Luke Cage - 'Now You're Mine', 'Soliloquy of Chaos' and 'You Know My Steez'

Trouble in Paradise.

Okay, time to finish this.

'Now You're Mine' begins where we left off, with Luke shielding Misty in a club full of bullets. While Diamondback is convinced that they can come out as heroes, Shades is beginning to realise that the new boss is just as self-destructively obsessed with Luke Cage as the old boss; or even more so. Luke manages to get Misty into a prohibition-era hidey-hole, while Diamondback plays out a pantomime of Luke Cage's hostage drama, including murdering Mariah Dillard's council rival with his budget Iron Man gauntlets.

Boom!

Claire is part of the hostage crowd, where she runs into Candace, the waitress who helped to frame Luke and who comes clean now. Claire manages to slip away and incapacitate a guard, because she's awesome, She locates the back wall of the shelter and Luke punches through, letting her get to the injured Misty. "Me, medical shit. You, bulletproof shit." As part of this, she has to close up one of Misty's arteries, with the possible risk that she might lose the arm (hinting at her comic book counterpart's bionic arm.)

Politics.

Luke takes out the hostage takers and gets everyone out alive, apart from council rival, who has already been robot punched to death to encourage the police to shoot first and ask questions in the wrongful death inquest(1). The Inspector struggles not to let the ESU of the chain with Judas 2.0, knowing that whatever the police, the crooks will have soon, and not really trusting Mariah. In the end, Luke doesn't resist arrest.

Misty and Claire take down Shades when he finds the shelter - because they're awesome, yeah - but Diamondback gets away and Misty hints to Luke that he ought to bring him down, before he can go to ground and rebuild his forces.

"So... we don't have to hate each other and cat fight and shit?"

Moving on to 'Soliloquy of Chaos' then, Luke escapes with the collusion of the transport driver and goes after Diamondback. Shades is bailed out, but Diamondback sends his new number two guy to off him for questioning his leadership. Shades takes out three would-be killers and escapes, and both he and Diamondback aim to suborn Mariah to their cause. She leans towards Shades, since Stryker is so clearly incredibly cray-cray. Aided by Mariah's devoted and morally flexible council PA, they set out to get clear of the cops and rope Luke Cage in to fight Diamondback for them.

Method Man.

Tracking down leads, Luke is distracted by a bodega robbery, where by pure chance he runs into none other than Method Man of the Wu-Tang Clan, who swaps his hoodie for Luke's bullet-holed one. Later, he freestyles a tribute to Luke on the radio(2) ('Bulletproof Love') and the storekeeper starts selling hoodies with holes in, providing cover for Luke as the cops find their perp's distinguishing feature has become a fashion statement.

On Bobby Fish's advice, Luke uses Turk Barrett as a way to get to Diamondback, who is in need of new distributors. He goes to his half-brother's warehouse lair, but the Puerto Ricans have beaten him there and been slaughtered by Stryker using something new; something unlike anything they have seen before.

Harlem standoff.

Shades and Mariah look for parlay at the barbershop, offering proof of Carl Lucas' innocence as a sweetener, but Diamondback breaks up the party with a grenade, before entering in a utilitarian-looking supersuit(3).

'You Know my Steez' kicks off as Luke and Stryker face off. Stryker's suit is bulletproof and extends the strength-boosting power of the gloves, but Luke realises that either Diamondback or the suit itself are drawing power from the fight. He lets Diamondback whale on him until the power gives out, then smacks him down. Mariah is taken into custody and it's all good! Yay for the heroes!

Oh, wait; we're only fifteen minutes in.

Actually not the main event.

Luke gives a statement and the NYPD drop the charges. Misty brings Mariah up for murdering Cottonmouth, with Candy as a witness, but unfortunately Shades stole Misty's phone in all the grenade confusion and lures Candy into an ambush, killing her with Cottonmouth's pistol. Without her word, Mariah walks and sets up as the new Queen of Harlem, while Luke's plans to get coffee with Claire are interrupted when Mariah outs him as Carl Lucas in a TV interview and the US Marshall service turns up on account of how he escaped from that prison that one time. Misty is in the shit for going behind the Inspector's back and maybe getting her witness killed. Bobby Fish does find the evidence file, but all in all it's a bit of a downer.

And so Luke Cage wraps up, not with a bang, but with a warrant. The really interesting thing about it is that it essentially takes the entire series to establish its actual villain. We begin with Cottonmouth, replace him with Diamondback - a greater physical and emotional threat to Luke - halfway through, but in the end the villain of this series is Mariah Dillard, the one person Luke's powers are useless against, because she would never come at him physically. Like Luke, however, she is unbreakable. For all her crimes, she walks away Scott free, her political connections protecting her from the consequences of her actions, while better men and women are eaten up by the system.

The series doesn't end quite as strongly as it began, and the high risk gambit of cycling through villains becomes a little frustrating before it finally pays off, but it's a solid entry into the MCU and recognised as one of the best and most aware black superhero stories ever.

(1) I kid of course; they don't have those when the police shoot a black man in a hoodie.
(2) During the interview, the show also gets as on the nose as it is possible to be about the aptness of a bulletproof black man to the era.
(3) It looks kind of goofy, but is probably kind of what a military-issue, non-flying, budget Iron Man suit woudl look like.