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.