Would "Rage" Make an Impact in a New Season of Luke Cage?

When we look back at the shows Marvel put on Netflix, Luke Cage is one of the major successes. In addition to just being a good show, and picking up from where Luke's debut left off in Jessica Jones, it managed to address social issues in a way that really put the audience in the perspective of a character we don't see much; a black superhero. It felt (at least to me as a white viewer, so take this with a huge grain of salt) like it was trying to provide a genuine experience rather than simply co-opting blacknesss to try to get credit. It managed to handle the blacksplotation-era inspiration of the character, and to update him in a way that felt empowering rather than exploitative.

And let us not forget that when the first season dropped, it broke Netflix's servers.

I love the character of Luke Cage. Heck, I wrote an entire character conversion guide for the Pathfinder RPG for him. While Black Panther may (rightly) be seen forever as the king when it comes to Marvel's black superheroes, Luke tackles a very different set of challenges. T'challa lets us see what an Africa free from colonial influence might have been; Luke asks what would happen if, in the midst of an epidemic of violence, killer cops, and hundreds of years of social controls, a black man was suddenly bullet proof.

Stories need to go new places in order to stay interesting, though. The first season asked the question of how a man with great personal power can fight a system (both corrupt policing, and organized crime). The second season gave us the character of Bushmaster, and showed us a kind of dark reflection of Luke, and asked about the nature of power. But for a third season, I'd hold up a mirror to society as the news is showing it right now, and present a conflict of peaceful (ish) resistance (given Luke's nature of standing there until his enemies run out of bullets) with the more immediate demands of a younger generation that has had enough of this bullshit once and for all.

And there is no character that could embody that more than Rage.

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Who The Hell Is Rage?

If you're not familiar with Rage as a character, don't worry, you're not alone. The short version is that when he was 13 years old, Elvin Haliday was on his way to meet up with a friend when a gang of white kids who didn't think "one of them" belonged in their neighborhood came after him. Outnumbered, Elvin ran, hiding in a culvert. The water was putrid by itself, but it was also a dumping ground for illegal toxic waste. Sickened and exposed, Elvin dragged himself home where his grandmother got him hosed off, and put to bed. Over the ensuing days, Elvin grew in size, strength, and invulnerability. He went bald, but he was damn near indestructible, had colossal strength, and topped out at six and a half feet and over 400 pounds.

The character debuted in 1990, which might explain why his aesthetics are more than a little crass, to say the least. He's big, he's black, he's aggressive, he dresses like a heavy metal Mr. T in a luchador mask, and they called him Rage... the cringe is strong.

The character's original arc (which I got my hands on as a young comic reader and was fascinated by) is Rage basically showing up and demanding to be a member of the Avengers. He's got the power, and the fact that there are no black members of the team is a serious problem from his perspective. Though there was initial friction, Rage proved himself by helping the team. Captain America tries to find out more about him, gets his origin story, and Steve is understandably confused. To paraphrase, he asks Rage what he's been doing all this time if that happened to him when he was a kid.

And it slowly dawns on Steve that this titan he's been fighting alongside, who jumped into a portal to another dimension to punch out alien horrors from the mind of H.P. Lovecraft, is actually just a teenaged kid who's trying to do what he thinks is right.

The Next Generation

Luke was always very conscious about how he used his power, and what effect it could have on the community around him. He knows just by existing that he upsets the status quo, and that what was a dangerous situation on the city's streets before can be downright deadly now.

Given Rage's age, he would have seen what Luke is doing. And when he gets power like his idol, he would try to follow in his footsteps. To try to do some good with it. Of course Rage might be bigger, stronger, and have significantly less training than Luke does... and when word gets out there's another black vigilante whose skin bounces bullets and who can throw a squad car at someone if you make him mad enough, Luke's going to show up to deal with that.

But rather than a neighborhood threat, he might find a hulking fanboy. Rage might try to play it cool, but meeting your hero can unman anyone. Luke would be surprised, and probably more than happy to take a handshake and a hangout over having to throw down in an alleyway. For this story, he could take the role that Captain America had in the original; the outstretched hand and mentor figure who finds out to his shock that all of this power was laid on the shoulders of a kid who's just trying his best to be a hero.

The Conflict

These two characters may seem very similar in a lot of respects, from their ethnicity, to where they grew up, to their goals in doing good things with powers they didn't ask for. The real difference between the two of them, though, is generational.

Luke is a grown man, and we see him as an almost MLK-like character. The son of a preacher, he joined the military to get out of some trouble when he was young, and he became a cop after that. Given the systemic issues between police and the black community, this is an aspect of the character that could be delved into more deeply. Perhaps he believed he could make a difference, that he could change things from within. That would be in keeping with how we see Luke as a character; he's cool, thoughtful, and he's been described as soulful. He's reflective, and he often takes a big picture view of change, progress, and what ripples his actions would cause.

Kept on the current timeline of things, Rage would have grown up as part of Generation Z. For him, there's never been a time when America wasn't involved in a needless war. Never a time when cops didn't pound the streets in riot gear. Never a time when the economy worked, or when real, systemic change made things better. Rage might be immature and inexperienced, but there would be real fire in him that would make him the unstoppable force to Luke's immovable object.

The key to this story is to show us things from Rage's perspective. Show how sometimes direct action gets immediate results. As an example, say a cop put up their hood to block their dashcam before they approached a pulled over black driver. Just before he gets to the window, have Rage slam down the hood (and perhaps put his fist through the engine block) before giving the officer a smile and saying something like, "Saw you were having car trouble. Fixed it for you. Didn't want your camera to miss this."

Maybe Luke gets blamed for this action (showing again that cops just assume it had to be the one black man with superpowers they know about, even if Rage looks nothing like Luke), but then we realize that the action (ham-handed as it was) gets immediate results. The police brass make it clear that all body cams must be on at all times, and we actually see them take action against cops who attempt to discard the new rule. The so-called bad apples actually get fired. Police behavior is clearly documented, and rates of reported abuse take a nose dive... at least in Harlem, where there might be worse than a reprimand in a cop's file lurking around the corner.

The conflicts between Rage and Luke aren't over their goals, but rather their methods. Luke believes that you should trust in being right, to only use force when you have to, and to make sure you exhaust all your other options first. Rage, on the other hand, believes that with the raw power in his hands he can make real, effective change by fighting fire with fire. Gangs want to show up with guns, he'll crumple them into scrap and rip their drug lab down with his bare hands. Cops try to escalate things, he can break every piece of military hardware they were given to make the point that they don't have a gun big enough to win this fight. He might even show up to a prison, and insist that everyone in there with a marijuana possession sentence be released, or he'll smash down the walls and let them out personally after ripping the bars out of their foundations. If we want to make him look legally justified, have weed be legal in this version of New York. If we just want him to be morally justified, make it a point that this is a charge that is used to force prison labor out of a disproportionately black population, and that was supposed to be over before Abraham Lincoln went to see a play.

It's the same question as Professor Xavier's peaceful coexistance and Magneto's direct action. We, the audience, might laud the noble goal... but deep down we probably don't believe that it's going to work as well as a show of overwhelming force. And that would be the question of the whole season... does Luke persuade Rage to cool his head, and to accept that some things take time? Does Rage make Luke look full in the face of the systemic problems he's grown calloused to (some he might even have helped cause during his time as a cop), and get him to help him tear down the walls to make changes now?

I don't know about you, but I'd binge-watch that season in one night.

Looking For More Movies and TV?

If you enjoyed this little proposal, then you might want to check out some of my other pieces that take aim at popular franchises, or which go into what makes movies and TV shows really work!

- 5 "The Purge" Movies They Should Make Next

- What is The Monster in "The Ritual"? (A Mythological Head Canon)

- Remaking "The Princess Bride" For Real? Is There a Way To Do It?

- 5 Reasons Jason Voorhees is One of The Greatest Slashers

- Top 3 Hidden Gem TV Shows You Should Binge Watch (The Horror Edition)