Liam Hoofe reviews the eleventh episode of Luke Cage season 2…
The past comes back to haunt several characters in the eleventh episode of Luke Cage season 2, The Creator.
Cross-generational conflict has been a big theme in Luke Cage season 2. Whether it’s Luke’s father trying to repair all of the damage he has done and set his son on a better path, or Bushmaster seeking vengeance for the wrongs done to his family, the past has been ever-present and never more so than in the season’s eleventh episode.
We spend considerable chunks of this episode’s runtime watching the events that led Bushmaster back to Harlem at the beginning of the season. We watch him as a boy witnessing his family being manipulated by The Stokes, we watch as he helplessly watches his mother burn, and finally, we see him taking a bullet in an attempted murder on his young life. It is those events that lead to him becoming the villain that we all know, and it is through those flashbacks that he finishes the episode as a much more sympathetic character. Bushmaster was absent from the last episode and he awakens in this episode to discover that his whole family has perished at the hands of Mariah.
Well, not quite his whole family. His aunty Ingrid managed to escape and it is Luke’s mission in this episode to protect her. While he may be the titular character, a lot of this season hasn’t focused too much on Luke Cage, and this episode was no different. Luke’s mission to help Ingrid was just a reason to bring Luke and Bushmaster together at the end of the episode in what was one of the most interesting exchanges this season. Bushmaster effectively offered Luke a peace treaty but Luke realised that Harlem needs to be kept under his control and that he only helped Bushmaster to help bring down Mariah.
As for Mariah, her Lady Macbeth inspired descent into madness continued this episode. Everything around her is crumbling but she is clinging on to her crown of thorns atop of Harlem. At one point, she even spoke to a vision of her dead uncle, the man who raped her and fathered Tilda. She has now become the big bad of the season and her descent into madness has been fascinating to watch.
She’s not the only one being plagued by visions though, and her partner in crime, Shades is struggling to deal with the aftermath of last episode’s massacre. Shades has been wrestling his conscience since killing Comanche earlier in the season, and it finally got the better of him and he confronted Mariah about it, almost strangling her to death in one of the episode’s most emotionally charged scenes. He ended the episode by handing himself in to Misty so that he could bring down his former lover.
Luke Cage may not have been perfect but it has done a damn good job at developing strong characters and that is all coming together nicely with only two episodes of the season to go. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up over the next two hours of this show, and it will be fascinating to see how things are going to play out.
Liam Hoofe
