‘Luke Cage’ Season 2: Is Claire Temple Too Good For Luke Cage?

It needs to be said: Claire Temple is too good for Luke Cage.

It needs to be said, and I need to say it. In fact, I need to scream it. Like, it’s always been there, floating in the subtext of Marvel’s Luke Cage, that Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) — the soulful, brilliant, courageous, spunky, kind, loyal, and forever down-to-earth nurse who flits from one Marvel show to another, snatching up superhero buddies the way other people collect Pokemon — deserves more than Luke Cage (Mike Colter) is giving her. It’s not just that she’s had to befriend his exes and wait for him patiently to get out of jail; Claire Temple simply has better things to than to follow Luke Cage around the neighborhood, egging him on sweetly as he pulls giant towers across an astroturf lawn.

Come to think of it, Claire Temple is too good for each and every one of the Defenders. She knew she was too pure to deal with Matt Murdock’s self-flagellating bullshit. She saw through Jessica Jones’s brittle badass act. She definitely hung out way too much with Iron Fist. (I mean, he took her to China to fight kung fu baddies?? And never even let her go sightseeing?) But most tragically, she may be too caring, too lovely, too noble, and too wonderful for the Hero of Harlem, Luke Cage.

The good news is Marvel’s Luke Cage Season 2 seems to know this. The new season depicts her as the ideal girlfriend for a superhero like Luke Cage — she’s sweet, sensual, and can patch him up after a fight — but the problems that threaten to rip them apart from the beginning aren’t her issues, but his. At first it seems like nothing could tear these love birds apart, but then Luke’s own bitterness gets in the way. In Episode 3, tensions between them come to a boiling point when Claire argues that Luke is leaning too much on his anger to propel his heroism. (Note: spoilers ahead!)

Let’s be honest and say this particular fight is not Luke’s finest moment. Though he has a number of good points about the rock and the hard place he’s in culturally as a bulletproof black man, he turns too quickly, too brutally on Claire. He snaps that she’s trying to “castrate” him and later punches a wall when she brings up his father. Claire’s reaction? She needs to take a trip to Cuba to see her grandmother and the ocean. It’s not her giving up so much as it’s her recognizing that she doesn’t need this in her life. What she needs is peace and serenity, and not more war.

It’s hard being a superhero’s significant other. In addition to all the other stressers that can bring a relationship down — divergent schedules, personality clashes, crazy exes returning from the dead — you’ve got to deal with the fact that your partner is putting their lives on the line everyday and every night in a battle of good versus evil. It’s a lot to handle, and it takes a rare angel of fortitude. It takes someone with a superhuman level of empathy.

Which is why Claire Temple has been such a triumph for the Marvel shows on Netflix. This mini franchise might have some problems to solve, but Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple is not one of them. Claire has always offered a breath of fresh air to the franchise. Dawson’s acting lifts the drama of every scene she’s in, and her charisma glitters off the screen. But most importantly, Claire Temple connected the wild world of Marvel’s comic books with a living, breathing New York City. She is the real woman down on the ground, living her life in the muck, and lifting the souls of everyone around her.

Claire Temple is far more than a superhero’s girlfriend — she’s a superhero herself. And I’m glad she broke it off with Luke Cage, because that hero and his show only saw her as the back up, and not the main event.

Stream Marvel's Luke Cage on Netflix