Luke Cage Showrunner Says Cancelled Season 3 Plans Would Have Brought the Character Full Circle

Luke Cage fans can have a tiny bit of closure after the series’ executive producer Cheo Hodari Coker told TV Guide what he would have had up his sleeve for Season 3. Some Marvel fans are still mourning the loss of the Defenders Netflix shows and that isn’t going to go away. But, nuggets like what the rough themes would have provided some comfort for fans who really became invested in this corner of the Marvel offerings. Just last week, Daredevil trended because people thought Matt Reeves’ new Bat Suit looked a little bit too close to the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. At the moment, there are no plans to bring back any of the shows, but the call to learn more about how they moved forward will be persistent.

“It was crazy because we were hitting all these things that are happening in the press right now,” the showrunner began. “I can’t on the record talk about what we had planned because, contractually, you know, I still don’t want any Marvel assassins coming out of the woodwork to try to take me out. [Laughs] But what I can say is that we had a very good season planned, and it was one that I think would have brought Luke Cage as a character full circle.”

Coker continued, “You see people online that were like, ‘Oh my god, I turned Luke into a gangster.’ They wouldn’t be [saying that] if they had the opportunity to see all three seasons and see the directions Luke would have gone. I was always a Luke Cage fan, but I was probably, ultimately, a Chris Claremont, Frank Miller, Wolverine, X-Men Golden Era comic book fan, you know? And it wasn’t until Brian Michael Bendis rebooted Luke Cage within Jessica Jones — that [I felt liberated to] approach established characters within the Luke Cage universe from a different perspective. …”

The moment and the enormity of this show was not lost on the executive producer. “I’m not a casual fan of comic books,” he argued. “Back in the day when people would actually buy comics on a weekly basis, every Wednesday I would be at Golden Apple or somewhere, and I bonded with a lot of people, like one of my closest friends, the late John Singleton. When the opportunity came up [to do Luke Cage], I knew how big the opportunity was. It was just like, ‘I can’t believe I’m gonna have a chance to do this.’”