Episode Title: DWYCK
Originally Aired: September 30th 2016
The most recent episode of Marvel’s Luke Cage featured almost as many sweet Christmases as it did relevant minutes. It was an episode that moved the story forward without much happening within the episode itself.
It featured a lot of an injured Luke wondering around town, multiple meetings within the criminal underworld, and Misty meeting with a police psychologist, to help set the stage for the final three episodes of the season. Luke is going to risk life in an untested medical procedure while Diamondback will run the dark side of Harlem. He will also be working on a legitimate deal that the will be brokered by Mariah with the police to sell his Judas bullets to help bring in Luke and other powered people.
Mike Colter may not be the best actor in the series but he does a very good injured shuffle, he should because he has been doing it for two full episodes. One shot to the stomach and another to the left shoulder has him on the ropes, his advanced healing is keeping him alive but the rest of his abilities are killing him even faster. After stealing some clothes from a laundry mat, beating up a pair of cops, Luke finally reunites with Claire and her mother’s restaurant, where she was searching for a way to help him. Even with the flash drive that cost Reva her life, the two are at a loss and must turn to the only person that might be able to help Dr. Burstein, the man who ran the experiments at Seagate.
In the biggest waste of time in this episode, we spend plenty of time with Misty and her forced meeting with a police advocate psychologist. In this interview, we learn more about her control issues and how her thirst for lemonade led to her thirst for justice. The meeting challenged her on her past, her relationship with Scarfe and her lack of a personal life, and it concluded in the worst scene of the season. She takes a break walks back in and breaks down in a bit of horrible acting that for some reason the Dr. and her boss buy. It is clear that it was just filler that no one involved cared about as long as it ate up the right amount of running time.
Diamondback is as good at magic as he is charismatic. He continues to flounder in the wake of the loss of Cottonmouth but I hope that with the stage set the final three episodes will be something special. He is a demented sociopath he murders four people for not buying his overpriced products. Even if he does not survive this season, he may affect the Marvel world going forward with his technology. He also threatened Shades because he loved Cottonmouth for some unnamed reason, in a scene that made zero sense. He sent Shades to manage Cottonmouth and it was implied that he would kill him if need be even though that is not what they wanted, so why is he upset that Mariah killed her cousin?
The best thing about this episode is the fact that it should be the last of the filler episodes as things are going to be moving forward toward the conclusion. My expectations for next week are that Luke will be healed and ready to get back in the fight and that Diamondback will have the other crews afraid to test him and a deal in place to arm the police. The cops and the news will be freaking out after that video of Luke being shot and surviving was leaked, and they will be willing to kill Luke if he will not come in on his own.
Channel: Superhero 