Luke cage was a Netflix Original Series based around the Marvel Character Luke Cage. It was in the same universe as all the other Netflix Marvel series, but this time it focused on the comic book character Luke Cage. For this post, I am going to focus on the first season as that is something I remember more than the other seasons. Luke Cage takes place in modern-day Harlem in New York City and in the series he uses his powers of unbreakable skin and super strength. He uses these powers to fight the crime in the city, with the main villain being Cottonmouth. This series is a fight for power in the streets of Harlem. Whether that be between Cottonmouth, Mariah, or Luke Cage, they are all trying to fight for their vision of the streets. The story portrayed black culture in a way that many TV series have not done and was the first Marvel property to portray black culture on screen. The main spot in the series was at Pop’s barbershop, a known neutral zone in Harlem. This series lets the viewer explore what the culture is like in Harlem while respecting and exploring new avenues of storytelling for a character that is often forgetting in the Marvel lineup. The struggle for power in the series is the main idea of the whole series as Luke Cage is “overpowered” when compared to those who oppose him. It’s all about how they can get more powerful to defeat him and take control of the streets of Harlem. This type of power struggle can be directly linked to the other arguments that we have looked at this semester. Luke Cage would be the “other” in the story because everyone is out to get him in the story. I feel like the creators were trying to make the viewers think about the motivations that the villains were experiencing. They explored Cottonmouth’s past, which was the best part of the first season, to fully try to explain the characters’ motivations and allowed the viewers to feel for him. It wanted to portray the struggles of Black Americans throughout their childhood and was exploring how that childhood can lead some down a dark path. 