How Luke Cage’s Comic Book Origin Was Changed for Netflix Series

Today marks the debut of Marvel’s Luke Cage, and many Netflix subscribers are currently bingeing their way through the season. As with any comic to television translation, there are bound to be some things that get tweaked and adapted as the season moves along, and Luke Cage does have its share of changes to the character’s origins.

If you haven’t at least made it to episode 5, be warned that are spoilers incoming.

Early in the season fans are introduced to Carl Lucas, the real person behind the Luke Cage moniker. Lucas has a military background, though he doesn’t reference it much. What he does acknowledge is his former position as a police officer, and a frame job lands him in prison. It’s here that he meets Reva Conners, a psychologist who works with the inmates. After he’s made to fight in a prison-run gladiatorial arena, he tells Reva what’s happening in the prison, and to get out while she can.

After he is brutally beaten by some of the other inmates, it is Reva who pleads his case to be saved by an experimental process that ultimately gives him his invulnerability and super strength.

In the comics, Lucas does end up becoming a police officer, but only after a substantial time as part of a New York gang. Lucas battles a rival gang alongside his friend Willis Stryker, who has a girlfriend named Reva Conners. As a result of his gang activities, Lucas lands in prison, and it’s here that he starts on the road to rehabilitation, and eventually he becomes an NYPD officer. After saving his old friend Stryker from an attempted hit, Reva and Lucas grow closer. Stryker doesn’t take this lying down, and he frames Lucas with planted drugs, which gets him tossed into prison.

Ultimately, even with the changes, the main beats are similar, and Reva plays an important part in Cage becoming the hero he is meant to be, but it is interesting to see how the two origins differ.

Luke Cage is available now on Netflix.