As promised, here are the recaps for the second half of Luke Cage. The recaps for these episodes will be published separately, as individual articles, instead of in one big post like the first six episodes. Happy reading!
SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.
We all knew Luke was going to win the fight with Diamondback. There was never any question about that. But I didn’t think he’d get beaten up as badly as he did. The suit made Diamondback really, very strong that he was able to make Luke bleed. I really underestimated that thing. Maybe super strength is enough to take down Luke.
I love how basically all of Harlem gathered around the fight to watch and cheer him on. That had to affect Diamondback psychologically a little bit. Given his hatred of Luke because he thought their father favoured him, I’d think that seeing Luke literally surrounded by love would hurt him somewhat.
Claire pulled an Iris West with her motivational line to Luke. But unlike in The Flash where that kind of thing comes off totally cheesy, it didn’t here because she doesn’t do it constantly. Luke may have been indecisive about his heroism, but he doesn’t need his love interest to give him a pep talk so he can be useful.
I can get behind Luke and Claire. They’re very cute together and the more scenes we get of them flirting with each other, the more the pairing grows on me. Shame they won’t get any coffee. But at least he got a kiss!
I was lulled into a false sense of security when Candice listened to Claire and stayed with Soledad. I truly thought that she would make it to the end of the show virtually unscathed. But nope. Alvarez just had to swoop in and kill her. Thereby destroying the state’s case against Mariah.
Seriously though, he has to have some kind of thing for Mariah. Why would he stick around after everything that’s happened? Why save her by killing Candice? There has to be more behind his actions than just ambition and using her to get what and where he wants to be. If he didn’t care about her at all, he could have just high tailed it out of there and set himself up somewhere else. He had that opportunity. He was a free man. But he came back for Mariah.
It was inevitable that Luke would go back to prison. He got all of that exposure in the media and Mariah calling him Carl Lucas on camera was all that it took. But it’s still unfair and I was hoping that there’d be a way for him to get out of it. I should have known that the folder was too good to be true and he wouldn’t be exonerated that easily. But there is hope! Bobby has the folder and he knows what it is and the value of it.
On the bright side of things, at least now we have a hint about how Matt and Luke will meet each other going into Defenders. It’s pretty good and logical set up for that.
FINAL IMPRESSIONS:
I didn’t really like this show much when I saw the first few episodes. I didn’t dislike it or anything, it just didn’t leave me very enthused about it. It really picked up and became very engaging at about episode five or six for me. It was a little heavy handed at times with the celebration of blackness and Luke stopping to make a speech about it got a bit disruptive, but I appreciated all of it none the less. Setting Luke Cage amongst other black heroes and having them be inspirational figures in his life was a really nice touch.
I don’t like it as much as I liked Daredevil or Jessica Jones and it’s by no means perfect. But it did what it set out to do, I think and it did that pretty well.
Overall, the writing and acting were good. I wish we had gotten to learn more about some of the characters – Alvarez especially, he’s a bit of an enigma and Bobby’s cool so I’d like to know more about him as well.
It’s a worthy addition to Netflix’s mini universe within the MCU.
Random thoughts:
- Stop destroying the shop!
- Misty didn’t read Mariah her Miranda Rights.
- No! Don’t give up the shop!
- Mariah loses all sophistication and manners when she is cornered and scared.
- They’re gonna get coffee!
- No! They were gonna get coffee!
- I didn’t think Mariah reciprocated.
- They know your face Misty. Still suck at going undercover I see.
- Oh come on! Dr. Burstein got his hands on Diamondback?!
