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| Smooth operator. |
Hot on the heels of
Daredevil's barnstorming second season, Marvel Noir continues to make
Agents of SHIELD look like a ham-fisted mess with the third
Defenders lead in series,
Luke Cage.
We first met indestructible bartender Luke back in
Jessica Jones, and here find him with a few recurring headaches from their last meeting, working cash in hand sweeping floors at Pop's barbershop and working in the kitchen of the Harlem Paradise nightclub, keeping his head down. Pop's is a cosy sanctum from the pace of modern life, where Pop himself rules over a haven for disaffected youth and Turk Barrett plays chess with resident pro Bobby 'Not Fisher' Fish. Harlem Paradise is a sweet jazz club, whose king is Cornell Stokes, one of Harlem's premier gangsters.
In 'Moment of Truth' Luke directly rejects the call when Pop prompts him to step up and be a hero. We also learn a bit more backstory - framed, subjected to experiments in prison which gave him his powers - and that Pop knew Reeva from way back. Nonetheless, Pop is all for Luke getting back on the bike, and despite being reluctant to call the local-girl-turned-lawyer who keeps leaving him her number, Luke does hook up with a lass he meets at the club while working bar, and whom we later learn - although a bit before he does - is Detective Misty Knight. Also in 'the gentleman doth protest too much theatre', our man steps up when he sees his landlady's restaurant being shaken down. He's not for hire, he tells her, but promises 'I got your back.'
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| Family. |
Meanwhile, Stokes and his cousin, Councilwoman Mariah Dillon, are setting up an arms sale to the Puerto Ricans to cover money Dillon stole from the city to pay for the club. Three gunmen rob the exchange, but things go south and all but two of the stick-up guys are killed. These two are Pop's kids - not biologically, but among the ones he has tried to nurture - as is Misty, which draws Pop into the business.
Stokes visits Pop for a shave accompanied by Shades, an enigmatic messenger for the even more enigmatic Diamondback, Stokes' weapons supplier, and Tone, his right hand man. Stokes is arrogant, but treats Pop with the respect due a craftsman. Pop is respectful to Stokes even though he knows that he just beat one of the stick-up boys to death with his bare hands. Tone drops money at Pop's feet. When Tone learns from Turk that Chico, the last stick-up guy, is at Pop's, he ignores Pop's offer to parley with Stokes and Shades' suggestion that they wait for Chico to step outside and instead machineguns the barbershop, killing Pop and wounding Chico while Luke covers a young customer with his own body.
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| The thanklessness of mentoring. |
Stokes gives the money to his cousin, but trouble is brewing with the Puerto Ricans, who claim to consider him inconsequential, but not so much so that they won't go to war with him over the money he's got and the guns in police lockup. Stokes is also pretty pissed about Pop, tossing Tone off a roof for being a jerk with one hand, and offering to pay for the funeral with the other. "Believe it or not, there's supposed to be rules for this shit," he notes.
Luke, meanwhile, decides to make a stand. He gets Chico to give him some details on Stokes' operation, gleaned while planning the stick-up, and goes to war. He busts into the mob's safe houses so that Stokes moves everything to the new Crispus Attucks building, which Luke then goes through like a bullet through butter. Through all this, however, he only takes enough money to make sure Pop's doesn't go under, his goal being simply to see the cash end up in evidence, out of Stokes' reach.
The Crispus Attucks attack is the first big set piece of the show and is everything that
Daredevil's hall fights aren't. Luke never dodges, barely has a technique; he just ploughs in like a tank, indestructible and unstoppable. In the earlier restaurant skirmish he simply takes a punch on his chin and lets the force of the swing break his assailant's wrist. And Matt Murdock claims he knows how to take a beating.
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| Unbreakable. |
Through all this, Misty and her partner are seeking to get Chico's testimony. Unfortunately, Misty's partner Raphael turns out to be a stinking dirty cop, and we close out episode three with Luke trying to shield his landlady as Stokes blows up her restaurant with a rocket launcher.
Luke Cage takes us away from Hell's Kitchen and quickly establishes a unique identity, but retains many of the strengths of
Daredevil and
Jessica Jones, including from the latter the cyclopaean presence of Mike Colter. There is something of
The Wire in the complex underworld - although it is more hinted at than shown - and something of
Fargo in the rambling digressive discussions of sports and black authors, and there are layers and layers of unspoken or implied communication, only some of which are Marvel Comics Easter eggs.
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| Even Pop's flashback features Stokes and Chico's dad. It all links. |
Pretty much everyone in
Luke Cage talks about family, and legacy. Luke is a man without family and, at the top of the series, without any thought of a legacy. Stokes and Dillon are all about the legacy, however, each in their own way. Stokes wants to build an empire and Dillon wants to immortalise her name. Pop grew up on the streets as a mean-as-anything banger, but wants his legacy to be the kids he saves from going that way. And family? It's telling that only Stokes and Dillon really equate that with blood. Pop's family is one he made himself, and one which - in his eyes - Luke entered when he married Reeva. Luke describes Pop as his wife's people, but again there's no suggestion of a blood tie.
Other recurring themes include respect and image. Stokes wants respect and purports to give it, but although angry at Tone's blatant disrespect was happy to walk out without paying, taking it as his due that Pop would shave him for free. Luke and Misty hide their identities from each other even as they are hooking up, and no-one really sees Luke, colossus that he is, until he starts to act. Shades is clearly something serious, you can see it in Luke and Stokes' reactions, but most people just treat him like he's some dickhead who wears sunglasses at night. Dillon is obsessed with her name, and she and Stokes each have a nickname that trips their berserk button (Cottonmouth and Black Mariah, their comic equivalents, both of which are just loaded with unfortunate implications.)
The ultimate expression of Stokes' ambition and desire for respect comes when he stands in front of his poster of a becrowned Notorious B.I.G., the crown appearing to rest on his head, and announces 'everybody wants to be king.' As far as Stokes is concerned, he is the King, but he struggles to maintain that image and besides, to paraphrase Tywin Lannister, if you have to tell people you're the king, you're not the king. It is telling that among the floral tributes to the murdered Pop is a handwritten sign that reads: 'THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING.'
