The Super Powered Fancast

Marvel’s Luke Cage

Netflix

Season 2 Episode 9

For Pete’s Sake

Luke and company are on the run and they hold up at a Rand Enterprises facility as Bushmaster comes to Tilda’s shop looking for the ingredients he needs for his formula. When he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, the madness he was warned about starts to manifest.

Luke and Misty confront Mariah about everything she’s lost and the leverage everyone has over her. It’s a compelling argument that we all know she could care less about. Mariah puts a proposal to both Luke and Misty that both of them find distasteful, but Luke is the one who decides that it might be worth it to listen to her. When Misty returns to the precinct, she confronts the new commanding officer with some private information as Luke and Mariah go back and forth about what Harlem needs.

There are a lot of great conversations in this episode and they’re done in a way that doesn’t make them prohibitive to the tension of the story. There’s also some great intrigue in this episode as well as Bushmaster ups the bounty on Luke and company, prompting more than just his crew to consider taking them down.

So much is revealed in this episode, especially from Mariah. I cannot express how electric Alfre Woodard is in this episode, especially in the scene where she finally tells Tilda the brutal, unvarnished truth. It is a powerful scene. It adds so much to the character of Mariah that it is almost possible to forget everything she is and has done as you find yourself empathizing with her and her complicated history. It is a glorious performance punctuated by the fact that she finally admits something to Tilda that left me reeling. Reg E Cathey gives an amazing performance as well and his scenes with Luke are awesome.

Bushmaster catches up to them and there is another really well choreographed fight between him and Luke while everyone springs into action, including Mariah. It’s a great cap to this episode, but there is the feeling that it’s too easy. That there should be more and that we aren’t done with Bushmaster yet.