Another day, another Marvel Netflix series which gets sidetracked in its second half. Luke Cage takes its titular character from 2015's excellent Jessica Jones and relocates him in Harlem, wandering amidst gang warfare and questions about black history and the African-American legacy. Like all of Netflix's comic book offerings, it positions itself as a more thoughtful take on the universe, and for a while, it succeeds.
If only it actually maintained that.
Now that he's in Harlem, Luke Cage (Mike Colter) is trying to live a "normal" life, balancing two jobs: one as a sweeper at a barbershop owned by a highly respected man referred to as "Pop" (played by Frankie Faison), and the other as a dishwasher at the nightclub Harlem's Paradise, owned by crime boss Cornel Stokes (Mahershala Ali), better known as "Cottonmouth." When the barbershop becomes embroiled in Cottonmouth's criminal enterprise, Pop is killed in a drive-by shooting, and Luke sets out to take vengeance.
Although the revenge subplot may appear standard on the surface, it's elevated by its characters and their relationships to black history. This is best seen in the dynamic between Cottonmouth and his cousin Mariah Dillard (Alfre Woodard), who serves on the New York City Council and has ties to his affairs. Mariah prefers to "clean up" Harlem through legal means, whereas Cottonmouth thinks his success in crime is merely him living up to the groundwork left by the civil rights leaders. Both are ultimately corrupt, and while Mariah's frequent speechifying makes her own worldview obvious, Cottonmouth's is expressed through a mix of conversation and visual metaphors. No matter how much he may describe his position, never is it communicated better than in wide shots of him standing in the shadow of a giant portrait of The Notorious B.I.G.
Luke himself never quite manages to be as interesting as the villains, but at least early on in the season he's defined by his own sense of justice. Despite having skin as hard as steel, Luke is driven more by loyalty to Pop than by a sense of superheroic responsibility, which arguably would make fellow New York heroes Daredevil and Spider-Man roll their eyes. Luke's more akin to Jessica Jones, in that he's only roused to action when crimes personally relate to him in some way. He still saves people when he sees muggings, but he doesn't make a habit out of going out to fight crime. This is something he increasingly struggles with as he receives encouragement not only from people around him but from citizens inspired by his actions against the show's main villains. Unfortunately, way too many episodes simply don't afford Luke enough opportunities to emote beyond glumness or intimidation, and on the rare occasion that he does show other emotions, Colter undersells it, which unfortunately leaves the effect of having Luke occasionally come across as dull.
Unfortunately, around the halfway point Cottonmouth is taken out of the picture, and Mariah isn't necessarily equipped to take over in the role of the mob boss. She's ruthless, but the show doesn't spend much time on her, and she remains in the shadows of other villains who increasingly take over. Shades (Theo Rossi) was an adviser for Cottonmouth, but once the big boss is out of the picture, he increasingly becomes the puppetmaster behind a very inexperienced Mariah. Even he, however, is rapidly overtaken by the show's proper supervillain, the enigmatic Diamondback (Erik LaRay Harvey). The show attempts to deepen Diamondback by tying him to Luke's past, but it never achieves the thematic heights that Cottonmouth managed, and in direct contrast with Mahershala Ali's arresting performance, Harvey turns Diamondback into a cartoon character, although much of the blame does lie on the increasingly absurd and unfocused scripts.
Indeed, as the show goes on, the thematic clarity it found early on slowly evaporates, and once Cottonmouth leaves the show, the remaining episodes strain for any sort of point, throwing out murky references to civil rights which do little more than remind us of Luke Cage's identity as a black man who's immune to bullets. And yet, in spite of what this would imply, the police are rarely the enemy here, and the more the show toys with Luke's past, the less impact it leaves. When the show finally ends, whatever point it had been trying to make has been buried, covered over with superhero action, underdeveloped romance, rote precinct drama, and inane plot twists. To be fair, a few episodes in the latter half do find enough energy to become legitimately fun as superhero fair, if still not nearly focused enough to work as social commentary, but the contrast with the more focused first half does these later episodes no favours.
The show's often elevated by its sense of humour, and while it's not exactly the show's greatest strength, it's missed whenever it's absent. The best of the Marvel movies gain much of their entertainment value from having jokes mixed in with the action and drama, and Luke Cage is the closest the Netflix series have come to emulating that. In later episodes, the show can still be successful when it's lightweight and amusing, but on the far too common instance where it's both po-faced and shallow, the aforementioned lack of thematic clarity becomes much more difficult to come to terms with. Thankfully, unlike the second season of Daredevil, the show remains relatively compelling even when it derails, and much of that comes directly from its humour.
In addition, Luke Cage is among the most stylized titles in the MCU. Aside from visual metaphors like the Biggie painting, there's a continuous element of funk and hip-hop music which contributes to the show's energy. A frequent trick in earlier episodes of the season is to cut between a live performance at Cottonmouth's club and plot events happening elsewhere, creating a tempo through the combination of music and montage. Like the stark colour palette of Jessica Jones, Luke Cage has a distinct visual style, bathing everything in a golden glow akin to a 90s hip-hop music video. This is aided by a vaguely funky opening sequence, and these cultural motifs demonstrate a singularity of vision which the scripts too often lack.
Overall, Luke Cage has many impressive parts, but it derails in its second half and undercooks the ideas set up in the first half. Often its energy rises above its faults, but as it goes on, it loses focus and steam, failing to bring its themes to a satisfying or coherent conclusion and losing some of its identity - and writing quality - in the process. These Marvel Netflix shows are most disappointing when they have so much wasted potential, and although Luke Cage is usually solid and sometimes even great, it hangs in the shadow of Jessica Jones and even surprisingly thoughtful movies like Captain America: Civil War. It's a shame, as the show has so much potential baked into it, but once again, Marvel's Netflix shows can't keep the pace up over a whole 13 episodes. Maybe they should cut back a little.
7/10
+ Many thoughtful ideas regarding African-American history.
+ Sometimes approaches the levity of the MCU movies.
+ Distinctively stylized as usual.
- Loses focus halfway through.
- Central character can be dull sometimes.
- Themes grow increasingly muddled as the show goes on.
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