The Luke Cage premiere is just 10 days away, and Netflix has released a new featurette teasing Luke Cage’s journey from convict to hero. The clip also includes Rosario Dawson and Mike Colter speaking about their characters in the series. Misty Knight was only featured briefly in the footage, but Simone Missick did have one thing to add about her character in the commentary. “Here there are no capes. It’s just, I’m whoopin ass.”
In the footage, Luke Cage is at Seagate Prison. We know he’s been wrongfully convicted, but for what remains to be seen. We don’t really know anything about Luke Cage’s life pre-Jessica Jones. The clip does reveal that after leaving Jessica, he gets a job sweeping up hair in a Harlem barbershop. That’s how he meets Cottonmouth, a gun runner using a nightclub as a front. Luke Cage meets up with Nurse Claire Temple in a coffeeshop. Claire reassures Luke that he’s not a freak, but actually rather amazing. How the two first meet is still unclear.
Luke Cage Season 1 picks up a few months after Jessica Jones leaves off, but Charlie Cox recently revealed an interesting fact. Parts of Daredevil Season 2 happened at the same time as forthcoming events in Luke Cage . Nurse Claire Temple’s story arc in particular.
“One thing that I thought was really cool is that in the second season [of Daredevil ], we had a scene together and in the storyline we hadn’t seen each other for a long time and it takes place at the hospital. Rosario had — Claire Temple has a cut in her eyebrow. So I was like, ‘What is that?’ Apparently it had nothing to do with our world but it’s part of Luke Cage . The timeline had been thought through and worked out so that whatever’s going on in Luke Cage , which we don’t know, I don’t know, somehow at some point during that show, the next day she’s in the hospital talking to me,” the Daredevil actor shared at Wizard World Chicago.
This means that Claire may be extending her job search to Harlem after resigning from her night shift at Metro-General Hospital in Hell's Kitchen at the end of Daredevil Season 2. What brings her to Harlem remains to be seen.
Mike Colter also revealed at San Diego Comic-Con that he believes episode 4 is pivotal to the story. “Episode 4 is one of my favorite episodes because it answers so many questions and gives you so much backstory,” Colter said.
Cottonmouth may be the main villain, but there’s a few more guys who could start some beef with Luke Cage too. Erik LaRay Harvey plays Diamondback. Also known as Willis Stryker, set photos show him in an altercation with Luke in the middle of the street. Shades, played by Theo Rossi, could also pose a threat. Both Shades and Stryker have ties to Luke Cage’s mysterious past.
Stryker, Cage’s childhood friend, was also born and raised in Harlem. His alias, Diamondback, is a nod to his love for knives. In fact, Luke Cage was at one point involved with Stryker’s criminal antics, but was sent to prison after he was framed by his former friend over the attention of Stryker’s love interest, Reva Connors. When he finally got out of prison after an experiment gone wrong, he took on the name Luke Cage (formerly Carl Lucas) and started using his newfound powers to eradicate his former criminal organizations in Harlem. Stryker’s also known to be a good friend of Shades.
Luke Cage premieres Sept. 30.
