After two short teasers and a panel at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Netflix has released the first full trailer for Marvel’s “Luke Cage” series, and just like the title character, it hits hard.
The trailer, set to a remix of Miike Snow’s “Heart is Full”, features several action sequences, including Luke (Mike Colter) stopping a car with his body, beating up thugs in a restaurant, and walking unflinchingly into machine gun fire.
It also gives us our first look at the origin of Luke’s super powers, which had only been hinted at in “Jessica Jones”. There are shots of Luke emerging from a tank after having been experimented on and coming out “with abilities”. In a nice nod to the comics, Luke emerges from the tank wearing a silver head band and wrist bands, both of which were part of his original costume.
Luke isn’t the sole focus of the trailer, however, as much of the supporting cast also gets some time in the spotlight. To the surprise of pretty much nobody, Rosario Dawson will be returning as Claire Temple, a role that she previously played in “Jessica Jones” and both seasons of “Daredevil”. It seems that Dawson is fulfilling a similar role to Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe; acting as a character that connects all the different series together in the lead up to “The Defenders”.
We also get a more in-depth look at the series villain, Cornell Stokes, also known as Cottonmouth (Mahershala Ali). There are glimpses of him playing a keyboard, juxtaposed with shots of him in a bloodstained suit, which seems to indicate that Stokes will follow the Marvel Netflix series trend of cultured, complicated villains like Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Kilgrave (David Tennant).
Simone Missick’s police detective Misty Knight also makes an appearance, telling Luke that “You may be bulletproof, but Harlem ain’t”. Whether this means that she will be at odds with the unbreakable vigilante throughout the series remains to be seen. However, at the “Luke Cage” SDCC panel, Missick stated that the character would be “her own person”, telling fans that “[s]he’s not the wife. She’s not the girlfriend. She’s not a sidepiece or a sidekick. For all the Misty Knight fans, this show gives you everything you want and more”.
Finally, the trailer gives us a look at Pop (Frankie Faison), who owns the barber shop where Luke works. It looks like Pop will be acting as a mentor who pushes Luke towards being a hero. Here’s hoping he doesn’t suffer the usual fate of super hero mentors and makes it through the whole series.
All 13 episodes of Luke Cage will be available to stream on Netflix on September 30th.