Did the Season 2 Finale of Luke Cage Pave the Way to Program People Against Nationalism?

Fair warning right up front, this entire post is a spoiler. If you haven’t yet watched season 2, do that before reading any further.

In the most recent season of Marvel’s Luke Cage, there are three antagonists. Mariah and Shades who carried over from the last season and a newcomer to the neighborhood called Bushmaster.

Bushmaster is this wicked-sick Jamaican dude who uses voodoo and herbalism to enhance his strength to a level where he is almost on par with Luke, especially when you add Capoeira into the mix. Seeing as how he is a career criminal it makes him a clear and present danger when he and Luke throw hands.

At one point Cage teams up with Danny Rand, the Iron Fist, to storm a top-secret grow house that Bushmaster commissioned in order that he may gain access to an unlimited supply of the rare herb nightshade which is a key ingredient for his superpowers.

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In real life, nightshade is poisonous as all hell. Seeing as how superhero shows are many times targeted at kids, it makes me question why they would promote nightshade in such a way as to suggest it does something beneficial. There’s bound to be stupid kids that will die because of the way this series promoted nightshade. They could have just as easily used another less toxic herb if they wanted to exercise a little responsibility.

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So Danny was doing Luke a solid by helping him take out the garbage in Harlem while Danny normally deals with problems in the downtown area of New York. It was effective teamwork and together they took down the grow house and torched its contents. Danny was sure to mention he purchased the property in advance so no harm no foul regarding the arson.

Towards the end of the season, there was a power vacuum as Mariah was taken out of the game both by the law and then well, I won’t spoil the latter part of that. Mariah willed the Harlem's Paradise nightclub to Luke as a parting shot to corrupt him. She was on the receiving end of the adage that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" when she made her transformation from Mariah Dillard back to Mariah Stokes.

In this series, Harlem’s Paradise is the epicenter where most of the criminals frequent, it’s a popular nightclub. Mariah had inherited it from her cousin Cornell after she killed him in the first season. There's some dramatic backstory to that, none of which applies to this post so I won’t spoil that either.

Luke ends up taking ownership of the club. This, thinking it will put him in a prime position to put an end to nefarious activities and bad actors in Harlem. He fills the power vacuum left by Mariah and begins negotiations with the various crime bosses. He wants them to stop peddling their wares and conducting criminal activity on his blocks.

Yet, he does this by saying you can do your business up to this street, or all the way to that street, just not in Harlem. This is sure to create a problem in the next season should the Iron Fist or Daredevil need some reciprocal help either downtown or in Hell’s Kitchen. Cage will have to be Switzerland to stay true to his word to the Mob.

One of Luke’s biggest fans, D-Dub, is upset with Luke’s recent negotiations with the Mob and call’s him Luke Corleone. Cage puts his hands on D-Dub shoulders and says to him he (Luke) is “the only person who can make Harlem great again.” The final episode of season 2 and Here we go with the programming.

Just as Luke appears to be turning to the dark side out of his mouth comes a famous Trump saying. This entire bit seems as if it’s an attempt to discredit the notion that America should be great at all. D-Dub responds by pushing Luke’s hands off his shoulders as he calls him Luke Trump. His tone and inflection were disparaging, he meant it as an insult.

So as you can see the writing is setting the stage for a very interesting third season full of propaganda. I imagine that Harlem will represent America and New York City will represent the rest of the world.

Cage will do the best he can to keep the trash out of Harlem, yet it will cause the criminals to do business in either Hell’s Kitchen or Downtown NY. This will put his friends in danger and if they should need his help, he’ll be obliged via his entangling alliances to not come to their aid.

I can only imagine that they’ll have Luke become all braggadocios just like Trump, yet they will have him behave in such a way where he will come off like a slimy, disingenuous politician with hot sauce in his bag. He will be portrayed as Clinton in Trump clothing.

I predict towards the end of the next season’s episodes Danny Rand will get through to him and cause him to end his agreements with the crime bosses so he can help the rest of New York (the world).

If the writers do what I think they will do, it will leave people with very anti-nationalist, anti-Trump, or pro-globalist sentiments. What they're doing here is high-level propaganda and it will work on many people.

Yet those people should ask themselves if power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely then why on earth would anyone want a centralized global government?