The Laundry Files sound interesting! Haven't read any yet, though.

As much as I enjoyed Jessica Jones, I think Luke Cage is currently my favorite of the Marvel shows on Netflix . . . Figures it would get canceled in the middle of me watching the first series!

Spoilers follow for Daredevil seasons one and two, Jessica Jones season one, and Luke Cage season one.

I think what made me like LC compared to the earlier series is the positive tone. Daredevil and Jessica Jones were both incredibly dark: the former due to Daredevil's limits on how much progress he could make in gutting Hell's Kitchen's criminal underbelly in a short period of time, whether in a courtroom or masked on the streets, creating a tone of hopelessness; and the latter due to the wide and varied threat Kilgrave posed, and Jessica's constant fear of either herself or her loved ones falling under his control. By contrast, LC is all about striving to move forward in the world. Even the villains feel a lot more like ordinary people compared to Fisk and Kilgrave, and get a lot of screen time that develops them beyond their role as antagonists in the story. I feel a lot more sympathy for them than I usually do with MCU villains, even against the backdrop of the crimes they commit to feed their ambitions.

Actually, that leads into another feature of LC that I liked. The focus in DD and JJ was very much on the title characters and those immediately close to them. It made the conflicts feel very constrained, even in the midst of a huge area like Hell's Kitchen. LC, on the other hand, makes Harlem feel more like a community, with a lot of characters getting screen time in addition to Luke himself. Actually, I'm almost convinced Detective Knight got nearly the same amount of screen time as Luke himself. It fits in with Luke's desire to lay low, having to be spurred into heroic action nearly every time he does something.

Ironically, despite its more positive tone compared to the other two shows so far, it had a much more ambiguous ending, while DD and JJ had more positive ones with a pretty clear stop to the conflicts of each season. There were so many ups and downs in those last twenty minutes; if nothing else, it's got me excited for season two! Diamondback winding up with Cage's powers (probably) is bad, but considering the Hammer Industries super-suit didn't give him the upper hand against Cage, I'm actually not terribly concerned about that. Cage is in prison, but Bobby Fish has the evidence to prove his innocence. I love how incredibly book-ended the season was, too. Episode one had Cottonmouth framed on screen with the crown in his office painting centered over his head, and the final episode had his cousin Mariah standing in the same room with a different painting crowning her. Knight is also at the bar of Harlem's paradise in nearly identical disguises in both episodes, showing how little progress she and Luke have actually made towards ending the major organized crime in Harlem. And as Luke says, "Never backwards, always forwards. But sometimes, you have to make backwards to go forwards."

Revealing that Reva had been manipulating Cage is an interesting choice. She had been presented as such a good, almost paragon-like, portion of Cage's past, to the point that he abandoned Jones when he found out she was technically Reva's murderer. And her feelings for him seemed so sincere in the flashback episode . . . I mean, I think she was sincere, but that makes it all the weirder that she was also trying to lead Cage into the experimenting regimen. I guess we may never learn more about her at this point . . . I'm especially confused as to why the video footage of Kilgrave's power origin were on her flash drive from Seagate. Kilgrave was a child when he got his powers, so he couldn't possibly have been in the same program that Seagate was running. Unless his parents were scientists at Seagate? But I rather thought that scene took place in Britain, so . . .

The kiss between Mariah and Shades came out of absolutely nowhere. I didn't pick up on a single romantic thread between them in all their interactions, and I don't really care to ship them because they're both bad guys anyway.

MCU-wise, it looks like Cloak & Dagger and Runaways are both roughly next in the timeline. I don't think either are on Netflix, so we'll have to see what happens there . . .

—doctorlit was convinced for most of the season that Shades had the power to force people to tell him the truth by looking them in the eye, because of a scene in the second episode

"Man, you Harlem spoilers is off the chain. I'm going back to Hell's Kitchen, where it's safe." "Man, you Harlem spoilers is off the chain. I'm going back to Hell's Kitchen, where it's safe." "Man, you Harlem spoilers is off the chain. I'm going back to Hell's Kitchen, where it's safe."