Favorite Characters: Luke Cage (Luke Cage)

Luke Cage, as a Marvel hero, is a little hard for me to pin down.  He brings a different dynamic to the table than many of the MCU’s film and TV heroes.  He’s just as damaged as many of them, just as haunted by his past as others, but the way he carries both is definitely his own (some Luke-related spoilers.)

On a cursory level, it might be tempting to compare Luke to Scott Lang or one of the Guardians, an ex-con looking to make good.  But Luke isn’t like Scott or the Guardians.  While they all committed the crimes they were imprisoned for (even if, like Scott, the law-breaking was in pursuit of a greater good,) Luke did not.  He was falsely accused, falsely convicted, and left to be forgotten.  In the eyes of everyone around him, he went from cop to criminal in barely a breath.  And unlike Cap or Bruce, both of whom similarly got their powers from scientific intervention, Luke didn’t come to it as a willing participant.  He didn’t design the experiment or even volunteer for it.  He was experimented upon, a lab rat plucked out at someone else’s whim.

There’s also the small matter of his secret identity.  Plenty of heroes conceal who they are, but in Luke’s case, that begins before you even take the powers into consideration.  He knows that he can only avoid those who exploited him as long as they think he’s dead.  For the first part of the series, he has enough double lives to worry about without being a superhero.  He’s just trying to keep his head down, live clean, and go unnoticed.  Luke is a big guy, obviously, but his quiet reserve makes him appear to take up less space than he really does.

Because of these extreme extenuating circumstances, Luke has a lot more to lose when he dons the hoodie and goes after Cottonmouth’s operation.  It’s a huge risk to put himself on any type of radar, but he does it anyway.  Initially, he’s drawn out of the shadows because of what happened to Pops, looking to make things right – shades of both Spider-Man (feeling guilty over what he could’ve done to save Uncle Ben) and Iron Man (at first using the suit solely to go after the terrorists who bought his weapons illegally.)  But as soon as he pushes, Cottonmouth pushes back, and it’s not Luke that Cottonmouth pushes at directly; it’s the neighborhood.  Luke, seeing the people on his block being put to the knife over his actions, wrestles with whether it’d be better for them if he bowed out or fought back against those looking to hurt them.  No surprise which one he chooses.

I like that he’s such a local hero, that he mostly stays on the street level looking out for ordinary people.  It’s a strong motivation for him, and it drives him farther than concerns for his own well-being do (not that he’s selfless or never has to deal with his own stuff, but I like that most of his time is spent protecting people that no one else notices from bad guys without comic-book powers.)  Things get more elevated and embroiled in personal drama toward the end of season 1, and I know that any comic-book show needs some stuff like that, but I hope that his journey going forward always keeps the day-to-day safety of Harlem’s residents in view.