MovieChat Forums > Luke Cage (2016) Discussion > From greatness to disappointment in half...

From greatness to disappointment in half a season.


I've never seen a show go from great to disappointing so quickly.

In my opinion the biggest problem the show has if i had to boil it down to one singular thing isn't cottonmouths death. It isn't even diamondback's injection into the second half of the series. It's the bullet. The judas bullet is a microcosm of a more pertinent issue the series suffers from which is that it just destroys any kind of pacing the series had going for itself and it was already starting to lose it by time he gets shot anyway.

From the time Cage gets shot which is at the end of episode 7, the bullets and cage's suffering from them doesn't wrap up until episode 10. This one plot point stretches itself out over 3 episodes. WHY?! That's a quarter of the series! And even with this one plot point, so much of it doesn't even make sense.

1) When claire attempts to get the bullet out and realizes she can't cut into him, he specifically says that they need to figure out something quick because it's getting hard to breathe. Clearly he's worried he may die because he gives claire the flash drive but the show doesn't actually treat it as if he's capable of dying because he immediately chases down diamondback and fights him in the theater which leads to....

2) him getting shot AGAIN! in the middle of broad day light with no one around no less. His demeanor doesn't change from when he got shot the first time. You could make the claim that since he got shot in his shoulder that there's no threat of it being fatal and i'd buy that if it weren't for the fact that...

3) When they give him the acid bath (which happens a mighty long time after he intially gets shot--its been over a whole day), they only remove the shrapnel from his shoulder. They never remove the shrapnel from his abdomen. What makes the whole scene all the more egregious is that the scene is predicated on the idea that they need to be quick because having him in the acid too long with kill him. So you can't even suspend your disbelief to make it seem like they took it out after

Why did all this need to span 3 episodes? It's such sloppy pacing and whether it be for better or worse, there's a huge tonal shift once diamondback is introduced. And to keep things extra terrible, once Cage recovers they drive down to Georgia for the church flashback scene which doesn't amount to anything other than magically remembering that Diamondback is his half brother. The second half of the series doesn't feel episodic at all. It seems like a poorly paced movie. Episodes don't have any meaningful start or finish like they did in the earlier episodes.

I really hope they tighten things up for season 2

"Sure, we'll help you, just sit down and wait for Detective LIKE-I-GIVE-A-DAMN!" ~Chief Wiggum

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You mean it gets worse??? Taking me forever to watch this sloth fest.

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Overall I enjoyed it, but yeah I would agree with you here. The 2nd half just felt underwhelming. Hopefully we'll get an improvement if a season 2 comes out in the near future.

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I'm on ep7 and enjoying the show quite a bit more than Jessica Jones which just dragged on with Kilgrave

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