Luke Cage 1x11 Review: Hostage Negotiation

“Now You’re Mine”
Written by Christian Taylor
Directed by George Tillman Jr.
 
The Story
People flee Harlem’s Paradise. Claire tries to help Luke get Misty out, because the shooters are using her as their target. They make it to the kitchen. Claire gets captured, along with everyone else who didn’t run. Including Mariah’s political opponent. Shades thinks Stryker is being extremely reckless. Stryker doesn’t care. He blows up the industrial fridge Luke has barricaded the kitchen with, but they’re already down in the cellar. Stryker makes Damon Boone (Mariah’s opponent) tell the police Luke Cage is threatening the hostages. Candace, the girl who gave a statement against Luke sprained her ankle really bad. Claire helps her, and she admits the truth to Claire. Claire has Candace “pass out” so she can go to the staff lockers. Misty agrees to help Luke, if she doesn’t bleed out first. ADA Tower from Daredevil shows up...to reassure the cops that Mariah is negotiating a deal with the mayor about advanced ammunition. Claire taps on the wall of the employee locker room with a wrench until Luke hears and punches in. Bahaha. Tower doesn’t want the police using the Luke-killing bullets. Stryker angrily tells Boone his life story. Shades is still super pissed, and he realizes the damage Candace could have just done them. Stryker calls Luke out with threats to the hostages lives. Claire patches Misty up some more (but she might lose her right arm). Stryker keeps telling the story. He and Luke went joyriding, but they got caught. Their dad sent Luke to the Marines and let Willis go to juvie, where he killed another boy who tried to shank him and ended up in adult prison. He blamed Luke for all of that. His mom died of cancer, alone in a shelter while he was in. Stryker punches Boone into the wall with his power glove. He’s dead. Shades is seeming less and less cool with following Stryker’s orders, but he just found the trapdoor. The cops get authorized to use the Judas bullets because of Boone’s death. Luke helps the hostages escape, but Stryker has Candace held over the 2nd floor balcony. Stryker drops her and runs. Luke catches her and the cops come in and surround him. Misty is getting taken to the hospital, but she makes sure the I.A. lady knows the score first. Shades gets arrested, along with everyone else who didn’t escape (basically only Stryker and Zip got out), and Claire stomps his sunglasses. Bahaha.
 
It’s interesting that Luke and Matt both make a point of not killing, but Jessica and Claire have each killed someone with no apparent inner turmoil afterward. One side I hadn’t considered before with Matt’s no-kill policy (even though Luke effectively has a no-kill policy too, it’s more noticeable with Matt because he constantly agonizes over it, whereas Luke just uses nonlethal force without explaining why) is that maybe it becomes much harder to justify killing when you’re the one with the power. If Claire hadn’t shoved that ninja out of the window, he would have killed her. He had the power in that situation, and she did what was necessary to survive. Kilgrave proved over and over that he was never going to change his ways, and he had just become even more powerful than he ever was before; killing him was the only way to stop him from killing and controlling more people. But Matt and Luke haven’t been in situations like that, where they are powerless compared to their enemy. For them, killing is still a choice—and not the kind of choice where it’s their life or their attackers’. It’s just like how Buffy wasn’t justified in using Slayer strength against Ted after he attacked her (at least, until she found out he was a robot). Fascinating.
 
Things I Liked

• “Your family is jacked up.”
• How quickly Candace pretended to pass out
• “The night nurse”
• Luke teasing Misty a bit when she’s lamenting not trusting him
• Tower and the I.A. lady both not trusting Mariah
• Dang, Willis and Luke are just every ill-fated pair of brothers from the Bible, aren’t they? Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Joseph and all his jealous older brothers. Luke even has a new name, like a lot of the Biblical patriarchs.
• “Son of a Preacher” playing while Stryker tells his story
• Luke and Claire are adorable, but they need to stay platonic
• “Trouble stalks me like a crazy ex-boyfriend.”
• I love so much that “coffee” is the show’s code for sex. I was gonna be facetious and do that, but then they went and did it for me! Props, if I haven’t already given them.
• The way Luke casually tosses that goon who does a really elaborate flying kick at him
• Claire vs. Shades!
• Misty and Claire bonding over unconscious Shades
• The showdown music is awesome
• Claire stomping Shades’ shades while glaring at him

 
Things I Didn’t

• Stryker making that politician guy drink, after he said he doesn’t drink
• Why was there creepy music with Stryker’s Bible, but no close-ups to what he specifically highlighted?

 
The Characters
One of the hallmarks of a good man is that it doesn’t occur to him to think of himself as a good man. Because he’s too busy being concerned for the welfare of others. That’s Luke. Stryker mocks him, taunts him, suggesting that he could abandon Candace and flee, but it doesn’t even occur to Luke to leave an innocent girl (even one who sold him out) in danger. He risks going up to confront a man he knows has bullets that can kill him because he can’t allow him to kill the hostages.
 
How does Claire keep getting more awesome? Because she does. She’s more fun, more assertive, more fearless and just has more room to shine in this show than in the other two. I mean, she just basically got the miniboss fight against Shades! That’s so cool! She might just be my favorite Marvel Netflix character overall. I wonder if things would’ve gone differently between her and Matt if he’d met her at this stage of her character development instead of when she was new to superheroes. Would this Claire want to be with Matt, or would she still find him too big an emotional risk?
 
Okay, so I was mostly right about Stryker and Luke’s bad history, except that Stryker’s prison time was even less Luke’s fault than I expected. I thought Luke would have gotten him in worse trouble by naïvely telling the truth about what happened, but it was their dad who helped Luke get off while throwing Willis under the bus. So why the crap is he taking out his resentment on Luke instead of their dad?
 
Overall Rating
5/5