailed it.
i also especially loved the Powerman and Iron fist episode. By its end, I was clamoring to find old comics and willing the producers through witchcrafty means to come together and build us a series for this long time bromance. Those two go together just as famously as Cloak and Dagger and they got their series.
Luke Cage continues to be the most well-rounded of the Marvel Netflix properties.
They did give Danny a throwaway line about how he’d found peace since the end of Defenders. I would assume in the mission he has taken up in Murdoch’s name. Its given him the sense of purpose he threw away when he left Kun Lun.
While its nothing like the Danny Rand of the comics, or the cartoons I’m more familiar with, I didn’t have a real problem with Rand’s lack of centeredness in Iron Fist.
He was massively conflicted about leaving Kun Lun. Abandoning his post broke him in ways he didn’t understand, and being back in New York thrust him right back into being a 12 year old boy. These are all classic PTSD triggers, and Danny was played that way from the start. And it messed up his ability to summon his chi.
I know I argued this in the Iron Fist recaps, but the Danny Rand that “mastered his chi” and went on to become the Iron Fist was not a wholly integrated person. He had buried the old so deeply that it couldn’t come out, and built someone new on top of it. And when the way opened, and he stepped through… he cracked the Iron Fist open enough for the 12 year old boy to resurface. That’s the way I read the series, anyway.
The problem is that the series never really addressed this. Nor did Defenders. They just let him wallow in anger and a complete lack of self-awareness.
Of course, I always found Danny Rand to be the least interesting Marvel character, because centered is boring. So, I’m personally glad that’s not the direction they went for 13 hours.
I really enjoyed this season. I have two major comments:
1. krad: In your review of the first third of the season, you mentioned Tilda’s parentage as if that was something that was revealed in the first season. As someone whose only knowledge of these characters is from the MCU and television shows, I didn’t even know that Mariah had a child. When it was revealed that Ridenhour and Mariah had been an item in high school, my first guess was that Tilda’s father was Ridenhour. (Of course, in hindsight the correct answer was obvious.)
I just re-watched the relevant portions of S1E7 (the one where Mariah kills Cottonmouth), and I didn’t see anything that indicated Mariah was pregnant or had a child. Was it revealed in a different episode and I just missed it (completely possible), or is this one of those things that people who have read the comics would know but wasn’t clear from the show?
2. Since my knowledge of the legal system mostly comes from way to many Law and Order re-runs, this question is for the lawyers out there: Do immunity deals like Shades’s often actually hinge on the conviction of the person in question? That seems awfully risky from the immunity-seeker’s point of view. I would expect that all they would promise is to testify against them. Was that a failure on Shades’s and/or his lawyer’s part, or is this a pretty standard clause? (Granted, having the prisoner die in custody might also negate an agreement to testify, but still…)
Finally, I am definitely down for Daughters of the Dragon and Power Man & Iron Fist.
bad_platypus: Knowledge of the comics is irrelevant. In the comics, none of the characters in question (Mariah, Cottonmouth, Nightshade) are related at all. But it was blindingly obvious to me that Tilda was the result of Mariah’s rape at her uncle’s hands. Nothing else made sense.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
What’s the first best fight scene? The Luke/Misty pairing?
Also, is that a real Basquiat? Modern art and its assigned value is a hoot. Reminds me of the stunt Banksy pulled where he had an old man selling a bunch of his paintings (unsigned) at a street fair for 20 bucks and they didn’t sell well. Couple days later those fortunate enough to buy one, mostly out-of-towners, found out they had pieces worth 100K or more.
Definitely looking forward to season 3. This one was far better constructed, removing the sag in the middle, as you said. Coker said this in an interview about breaking season 2:
“The writer Angelica J. Bastién wrote the recaps for Vulture during season one and, man, there were some critiques that were some of the most scathing reviews I’ve ever seen in my life. But, she’s such an incredible writer that as a former journalist, I loved what she wrote and how she wrote it even though it hurt.
So, I collected all 13 of her recaps and when we established the new writer’s room, which was essentially the old writer’s room because we had very little turnover, and we decided to approach them one by one.”
harshest critic
Also loved the Iron Fist stopping by. He’s mellowed a bit, not spouting stuff about dragons as much (except the one time in the barbershop) and seeming clueless about how it’s received. The fight sequence was fun. Just ask what Luke could do with a little training, instead of just being a bruiser and brawler. Reminds me of old Avengers comics where Steve Rogers trained other Avengers. He trained Stark in case he had to fight without his armor. That may have been a bit of the inspiration for the stretches in Iron Man 3, where Tony has to go without and improvise.
Next season will likely start with temptations for Luke, perhaps to cut corners initially, or use his power/money for influence. Then Danny will step in and say, “You think you’ve got money?! Now this! This is money!”
And then the cycle of family legacy and corruption will continue with the appearance of Nightshade. That look of disgust on Tilda’s face when the will was read… damn. And Mariah decided that before her daughter murdered her, obviously. She meant it when she said she couldn’t love her. Powerful stuff.
I said in the review what I thought the best, second-best, and third-best were. Read it again. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Oops, my bad. I blame lector interruptus. Got it now. Power Man & Iron Fist, then Daughters of the Dragon.
In tangentially related news, Lewis Tan is hinting (who seemed a bit annoyed that he wasn’t cast as Iron Fist in first season) that he may be cast as Nightwing over at DCEU.
I think the godfather-closing-door homage with Misty at the end is a pretty strong indication of how they want to play S3. He’s already closing out one of the people who will supposedly keep him honest.
Also I would have liked an update on how Bobby is doing post-surgery (donating a kidney is no small thing) or what he thinks of this turn of events.
wow 12 and 13 ???!!! all of sudden the captain and luke want to protect mariah?!! from someone who actually truly has a right to come after her and they know it. then he wants closure. what garbage. big dumb wimp?! they have made his character a big dumb bully?! he even says it – twice
what a waste. eye for an eye for an eye and occasional misplaced dudley do right . . . in all the wrong places
As far as seasons of MCU Netflix series go, this was pretty good–maybe the first time a second season as actually improved on the first. But it still has a lot of the problems that even the best seasons have had–it’s too long, too unfocused, and doesn’t seem quite sure of what it wants to say.
The good stuff is really good. I still love the texture of the show: the music, and the use of Harlem and its physical locations. The performances and stories of the antagonists are great; Mariah, Bushmaster, and Shades all have compelling stories, and the actors knock it out of the park. I’m a little less sold on what is going on with Tilda, but I’ll cut Gabrielle Dennis some slack; it’s hard to stand up to Alfre Woodard devouring the scenery.
Mproblem is that the villains have the main plot of the season, and the heroes are basically incidental to it. You could just have the Stokes-Stylers rivalry without Luke and Misty, and it would still make total sense. They don’t need to be there for it to work. I’m conflicted about Misty altogether, because even though she is an awesome character and Simone Missick is awesome, I do not think that Misty’s story or character in this series are very good. She is basically shoe-horned into trite cop drama tropes, where she is frustrated by red tape. It’s lazy, and it’s also politically tone-deaf in this day and age. At least the story about her coping with losing her arm is decent.
Mike Colter and Luke Cage have even bigger problems though. Colter is a likeable presence, but the way Luke Cage is written and Colter portrays him, I just don’t buy that Luke is stewing with barely suppressed rage. The closest I come to believing it is in the scenes with Cockroach and Claire early on–maybe Rosario Dawson brings out the best in her fellow actors. But then she leaves the show, and all the energy seems to drain out of Luke. Without Claire and Fish around, the stakes are much lower for Luke, and it’s not really clear who Luke Cage IS. Bushmaster’s feud is with Mariah, not Luke, so there’s no fire in their confrontations. They go to efforts to show that he is well-read–but he doesn’t seem to digest what he reads, or apply it to his situation. He jokes at one point that it’s his show, but I’m not sure that it is!
I will saw that the season ended on a strong note. Putting Luke in a precarious position where he will have to clarify what he stands for, and where he is in danger of crossing a line, is a potentially good move.
@10. Colin R: ” I just don’t buy that Luke is stewing with barely suppressed rage”
You could look at it as an example of how successful Luke is in hiding his rage. He only reveals it to a person he deeply trusts. And of course, it turns out to be a mistake because he scares her away. He has to keep it bottled in order to continue to function. This is not a stretch.
The stakes for Luke is being corrupted by the battle for Harlem’s soul. The entire season builds up to him being drawn in to the corruption and ends on the question of whether he will be corrupt next season. He’s the Michael Corleone of Harlem, constantly being pulled back in. Similarly with Tilda’s character. With her mother gone, she will step in as antagonist and continue the cycle. Just look again at her face as the will is read… and tremble.
Also, as I’ve said before, someone on the production absolutely loves Missy. Perhaps quite a bit of her screen time could have been cut. The camera loves her, but much of what she does is prosaic. Hopefully this will pay off big time in the Daughters of the Dragon series. Make it happen Netflix/Marvel!!
@11 Maybe. That could be a story for Luke Cage. But here’s the thing–Luke has never seemed like he was stewing with rage. When we meet him in Jessica Jones he is soulful and wounded, but not enraged. In Luke Cage Season 1 he is a reluctant hero–much of the season was spent convincing him that he SHOULD be upset and should do things. In the Defenders he is basically the team dad, reining in the more volatile heroes. The other heroes are recognizably themselves, even when they appear outside their own environment. Luke is a chameleon.
And when it comes to self-destructive anger, I don’t think think he can compete with the other MCU protagonists. Matt Murdoch and Jessica Jones already have that ground well-covered. Even Danny Rand’s petulant entitlement feels more genuine. His utility status I suppose could actually be a character trait–but it’s not really something that feels inherent to his character. It’s just sort of how thing play out. Despite his stature, the shows have a hard time putting him center-stage and telling us what he’s really about.
Well, now that he’s King of Harlem, season 3 will definitely have him center stage. Would be odd for it not to.
I am normally right there with krad reviews, but for Luke Cage I have to say that I don’t agree the music and fight choreography were all that special.
WRT to the music, featured songs did fit the mood or their episodes both musically and lyrically, but most of the time it really dragged for me. There was a huge amount of time spent on showing the performers that wasn’t moving the story forward and wasn’t even setting the atmosphere.
For the fight choreography, I thought Coleen Wing was passable and Bushmaster was quite good. I also get a kick out of the unskilled style they’ve developed for Cage and Jessica Jones. But the Iron Fist/Luke Cage raid didn’t excite me. Rand didn’t move much like a kung fu master and the camera work didn’t do them any favours either. I don’t know enough about filming and cinematography to understand why it wasn’t as effective as I wanted, but it felt to me like the timing of the cuts and the framing of where the camera was looking wasn’t used optimally.
I greatly enjoyed this season as a whole though. It definitely matched up to the first half of season one for me. Learning more about Shades and Mariah made them even more interesting to me (and Mariah was sooo deliciously hateable). Piranha Jones was a refreshing dose of comic relief (and social commentary at the same time); it’s a shame he won’t be coming back.
vinsentient: I didn’t make this clear in the review, but what I meant was that Jones was better than he was in Iron Fist and Defenders. He’s still not there yet, but there’s been incremental improvement every time we see him. Given his total lack of martial arts training prior to taking the role, I don’t hold out much hope that he’ll ever turn into Mark Dacascos or Daniel Wu, but I’ll take what I can get.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Great review. I enjoyed this season a lot more than the first (100% agree that season 1 fell apart after the death of Cottonmouth). I was a little dubious as to whether Mariah and Shades could pull off being the big bads this season and holy crap! was I wrong. Shades was written with a huge amount of depth and they did a fantastic job showing Mariah’s slow decent into absolute evil. Wasn’t thrilled with Bushmaster at first, but I really liked where they went with him. I think the music fit the series perfectly, I’m just not a huge fan of the style. This season also cemented the fact that I HATE raggae. Oh well, c’est la vie.
Also, YES! to ‘Power Man and Iron Fist’ & ‘Daughters of the Dragon’.
I just got around to finishing this one last night, and I wanted to respond to Sunspear @@@@@ 5 – It seemed clear to me that Mariah knew something was up with Tilda’s visit to her in prison. She could tell she was lying, and that certainly put her on edge that *something* was up with the whole visit. As a result, she didn’t change her will until after that incident (she tells Donovan that she needs him, and that it has to be legal and legitimate). And the final will is handwritten, probably on a legal pad that Donovan had in his briefcase. She certainly seemed to be telling the truth regarding her inability to love Tilda, but I don’t think that decision was made until the Spider’s Kiss (Beso de la Araña).
Overall, I thought this was definitely an improvement over Season 1. Bushmaster was definitely a more compelling villain than Diamondback.