The next Marvel TV show to arrive on Netflix will be Luke Cage season 2, which will see the return of Mike Colter’s Hero of Harlem for the first time since he teamed up with his fellow street-wise crime-fighters in 2017’s The Defenders. Some of the big things fans are excited to see in the series’ sophomore run include a new villain, Mustafa Shakir’s Bushmaster, and a team-up with Finn Jones’ Iron Fist.
Now, in a new interview, showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker has shared a bunch of intriguing details about the upcoming season. First off, he teased what we can expect from Bushmaster, the latest crime boss threatening Luke’s hometown. Apparently, he’s going to be super-powered, as the writer described him as “bullet-resistant” and outlined his abilities:
“It’s not gonna bounce off, but he has his ways of healing. And he has very similar strength to Luke in terms of being able to take a punch and give a punch.”
Coker then went on to mention how Bushmaster’s Caribbean heritage will be an important part of his character:
“Jamaica has always been a country of resistance. They were the first to cast off their shackles and say, ‘We have our own government, this is how we’re doing things.’ We put a lot of that stuff into the character of Bushmaster.”
Next, he teased what Iron Fist’s role will be in Luke Cage season 2 and it turns out that Danny Rand might teach the unbreakable man some of his mystical tricks. “Danny helps Luke channel his chi,” Coker revealed, before promising that the two characters would take part “in a fight to end all fights that was just one of the most fun things we’ve done.”
As much as Luke Cage season 1 got right, it’s generally thought that the second half dropped the ball – primarily due to the switch of villain from Mahershala Ali’s Cottonmouth to Erik LaRay Harvey’s Diamondback. Surprisingly, Coker addressed this, though he thinks the reaction is mostly due to Ali’s incredible performance.
“The standard conventional wisdom is that the show was great up until episode 7, and then went downhill because Diamondback wasn’t as good a villain as Cottonmouth. But as Jeph Loeb, the President of Marvel Television jokes, Mahershala couldn’t have followed Mahershala!”
In a similar vein, the showrunner promised that he and his team would work on improving the action in season 2, after admitting that the climactic fight between Luke and Diamondback in the season 1 finale was pretty lackluster.
“It’s one of those things where it’s like, ‘Okay, how do we learn from this?’ We had a brilliant director in Clark Johnson, but we had limited resources and we were still trying to figure it out. When you look at the fight sequences in season 2, a lot of those things have been smoothed out.”
Finally, many are wondering if Luke and Danny’s team-up could lead to a Heroes For Hire spinoff, which would see the pair form a crime-fighting business like in the comics. There’s been nothing confirmed on that front just yet, but Coker remains optimistic about the chances of it happening, revealing that conversations have been had on the topic over at Marvel Television.
“It’s something that’s in the air. Internally at Marvel Television, everybody knows there’s a part of that combination that is inevitable, particularly when you watch them together in the way that we did it. If feels right. It feels good. It feels like, ‘I want to see more of this combination. Heroes for Hire is really not off the table.'”
Luke Cage season 2 smashes onto the streaming service in just a couple of months’ time, on June 22nd.