Now that Disney Plus is pumping out new Marvel TV series to great fanfare, it’s almost hard to remember back when Netflix was the home for Marvel on the small-screen, with the Defenders-verse of street-level heroes becoming firm fan favorites from the debut of Daredevil in 2015 to the abrupt cancellation of the whole sub-franchise in 2018/2019, a move which hit the fandom hard at the time.
Looking back on his tenure in the MCU, Luke Cage star Mike Colter has now revealed he regrets not getting to tell the full story of the Hero of Harlem as planned. Speaking in an interview with Collider, Colter was asked if he felt his guest spot in the Jessica Jones season 3 finale, which aired after the second and final season of LC, gave him any kind of closure for he role. The actor admitted it didn’t, as there was still so much to explore with the character.
“To be honest, no, it didn’t give me a chance to have any closure,” Colter said. “There were so many places we could have taken it. There’s obviously the Alias series where Jessica and Luke had a child and had this adult life they were trying to live, and there’s this moment where they are working out their blue-collar, making ends meet life together, which is very interesting. There’s the journey that Luke had in his own series with Harlem’s Paradise, where he’s taken over the club, and is he gonna be a bad guy or a guy that is on the other side of the law, and who’s gonna stop him.”
As Colter points out, Luke and Krysten Ritter’s Jessica were destined to end up together, and presumably have a kid together, too – in the comics, their daughter is called Danielle Cage, named after Danny Rand AKA Iron Fist. What’s more, his comments also remind us of the huge twist at the end of Luke Cage season 2, where the bulletproof man did his best impression of Michael Corleone in The Godfather and took over from Bushmaster as the latest king of Harlem’s underworld.
This could’ve led to a fascinating arc where Luke’s allies, maybe Jessica included, had to go against him when he went too far over into the dark side. But it wasn’t meant to be, as it seems unlikely that story will ever get told at this point. There’s a slim chance Colter may return as Luke Cage – just as Charlie Cox is coming back as Matt Murdock – but, if he ever did, Marvel would no doubt want to start from scratch with the character instead of just reheating Netflix’s old plotlines.
