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Critic Reviews
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As season two unfolds, the show and its protagonist draw power from the past, both in confronting and embracing it. And in doing so, Luke Cage becomes the first Marvel show to not only best its first season, but also maintain most of the momentum (it’s not omnipotent, after all). The character and show regain a lot of their swagger.
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An all-around more evenly paced and executed venture from start to finish. From the performances to the directing to the fight choreography, every nut and bolt of this narrative has been tightened down, and the narrative energy emits more spark.
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This one is stronger, faster, and infinitely more compelling--all things it has in common with its hero.
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Luke Cage's second season marks the darkest point of the Netflix Marvel shows to date, and will have you rethinking your definition of 'good' and 'evil' once you reach the ending.
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The show is, to be clear, worth admiring for the way it deeply cares about its ensemble and their journeys--Misty (Simone Missick) in particular is well-served with plenty to do. But that’s where most of the bloat lies: long scenes, with pretty quick emotional conclusions.
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An intriguing, but slightly less riveting, second season of Luke Cage.
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[Luke Cage's] personal desires are in direct competition with his obligations as a celebrity and role model. The Netflix series struggles to coalesce those roles and present Cage as one coherent, if conflicted, person; instead, we see different iterations of the hero from episode to episode. It's a flaw that makes for a season of Luke Cage that's alternately bland and thrilling, formulaic and insightful--which is to say, as variable as Luke Cage himself.
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There are plenty of things this season does well, really well, but there is so much filler and narrative dragging of feet in between that it’s hard to recommend it outright.
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Luke Cage might be bulletproof, but the character's eponymous Netflix series looks weaker in Season 2 -- not bad, overall, but still experiencing the equivalent of a sophomore slump.
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Despite its improvements in season two, that reality is something that Luke Cage still struggles with. In many ways, Luke Cage reads as a would-be groundbreaking superhero show from the ’90s displaced into 2018: earnest, a bit hollow, and more primed toward political resonance than artistic grace.
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Too much canvas with wild splashes of paint deployed to fill it. Compared with the first, the second is a disappointment, but far from a failure. Best experienced in small bites instead of huge indigestible chunks.
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It's a step up from other recent Marvel/Netflix shows when it comes to a memorable villain with season-long objectives. It's still a season with wildly fluctuating spikes and valleys in energy. One moment it walks with the same swagger and purpose and ideology that carried the initial seven episodes of the first season, the next moment it slumps into a fallow funk as if saving its energy and budget.
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Even beyond the imbalanced plot/time ratio, there's a flatness--and cheapness--to be found across the whole run. For every one dynamic scene, whether straight-up superhero action(*) or simply a moment involving many characters bouncing off each other at once, there are at least a half-dozen lifeless two-person conversations.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 111 out of 170
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Mixed: 31 out of 170
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Negative: 28 out of 170
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Jun 27, 2018
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Jun 26, 2018
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Jun 27, 2018