‘Luke Cage’ Recap, Episode 11: Now You’re Mine

Marvel’s Luke Cage, Episode 11 opens with Diamondback (Erik LaRay Harvey) deciding to hold Luke Cage (Mike Colter), a wounded Misty Knight (Simone Missick), Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), and the remaining rally attendees hostage inside of Harlem’s Paradise. Diamondback has no real plan for this standoff, as Shades Alvarez (Theo Rossi) points out, but Diamondback is so focused on getting Luke, nothing else matters. Diamondback continues to be a character for whom I have great dislike, even as we’re given what’s supposed to be a devastating account of his experiences as a youth (a tale replete with a too on the noise choice by Diamondback to play “Son of a Preacher Man” to score his monologue to Councilman Boone).

Back when Luke and Diamondback were teenagers, Luke skated on automobile theft charges with the help of his family name while Diamondback, the secret illegitimate son to Luke’s preacher man father, was sent off to juvenile detention. There he stabbed another inmate who had attacked him, resulting in him doing more time and causing him to miss the death of his mother to cancer. Diamondback’s fixation on Luke continues to confound me; It makes sense that he would resent his brother, but the extreme anger he feels should be focused on their father instead. And while the story of his incarceration is sad, I can hardly muster up any sympathy for a man whose childhood was lost to the system but who pursues his vendetta with no regard for the black boys of Harlem that his tactics endanger. In a show so focused on affirming that black lives matter and should matter more to police, Diamondback is alarmingly reckless with the black lives of the other Harlem residents. Put into context of Inspector Ridley and ADA Blake Tower’s lengthy back and forth outside of Harlem’s Paradise about the dangers that’ll come from arming a police department with Diamondback’s military grade weapons over what we in the audience know to be false threat he created, Diamondback is especially off-putting.

(Also, this reading Bible verses thing doesn’t work for me. It’s little more than a quirky characteristic slapped onto a barely interesting character. We get it, your shitty dad was a hypocritical preacher. Whatever.)

Diamondback is gonna play this whole thing by ear, and it seems the basic plan is to kill Luke while also convincing the police and SWAT team and everyone else outside that he’s a killer, and then maybe escape? All this is very unclear.

Luke gets Misty from behind the bar where they are ducking bullets to safety in a secret room under the Kitchen. He explains to her who Diamondback is while tending to her wounds. Misty promises that once they get out of this situation, she will do her best to ensure everyone knows that Luke Cage is innocent of the crimes everyone has tried to frame him with. (Luke sure gets framed a lot! We’ve had two framings just within the present day timeline of this story, and Diamondback framing him is how Luke ended up at Seagate in the first place. What awful, awful luck, dude.)

There’s a lot happening immediately outside Harlem’s Paradise, too. From the moment the police arrive at Harlem’s Paradise, the head of the ESU wants to go in with force to take out Luke, but Inspector Ridley seems to finally be taking Misty’s hunches about Diamondback and Luke Cage into account. So Ridley resists the option to send in the ESU and instead wants to wait things out. BTW, doesn’t Inspector Ridley look like the black version of Angela from Who’s the Boss?

And the way she pushes back against the male head of the ESU and ADA Tower proves she totally is the boss. She handles herself very well when Councilman Boone calls and makes demands on Luke’s – but really Diamondback’s who’s holding a gun to Boone’s head—behalf. She remains calm when she’s denied proof of Misty’s life, she’s careful to consider the motive behind Mariah Dillard’s eagerness to arm the police with the new weapons to use on Luke, and she stays the course when she learns that the few released hostages are saying Luke Cage was not their captor.

And speaking of boss women, WHOA THERE CLAIRE! What an episode Claire is having! Claire finally demonstrates powers beyond fixing up and giving pep talks to Luke. Throughout this crisis, she’s clever and quick thinking and I wish we’d seen this Claire before I spent like four episodes trying to dislike her as feminist-ly as possible. She is super badass. We see her talk one of the goons into letting her treat Candace, she gleans from Candace that she was part of Mariah’s scheme to frame Luke Cage, figures out where Luke and Misty are hiding, she reaches Misty and Luke in their underground hiding place after coming up with a smart story and knocking out one of the goons, she saves Misty from losing her arm to her gunshot wound, and saves her life again when Shades almost takes Misty out, and even keeps cool when Misty basically tells her “I smashed your dude.” She’s a dream.

Shades Alvarez has been growing on me, too. His disbelief at Diamondback’s recklessness and promising never to testify against Diamondback because he would be too embarrassed to admit how unprepared for this hostage situation they were were bright spots in his character for me. It’s hard to imagine a guy like Shades would have put up with a man as rash as Diamondback or that Diamondback would accept backtalk from his subordinate, and so I expect that this relationship will unravel. Especially since Shades’s ambitious side has been out front in the time since Cottonmouth’s death.

Diamondback uses the PA system to demand Luke surrender himself and Misty or else he’ll kill a hostage every 10 minutes. As Luke fights his way up from the secret hideaway to prevent this from happening, Diamondback uses the super glove he killed Officer Albini with to kill Councilman Boone, and has one of his goons deliver Boone’s dead body to the police waiting outside. Finally Inspector Ridley agrees to let the ESU move in on the nightclub. In the meantime, Luke fights off more goons and eventually frees all the hostages. Diamondback has held onto Candace, though, and forces Luke to choose between fleeing the ESU or saving Candace. Instead of making his escape, Luke opts to save Candace as ESU finally enters and Diamondback follows Zip to a secret exit where he is whipped away in an SUV. Luke is arrested along with the other actual criminals, but I’m confident that with Misty and, it seems, Inspector Ridley on his side, Luke will be alright.

[Watch Marvel’s Luke Cage, Episode 11, “Now You’re Mine” on Netflix]

Rae Sanni is a comedian and writer from Brooklyn, NY who has been bringing her unique perspective on everything from pop culture to race and gender relations to audiences all over. Rae co-hosts the monthly stand up comedy show LoudMouth!. You can find Rae on Twitter @Raesanni, where she muses on her love for Rihanna, NBA players, and being a black person.