10 Years Ago Today, An Iconic Marvel Character Finally Got His Own TV Show, And He'll Return Next Year

2016 was a watershed year for superheroes in Hollywood. Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool proved that R-rated superhero comedy could make bank at the box office. Batman Vs Superman finally brought DC’s Trinity together. Marvel’s Civil War delivered Black Panther and Spider-Man to the MCU. Meanwhile, television was having its own superhero boom. Arrow was heading into its 5th season, The Flash was going strong into its third, and Supergirl arrived on the CW for its sophomore season after launching on CBS the prior year. In the fall of 2016, Agents of SHIELD was returning for its fourth season, with Ghost Rider in tow. The Netflix corner of the MCU was also hitting its stride. Earlier in the year, Daredevil introduced The Punisher and Elektra to rave reviews. Superheroes were everywhere. Then one finally came to Harlem.

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On September 30th, 2016, Luke Cage finally starred in his own show. After appearing in Jessica Jones‘ first season, Mike Colter returned to the role as the first Black lead of a Marvel-produced television series. He would be joined by Mahershala Ali as Harlem club owner and crime lord Cottonmouth, Alfre Woodard as Mariah Dillard, Theo Rossi as Shades, and Simone Missick as Detective Misty Knight. Rosario Dawson would also return as nurse Claire Temple, the connective character between Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage. The show was created by Cheo Hodari Coker, a former music journalist and writer whose credits include Southland and Ray Donovan. Coker’s experience in music and crime thrillers brought a unique flavor to the show that explored Black life and culture in Harlem. The show did not shy away from the Black experience, and fans loved it.

Power Man Uncaged

When we first meet Luke Cage in Jessica Jones, he’s running his own bar. He and Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones discover each other’s powers, him having impervious skin and both sharing super strength. One thing leads to another, and much like in the comics, they start hooking up. There is also a lot of drama, because Jessica killed Luke’s wife while under the control of David Tennant’s Kilgrave. By the end of the season, Luke’s Bar is destroyed. He’s been taken over by Kilgrave. Then he’s shot in the face. Causing one hell of a meet-cute with Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple after she saves his life from the internal trauma caused by the shotgun blast. And that’s where we find him at the launch of his own show, working two jobs in Harlem and starting over.

Coker’s show roots Luke Cage at the center of two Black cultural institutions, the barbershop and Harlem’s fabled nightlife. During the day, Cage sweeps the floors at Pop’s Barbershop, where Frankie Faison’s Pop Hunter acts as Luke’s moral center. At night, he washes dishes at Harlem’s Paradise, the nightclub owned and operated by Mahershala Ali’s Cottonmouth. Coker would use the Harlem’s Paradise venue as an opportunity to include musical performances, with artists like Raphael Saadiq, Faith Evans, and Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings appearing. He worked with Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest for the show’s score. They would in turn collaborate with Method Man for an in-universe rap anthem called “Bulletproof Love.” After Luke Cage gets shot during a robbery, Method Man, appearing as himself, witnesses the event and goes on the radio to perform the track, inspired by seeing Cage survive after his hoodie is filled with bullet holes.

The show didn’t flinch in its depiction of how Black Americans face a system often designed to hold them down. It used the Hoodies Up movement as an expression of solidarity with the Black community, four years before the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests would force Americans to look closer at those same issues. In the show’s fourth episode, Carl Lucas is in prison after being wrongly convicted of a crime, abused by guards, and experimented on. The process grants him powers, and the scene itself gives the audience their only look at the classic Power Man costume, but the commentary lands despite the silly reveal. The showrunner pointed out that Luke Cage wasn’t a character that just happened to be black, and the Black experience needed to be part of the show. “I’m not one of these people that says, ‘Oh, Luke Cage happens to be black.’ No, he’s Black all day because I’m Black all day. There’s just no way around that.”

A Dangling Power Vacuum

The series would continue for another season, but never quite hit the creative highs of the first. In the first season’s story arcs, Cage comes up against multiple bad guys, including Woodard’s Black Mariah and Rossi’s Shades, vying for power in their own right. That dynamic leads to a surprise change of antagonists, leaving a vacuum of personality on the show that it never quite recovers from. After The Defenders brought together Netflix’s street-level heroes to face the Hand, audiences had a real expectation that Luke Cage season 2 would be a full-on adaptation of Heroes for Hire, the long-time Marvel comic that had Power Man and Iron Fist working the blue-collar end of the superhero spectrum. The second season’s Bushmaster gave Luke a nemesis operating at his level, and Finn Jones’ Iron Fist does show up late in the season, but by the time the series got there, audiences were already tuning out. By the time the series ended, Alfre Woodard’s Black Mariah had died and left Harlem’s Paradise to Luke, turning him from Power Man into a power broker.

After the show was canceled, the cast kept working steadily. Mahershala Ali would go on to win Oscars for Moonlight and Green Book. Ali would spend years attached to Marvel’s Blade only for it to go nowhere. Simone Missick went on to play the lead on All Rise, becoming the first Black woman to lead a CBS drama. Theo Rossi switched teams to DC for a role in HBO’s The Penguin. Though already a star, Alfre Woodard continues to land high-profile premium TV roles. Showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker co-wrote Creed II while finishing Luke Cage Season 2, then returned to his music-journalism roots as writer and producer on the Billy Preston documentary That’s the Way God Planned It. As for Luke Cage himself, Mike Colter found even more fans on the cult-hit show Evil as the priest-in-training David Acosta. The X-Files meets The Exorcist premise follows a team of investigators as they prove or disprove supernatural events.

An Avenger For Hire

In 2004, Brian Michael Bendis launched a team of New Avengers in a Breakout storyline. The book would bring together a group of heroes to stop a massive prison break from the superhuman detention facility The Raft. Characters who had never been Avengers before were suddenly on the team, like Wolverine and Luke Cage. Cage would even go on to lead Avengers teams himself. After Disney announced its intention to create a rival streaming service, Netflix began canceling its Marvel TV-produced shows. Fans had no idea if they’d be connected to the bigger MCU or left to just die on the vine. In that time, many fans hoped Colter would be able to return to the character and be upgraded to his place as an Avenger.

The first item blocking his path to Avenger status was undone when Daredevil: Born Again premiered in 2025. The show brought the Netflix branch of the MCU into the fold with a new series continuing the war between Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk. Cage returned in the second season in a plot point loosely connected to the MCU’s Thunderbolts. That return was only foreshadowing the larger announcement that all of The Defenders would be returning to support Daredevil in the third and final season of that series. In the comics, Cage eventually turns his career as an Avenger into becoming the Mayor of New York. Recent set photos imply that we may get to see Luke Cage step into the power vacuum left behind when Mayor Fisk was unseated. The show hasn’t even aired yet, and fans already want to know where they’ll see Colter as Cage next.

A decade later, Luke Cage is officially in the MCU. Without missing a beat, fandom is once again calling for a Heroes for Hire show, and this time Disney may be listening. While Disney+ has been facing pushback for its cancellation of minority-led shows, they are actively watching the audience reaction to see where they should have them show up next. Mike Colter even teased the possibility of a Heroes for Hire series. Fans are also vocally calling for the street-level heroes to show up in Secret Wars. No matter where we see him beyond Born Again, the first season of Luke Cage stands as a breakthrough in how a superhero show can still be modern cultural commentary and art. It laid the groundwork for a show like Wonder Man to get even more personal and layered. Ten years later, it still deserves every bit of praise it received. Now, if only Doomsday could give us a scene with multiple Alfre Woodards.

Did you miss the Netflix Marvel heroes? What was your favorite moment from those shows? Let us know in the comments.