Marvel’s Luke Cage Showrunner Reveals the Spin-off He Wants to Make

Marvel’s Luke Cage was one of the victims of the uncoupling of Marvel and Netflix. The series ended after two seasons and left Harlem’s hero in the awkward position of having become Harlem’s new crime boss. Series creator Cheo Hodari Coker has said that the show’s third season would have brought the character full circle. But Coker would also have loved to look back into the history of Marvel’s Harlem and the people who made it what it was before Luke Cage. On Twitter, Coker shared that he’d have liked to have made a spinoff about Harlem’s Paradise, the nightclub that was the base of the Stokes Crime Family.

“I would have loved to have done a Harlem’s Paradise spinoff,” Coker tweeted. “The Stokes and McIvers. No Superpowers. Just a generational crime family drama set in Harlem.”

Fans of Luke Cage may remember that Buggy Stokes and Quincy McIver founded Harlem’s Paradise. When other groups began taking an interest in the club, Stokes and McIver wound up killing each other in a dispute over how to handle the situation. Mama Mabel, Buggy’s wife, took over the club, killing MicIver’s wife Gwen. She passed control of the club down to Cornwell “Cottonmouth” Stokes, who was still in control at the beginning of Luke Cage. The show’s second season focused on the efforts of John “Bushmaster” McIver, Gwen and Quincy’s son, to exact revenge on the Stokes.

As for what the future would have held for Luke Cage, Coker said “It was crazy because we were hitting all these things that are happening in the press right now. 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. 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.

“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… I’m not a casual fan of comic books. 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.’”

Marvel’s Luke Cage is still available to stream on Netflix.