Luke Cage, season 2
8.5/10
Overall, one of the better Marvel Netflix seasons we've seen. It seems that the show runner really took to heart the criticisms people made of season one.
There was no mid-season giant left turn that got rid of an interesting villain.
Both villains remained complicated. Bushmaster in particular was sympathetic. Mariah's daughter may or may not go bad in a future season. Some of what I expected to happen did, but then again some things that I was expecting didn't, and there was a twist at the end that I didn't see coming.
It took a while for Misty to get her arm, and during that time, they did a good job of explaining some of the issues amputees have to deal with, from the emotional pain of losing a body part to frustrations they have with the way people treat them.
When she finally got her robot arm, it was from Rand Industries instead of Tony Stark, and so far it has no special weapons built into it like the one in the comic books. It's just an arm that works and allows her to do martial arts with both arms again, and she can throw punches with it that land a little harder, and it allows her to block blows from superpowered opponents.
Danny showed up. I'll talk more about him below outside of this hidden section. They established their bond and he spouted Asian monk crap like in the comic books, but he and Luke didn't start Heroes for Hire. That was a shock.
The twist at the end was that Luke inherited Harlem's Paradise. Further, in the power vacuum created when Mariah Dillard went to jail, he had to broker a peace deal with other organized crime groups. It's heavily implied that that peace deal combined with being in charge of Harlem's Paradise might lead him down the path to becoming a gangster instead of a hero, but they also left hints in place that that will not happen.
For example, the Biggy Smalls painting that was always used as a symbol of someone seeking power among the criminal underground was removed by Luke once he took over. That painting is now replaced by a picture of Mohammed Ali. I was expecting this show to end with the founding of Heroes for Hire, but instead it ended with us asking if Luke will become a mob boss of some kind.
One nice thing about the scenes with Danny is that the Marvel-Netflix people clearly heard the complaints made about him. There was some tweaking done to the character, which was explained away with some hand-waving, but the character is definitely less annoying now, and a bit more like the comic book. I especially liked when Luke and Danny were bonding over old school hip hop.
All in all, season 2 was a lot better than season 1.
If you liked the first half of season 1, but lost interest once Cottonmouth went away, you'll love season 2.