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With the death of Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes at the hands of his outraged cousin, Mariah, we find that the show of Luke Cage has suddenly become spmething of a power grab between the remaining villains to become the new, main antagonist of the season. However, while the shock termination of Mahershala Ali’s character was good to light a fire under any viewers who thought that the show was starting to plateau, there’s a sense that the writers have removed one of the best aspects about the whole affair.
As it stands, three separate characters have stepped up to the plate in order to cement their standing as the latest pain in Luke Cage’s unbreakable butt. Two of them are secondary faces that are making a play for the spotlight, while one is a brand new threat who has a particular grudge with our hero. But if there’s a trifecta of baddies looking to take Cottonmouth’s crown, what Luke up to while all this is going on? It’s time for Cage to bite the bullet – a Judas bullet to be exact.
Barely an episode ago, there were two indisputable truths. The first was that Cornell Stokes’ rule over Harlem was set in stone and the other was no bullet could piece the skin of Luke Cage – however, both those facts have been proven brutally false after the events of the last episode. A violent dispute with Mariah Dillard saw her cave in her cousin’s skull with a microphone stand and a mystery assailant managed to shoot Luke with a Judas bullet that managed to actually piece the hero’s hide. But while a wounded Cage and Claire Temple take cover, their attacker ends up being Willis Stryker, a childhood friend of Luke and the much-hyped gun runner known as Diamondback. Trying to escape in a borrowed ambulance, they find that their pursuer isn’t about to give up do easily after drawing first blood.
Meanwhile, Shades finally makes his play by approaching a stunned Mariah and immediately gets to work covering up her involvement in the recent slaying. Before you know it, the police are being fed a story that it was Cage who killed Cornell and a “witness” has even been offered up in the form of club waitress Candace Miller. It seems that Shades has had feelings for Mariah and wants her to ascend and take over her dead cousin’s crime empire while he stands at her side. Of course, Misty Knight is having none of this bullshit, but despite the fact that she can see through Dillard’s lies and Candace’s statement like it’s tracing paper, she’s soon leashed by her new superiors.
The only way Misty is going to get to the bottom of this is to find Cage herself and bring him in, but while she should find this easy considering the bad state Luke is in, Diamondback isn’t about to let anything stand in his way from putting another Judas bullet into the man he claims is his brother.
While I certainly appreciate the attempts to ensure that Luke Cage doesn’t stagnate, “Blowin’ Up The Spot” makes a couple of major missteps in its mission to keep us on our toes. Yes, it’s beginning to feel like sending Mahershala Ali to take an early shower was a rather huge mistake, but it’s not like the show isn’t trying hard to plug that void. However, jumping from a hero vs. villain story to a bad guy origin story means that, despite giving Alfre Woodard the spotlight, her story has basically restarted from scratch and now lacks needed momentum. Also, Shades’ plan to frame Cage isn’t that different from Stokes’ attempt to sully his name with the people of Harlem, so their plan also feels like the show’s starting to go in circles despite pulling that massive status quo shift. However, while the budding relationship between an ambitious Shades and Mariah looks like it could be fairly intriguing, it’s the introduction of that third villain that causes the cracks to finally show on the surface of Luke Cage.
On paper, the introduction of Willis “Diamondback” Stryker seems to be perfectly judged comic book fare with an introduction to an arch villain who can not only counteract our hero’s powers with conveniently plotted weapons, but even has a handy past relationship with Cage. However, in action, the proper debut of Erik LeRay Harvey’s replacement heavy doesn’t quite have the impact the show was hoping for, and worse yet, it ends up being a showcase for one of the show’s biggest weaknesses.
When you craft any show or film boasting a character with superstrength and impressive durability, you need to tread a delicate balance when it comes to both your practical and visual effects, otherwise things get a bit awkward. Realising any story with an unkillable character means that the writers have to jump through various hoops and cut narrative corners in order actually build suspense; but while we’ll forgive the invention of the Judas bullet as Luke Cage’s version of Kryptonite, watching a character with the ability to launch a couch through a window struggle to out-fight a basically normal (albeit tough) dude ends up being a little crap. Yes, The show takes major steps to nerf the shit out of the hero to justify it, but it all just comes off feeling a little cheap, especially when this was the show’s big chance to go epic.
Also starting to suffer is Misty Knight, who is certainly being put through the wringer on an episode by episode basis; but much like the frustration you feel when the show you’re watching goes out of its way to slow down it’s hero, I’m wondering why the writers are trying so hard to keep Knight from being the ass-kicking, robo-armed PI from the comics. OK, so the show is plainly building up to it, but I don’t understand why Simone Missick character is constantly being short-changed. When she isn’t being verbally out-maneuvered by Mariah, or being stymied by her boss and Candace’s lawyer, or even being shouted down by Rosario Dawson’s Claire, she’s being taken hostage by Diamondback and pistol-whipped into unconsciousness. Yes, her eventual comeback will hopefully be righteous (if it even happens during this season), but right now this supposedly gifted detective has been continously bamboozled, tricked, foiled and attacked and it’s severely starting to hurt the character.
What should have been a rousing second half of a season willing to violently alter its status quo ends up being something of a damp squib. The action feels to cheap for the scale it’s trying to achieve, the treatment of certain characters is frustrating and the introduction of a more overtly comic booky villain proves to be inferior to the more intelligent brand of villainy they hastily killed off.
In trying to up it’s game, Luke Cage finally shows off its weak points for all to see. The budget finally admits that it can’t quite handle visualising the super powers its hero posseses. And while we get a new bad guy who enthusiastically quotes from both The Warriors and the Bible and even claims to be a long lost brother; it simply can’t match up to the charismatic complexity of Ali’s vanquished Cottonmouth. Or to misquote Diff’rent Strokes (or should that be Stokes?) – What ‘choo stalkin’ about, Willis?
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