If you haven’t watched Luke Cage yet, you have barely a week left to do so; at the end of February, all the original Marvel series are leaving Netflix, including Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Daredevil. Whether they’ll turn up on Hulu or Disney+ is anyone’s guess, but more than a few of us are trying to hurry through a rewatch—including Luke Cage‘s showrunner, Cheo Hodari Coker, who gathered some of his thoughts into a Twitter thread yesterday. The songs he wishes he’d gotten to use, the joy of writing for the cast, and the way running the show was like overseeing the first James Bond—Coker has a lot to say (and might keep going with additional commentary).
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Rewatching Luke Cage while I can on Netflix. They're going to do what they do. It's theirs. I just hope they don't sit on it for years to allow for an easier reboot, or re-air it with a different mix, or the N-Word muted. I'd love to do commentary tracks, or the original credits
— Cheo Hodari Coker (@cheo_coker) February 21, 2022
It’s telling, if not surprising, that the original showrunner for one of these series doesn’t even know what’s happening with it; as he says, it’s Marvel’s, and he has no control. But there’s a lot of joy in following along while he appreciates the work everyone put into Luke Cage:
The best scene I've ever written in my life, hands down, was in "Code Of The Streets" on the roof with Mahershala, @Theorossi , Warner Miller, Alfre Woodard, and Rob Morgan. I remember watching it and I forgot I wrote it. They took it to another level.
— Cheo Hodari Coker (@cheo_coker) February 21, 2022
Coker shares his thoughts on the series’ directors, what he learned from working on Southland, and a lot more—including some musing on whether he might create a podcast or video series with his own commentary for the show. And he keeps coming back to a deep respect for the actors who created these roles for TV, comparing them to the original Bond cast—they might get replaced down the line, but Coker knows he had something special:
Regardless of whether or not I'm asked back, I really hope they keep Mike as Luke and Simone as Misty, and everybody else as everybody else. It's kinda like Bond. There might be another Bond, but I got to write for Sean Connery, Lois Maxwell and Ursula Andress.
— Cheo Hodari Coker (@cheo_coker) February 21, 2022
Luke Cage is on Netflix through February 28th.
