Relationship Spotlight: Mariah Dillard & Cornell Stokes a.k.a. Cottonmouth (Luke Cage)

There a number of different adages you could probably apply to Cottonmouth and Mariah if you wanted to.  “Blood is thicker than water.”  “You can’t choose your family.”  Even stuff along the lines of tigers not changing their stripes and apples falling within reach of their trees.  But though the relationship obviously has its roots in these different ideas, it doesn’t feel clichéd or tropey.  Instead, it’s a fascinating, fraught connection that keeps both characters entangled in one another (a few spoilers for Cottonmouth-Mariah.)

At first glance, these cousins appear to be positioned as polar opposites – the crime boss and the councilwoman.  Really, though, they have much more in common.  Having grown up surrounded by the family business, both carry it on in their own way, and both have identities that are not what they seem.  Mariah, although she presents herself as the respectable politician, plays a shell game with official funds to help bankroll Cottonmouth’s criminal ventures.  Her illegal activities are much more of a secret than her cousin’s; Cottonmouth is the sort of man who’s widely known to be a crime boss, and his front as a legitimate businessman/club owner is more cover-by-rote than anything else.

They play the same game with the actual illegal activities they conduct and their respective attitudes toward the family business/desire for power.  Cottonmouth’s is much more out in the open.  He’s the one sending his lieutenants out to “deliver messages” or bring gun deals to fruition, while Mariah is eager to say that she’s “just” the money, that she doesn’t even fully want to know what Cottonmouth is up to as long as he takes care of it quickly and discreetly.  But when push comes to shove, Mariah has a much greater capacity for crime and power plays than she lets on.  When she takes over partway through the season, even as she insists that she’s just tying up loose ends so they can never come back to bite her, there’s also that little piece of her that takes pride in improving on Cottonmouth’s – by her estimation – sloppy operation.

It’s such a messed-up relationship.  Mariah wants nothing to do with Cottonmouth (even though, deep down so far that it takes her a good chunk of the season to admit it to herself, she kind of does,) but she still can’t turn him down when he needs something from her.  She knows how her dealings with him could mess with her career if they come out, but she does it anyway.  Cottonmouth is beholden to Mariah for the money she’s given him, and yet (maybe because he’s seen how she can’t tell him no?), he still acts like he has all the power. 

Both went through very different iterations of the same trauma, and both kind of blame the other for it, especially now that the actual people who traumatized them are dead and can no longer be confronted about it.  Cottonmouth resents Mariah because, while she was sent away to school and put on the path to her current highly-respected career, he was forced to join the family business as a teenager.  As he was made to commit horrific acts at Mama Mabel’s behest, his impression of events is that Mariah abandoned him by allowing herself to be sent away.  Meanwhile, Mariah loathes the way Cottonmouth remembers their Uncle Pete as the one person who tried to look out for him and wanted to nurture his musical talent instead of pushing him toward crime, because Uncle Pete’s abuse of her was the real reason she was sent away.  Hate and love and need and anger get all jumbled up between them, and it’s only a matter of time before all those fomenting emotions bring them to a crisis point.

Favorite Characters: Mariah Dillard (Luke Cage)

(Spoilers ahead.)

One thing I appreciate about Marvel’s TV properties is that there are often so many female characters and characters of color that there’s room for a wider range of roles within the story.  In the films, the ratio is drastic enough that all the women and PoC pretty much need to be firmly on the side of the good guys, but on TV, we have a plentiful enough selection that, in addition to the heroes running around being awesome, we’ve also had female villains and villains of color.  And even, as here – gasp! – female villains of color. 

Councilwoman Mariah Dillard is all about reinvention.  She works tirelessly toward a new Harlem Renaissance, giving the neighborhood a revamped image and showing the rest of New York what Harlem can be.  She wants people thinking about urban development and community initiatives, not crime and violence.  She’s about power, yes, but she’s also really, genuinely about helping the people of her city.

But for Mariah, that crime and violence is never far away.  She was raised by the notorious crime boss Mama Mabel, and her cousin Cottonmouth carries on the family business to this day.  Despite Mariah’s desire to be the respectable face of Harlem, willing the public to forget about her ignoble background, she’s also fiercely loyal to family and continually agrees to lend Cottonmouth a hand in his criminal enterprises.  She lets him launder his money through her real estate projects, and though she’s well aware that any carelessness on his part risks everything she’s worked for in a major way, she can’t bring herself to cut ties with him.  Both because he’s family and because she’s knows she’s gotten in deep enough that she can’t untangle her fate from his, she can’t wash her hands of him.

Mariah likes to think that she’s the responsible, ethical one cleaning up Cottonmouth’s messes, but he’s not the only one who chooses to go down dark roads.  Mariah’s drive – to succeed for the sake of Harlem’s residents, to seize the power she wants – leads her to plenty of sketchy decisions on her own that Cottonmouth has nothing to do with.  Her actions get darker and darker over the course of the series.  Whether she’s trying to cover the tracks of her past sins, create a rallying point to make the people follow her, or hold her own against the family’s rivals, Mariah proves ruthless in her ambition and ingenuity.

While Mariah has many talents, her greatest one is perhaps her ability to create a narrative.  It’s a gift that’s served her well in politics and long helped her maintain the appearance of distance from her unsavory connections, but she employs it to excellent effect as a weapon against Luke.  In her hands, Luke becomes a symbol of all the problems that have emerged in the world since Tony Stark revealed himself as Iron Man.  He’s the powered freak wreaking havoc on the lives of the good, hard-working people of Harlem.  Look at the police who are so powerless to stop this monster, profiling honest citizens in their bungled attempts to bring him down.  Mariah’s the only one who can effectively neutralize the threat of this superpowered menace, while at the same time taking on the police who’d rather harass Harlem’s people than keep them safe.  (And if it just so happens that Luke is the man who’s been trying to disrupt her family’s operation, what of it?)  This is what people mean when they say “mastermind.”