Luke Cage will find himself in quite the predicament by the time The Defenders begins, but don’t expect Marvel’s Power Man to spend all eight episodes locked up behind the bars of Seagate Prison.
That’s according to Mike Colter, who spoke to Entertainment Weekly in anticipation of Netflix’s upcoming team-up series. It’ll premiere sometime this summer – long after Iron Fist stages his solo outing in March – and off the back of last week’s media blowout, Colter has offered up some fascinating new details regarding both the ensemble series and, specifically, the next chapter in Cage’s story.
“It’s safe to say Cage is not going to spend the entire season of The Defenders behind bars. He’s been able to come clean and deal with his past… The difficulty with Cage [in the first season] is that he has this secret, he has this thing that he’s been trying to run away from and deal with, and that’s a big burden to bear. That weighs on you, that changes who you are as a person. Now that that’s out of the way, I think we can give him a different approach to life.”
Out of the foursome, Colter’s musclebound hero has already been acquainted with Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones – a rooftop burger with Charlie Cox’s Daredevil may be on the cards, too – but elsewhere in the interview, the towering actor drew attention to his on-screen friendship with Danny Rand, the martial arts expert to be played by Game of Thrones star Finn Jones. According to Colter, the dynamic between Danny and Luke isn’t necessarily a brains-meets-brawn situation, but there is a certain “wisdom-versus-youth” quality to their partnership.
“He’s a young guy. There’s an exuberance that Iron Fist comes with that Luke Cage wants to temper a bit. It can’t help but have a wisdom-versus-youth quality… Danny comes out like a bull in a china shop in some ways, and I think Luke has seen the world and knows certain things. It’s a cool combination that’ll work out.”
Despite the recent media spotlight, The Defenders is still without an official premiere date. Iron Fist is right around the corner (March 17) though, so we fully expect Marvel to break that radio silence very soon indeed.
