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.”