“Luke Cage” Recap Season 1 Episode 9: “DWYCK”

“Luke Cage’s” ninth episode brings the pain on all fronts. While Luke succumbs to his bullet wounds, Mariah tries to find steady ground, and Misty must come to terms with herself

Welcome to the ninth episode of Marvel’s Luke Cage! We’re on a roll here at Bam Smack Pow, so let’s not leave it to any introductions.

Not-So-Short Summary

Misty sits with a shrink after strangling Claire Temple at the end of the last episode. The shrink shows her a picture of Diamondback holding her at gunpoint and she nearly loses it. But no, he doesn’t want to break her–she’s already broken. Can Misty be fixed? Nothing leaves her head.

“I see everything and I forget nothing,” she tells him.

After a while, he offers her a Country Time lemonade, which has a story behind it from her childhood. It transitions to questioning her about Scarfe and not seeing him for what he was. She’s losing control and she knows it.

When she has her breakthrough, she then sits down with her new boss, Inspector Ridley. Ridley wants her to bring in Luke Cage, even shows her the footage of Cage beating up the cops to inspire her.

Meanwhile, Luke Cage rides in the back of a garbage truck with two bullet woulds in him. “Oh… sweet Christmas,” he mutters as he steps out onto the streets again.

Copyright Marvel Studios

At Harlem’s Paradise, Shades watches the band warmup through the brand new window. Cottonmouth’s men have yet to find Luke–one of them even gets a shot to the shoulder from Diamondback for being so incompetent. Diamondback is upset at how things unfolded–Cottonmouth dying, Shades taking over–and threatens Shades at gunpoint, but nothing comes of it.

They still need to find Luke Cage. And the Unbreakable Man currently burgles a laundromat for a new hoodie. He staggers down the street like a drunk, only to get sidelined by the cops. This hoodie remains bullet hole-less for about four minutes.

Mariah pays a visit to Domingo to see if he wants an invite to the table to continue running Cottonmouth’s regime and to round up anyone else he thinks might be interested. Back at her house, her assistant shows the footage of Cage beating up the two police officers and it bolsters her spirits.

She arrives at Domingo’s that evening, finding a roundtable of organizations. “I’m out,” she declares, and everyone shifts uncomfortably in their seats. She will give Cottonmouth’s connections and sources, all for a price. Except that’s when Diamondback shows up. “Your greed superseded your common sense,” he declares, killing all but Domingo and Mariah.

He sees the crazy in her, but she finds the angle to keep him interested. If he manages to kill Luke Cage, he could potentially sell his crazy weapons in the light of day–to the police to take care of these new threats. Diamondback is in, except he wants Mariah to broker the deals.

Photo Credit: Marvel Studios

On the sidelines, Claire does some investigating on Luke Cage’s cellular structure and also Seagate and his past (since he gave her Riva’s flash drive)…until Luke Cage stumbles in. His first wound is getting infected. She wants to find Dr. Noah Burstein to see if he has any ideas.

Claire and Cage take a road trip to Dr. Burstein’s house. She shows up with swagger and gets them into Burstein’s house in a matter of minutes. He doesn’t know how to help… until they offer Riva’s flash drive. He unlocks it to find everything he lost in the explosion.

But Luke fades fast. They move to the barn where Burstein has as much technology as he could steal. They need a blood/DNA sample and Claire suggests stuffing a needle down his throat to get his mucous membrane.

Burstein plans to dip Luke Cage’s skin in boiling acid and then remove the shrapnel. At this point, I feel like an arc reactor from Tony Stark sounds like a better and easier option.

The experiment looks horrendously painful, and they don’t know how long to keep him in. Claire pulls him out too early and the scalpel doesn’t do anything. They have to dip him again. Finally, as he succumbs to cardiac arrest, he puts his hand in a fist, the signal for too much pain.

And he flatlines.

Badass Moment of the Episode

I was going to say tossing the cop into his own dash cam, but let’s go with getting dipped in boiling acid twice.

Best One-Liner

“Well you ain’t Houdini,” Shades says.
“And you ain’t Rick from Casablanca either,” Diamondback replies.

Counts of “Sweet Christmas:” 2

Let’s petition for a weekly webisode series of Claire Temple and Luke Cage driving around. “Cage and Temple’s Driving Adventures.” What snacks do they buy? Who picks the music?

Does anyone feel like Diamondback is a bit of a letdown? His big reveal a few episodes back left me a little flat. And while he has great charisma playing up the dark side of society, I don’t know what to make of him. Am I the only one feeling this way?

With three episodes remaining, what else does Luke Cage have up its sleeve? How many more hoodies will he go through?