Luke Cage – Season 1 Review

Luke Cage

At first, it seemed like Luke Cage was going to be nothing more than a mash-up of Jessica Jones (reluctant hero, super strong, doesn’t hide his/her identity) and Daredevil (up against a local mob boss). A few episodes in, however, it does start to differentiate itself, to the point where it had the makings to be the best Marvel/Netflix show yet. The cast and characters felt a lot stronger, especially the initial villains. I liked the mob boss here a lot more than Wilson Fisk, and I really liked how said mob boss didn’t always have the upper hand. It was nice to see some back and forth instead of always watching the hero fail until the very end.

But Luke Cage makes the same mistake that Season 2 of Daredevil did by introducing a much more cartoonish threat halfway through. When Diamondback arrived, grinning ear to ear and spouting Biblical nonsense, the show lost a lot of its heart and soul. And with no complex villain to hold things together, the cheesy dialogue and contrived situations started sticking out more. For instance, there’s a moment where the cops beat up a kid, so the corrupt politician holds a rally to convince the community that they need to arm the police with more powerful weapons to stop Luke Cage. Uh… what? Why would anyone in this universe buy that?

Unfortunately, there are many instances like that where something ridiculous happens for no other reason than to move the story forward. After a while, you get sick of seeing characters simply walk away from situations where they should have gotten caught. By the end of the season, I was no longer sure on how I would rank this among the other Marvel shows. Again, it’s very similar to Daredevil Season 2 in that it gets off to a great start and then squanders most of it, whether that’s because they tried to stay too close to the comic or they shot themselves in the foot by sticking with the long-winded 13-episode format. Even Luke Cage isn’t bulletproof to that.

Reviewer

Clark
I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.

Published by

Clark

I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.