While Luke Cage has been doing its part to push boundaries within the MCU, recent episodes have also shown us some of the show’s weaknesses too. Trying to deliver grounded, realistic super strength on an oddly tight Netflix budget started to show that the season wasn’t built quite as sturdily as its titular hero – especially whenever it tries to leave the realms of neo-blaxploitation and step into a more brazenly superhero niche. Worse yet, some of those bad Netflix habits that dulled the sheen of some of the previous pseudo-MCU outings on the streaming site are seemingly creeping into Luke Cage far earlier than they did to Daredevil or Jessica Jones. We’re only on episode 9 and the show has needed to nerf our hero to an intense degree in order to let the rest of the episode shift it’s status quo about. While a wounded Luke staggers his way through New York, it’s down to the continuing strain on Misty Knight and the fluctuating power Base of the various villains to keep things ticking. But as Cage’s strength wanes, so does the abilities of the writers it seems.
After his brawl with Dimondback saw him catch another Judas bullet, a bleeding and weakened Luke Cage finally wakes up in the back of a garbage truck with no idea where the hell he is. Worse yet, he also has no idea that he’s been framed for the murder of notorious mobster, Cottonmouth, and after he’s eventually stopped by police, Cage’s violent reaction is subsequently caught on camera and leaked, tarnishing his “hero of Harlem” image even more. However, if he doesn’t figure out a way to get the fragments of the Judas bullets out of his body, his wounds are going to get infected and no amount of super strength can combat that. The only one who can figure out how to cut into his unbreakable skin and remove the shrapnel is Claire Temple, and she has plans to contact Dr. Burstein – the man who accidently gave Luke his powers back in Seagate Prison – for advice, but will the cure prove to be more damaging than the cause?
Meanwhile, Misty Knight is still being put through the wringer as her superiors seem dead set on getting their pound of flesh for her recent indiscretions. But after a meeting with a psychologist gradually breaks her down after everything that’s happened to her since Luke Cage showed up, she discovers that she can save her career if she admits that she has control issues and agrees to bring in Cage once and for all.
The third thread of this episode deals with the power vacuum left by the death of Cottonmouth and it seems that his murderer – his own cousin Mariah – is having second thoughts about taking over in his stead. Gathering other mob bosses from around, she hopes to offload the territory and move on with her life; however, Dimondback has other plans for her after she manages to survive his brutal coup by coming up with some innovative ways to make Cage’s life even more miserable.
While the three different threads each deal with necessary plot points to move the story forward, Episode 9 finds itself in a rather frustrating predicament as we find every single storyline stuck in a place of transition. While this isn’t an issue in of itself (character transitions are obviously very important in move their arc forward), the problem here is that for the most part, the various plot threads aren’t all that interesting when lined up together. If one of them occurred while the others were in a more action-orientated phase, then maybe they could have balanced each other out, but as it stands, we have an episode where it’s main characters are all inactive while in the midst of a downward swing. The result is that every character feels like they’re stuck in a holding pattern which makes the abnormally long episode (an hour and five minutes) essentially feel like the show is on pause.
The most interesting of the three proves to be Mariah’s attempt to pass through her cousin’s criminal empire while trying to remain squeaky clean, and we get to see what kind of arch villain she could be thanks to her more political based reasoning. However, as the episode begins, we find that she’s walked back some of Shades’ influence in order to restore some honor to her family name and plans to hold a kind of auction to sell off her cousin’s criminal empire. This leads to Dimondback to get involved to claim it all for himself, but the twist is that he wants Mariah to run it for him much like Cottonmouth did. Yes, it’s essentially an overly convoluted way to swap out Mariah for Cornell while still keeping Dimondback in charge, but the main selling point is witnessing how Mariah comes at Cornell’s old problems from an entirely fresh perspective. Selling his Judas bullets to a police force that’s getting increasingly worried about the growing number of superpeople is a fiendishly genius move, but we didn’t need an entire episode to get us there.
Similarly, I’m really getting annoyed at the lengths the show is going through to keep Misty off the playing field. While the back and forth she has to endure with the psychologist gives Simone Missick an acting workout to be proud of, it does feel like the writers are being forced to stretch out some storylines once again in order to meet Netflix’s episode quota. Again, the comic version of Knight is a vibrant, cyborg ass-kicker and watching this version get continuously undersold by sticking her once again in plot-limbo is fast getting annoying.
However, possibly most annoying of all is the fact that the main character of a superhero show is required to spend almost the entire episode staggering through the streets, groaning in pain. Again, while there’s important points here (watching a bullet proof black man confront police is always going to make a statement even before BLM), this entire plot thread doesn’t pick up steam until he reunites with Claire Temple who is brainstorming ways to fix him. However, while the episode takes a last minute swerve into Frankenstein territory as we reintroduce Dr. Burstein back into the show. But while theorising that the only way to soften Cage’s skin enough to get the shrapnel out is to dunk him in boiling acid (!) delves into nicely deranged science fiction, it raises yet another annoying problem. Anyone who watched Jessica Jones knows that we’ve already had an entire episode dedicated to Claire coming up with sadistic medical practices in order to circumvent Cage’s stubborn biology. While pressing pause on all of the characters is bad enough, it’s actually pretty galling that the only major plot point here is one that’s already occurred in another show entirely.
While the downward spiral of Luke Cage doesn’t mean that we don’t get good scenes, acting or twists, there’s no denying that the entire writers room of the show are mainly playing for time. Objectively, there’s nothing here that deserves an entire episode’s attention, but if the season has to stretch things out like Reed Richards reaching for a test tube, I guess we’re going to have to get used to it. We’ve still got four episodes left to go…
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