Development In October 2013, Marvel and
Disney announced that
Marvel Television and
ABC Studios would provide
Netflix with live action series centered around
Daredevil,
Jessica Jones,
Iron Fist, and
Luke Cage, leading up to a miniseries based on the
Defenders. In December 2014,
Mike Colter was cast as Cage, which was envisioned as a recurring role in the
first season of
Marvel's Netflix television series Jessica Jones (2015) before headlining his own series. Netflix and Marvel announced that
Cheo Hodari Coker would be the
showrunner for ''Marvel's Luke Cage
in late March 2015, after he pitched the series to Netflix as an examination of Harlem, "like what The Wire'' did for Baltimore." The season consists of 13 hour-long episodes.
Writing Each episode of the season is named after a
Gang Starr song, with Coker wanting the full season to feel like an album of music, explaining, "When
Prince put out an album, you would shut things out and listen to the whole thing" similarly to modern
binge-watching of television series. Coker was inspired to name the episodes based on music by television producer
Shonda Rhimes, who names each episode of ''
Grey's Anatomy'' after a pop song. Coker chose the Gang Starr songs ahead of his first pitch meeting with Marvel Television head
Jeph Loeb, to help organize his planned story arcs. He chose the songs based on their titles only, so each episode's events does not necessarily reflect the respective song's lyrics. Loeb described the season as "a fugitive story", and "a story of redemption", and said it was about Luke Cage's "story and where he came from and, most importantly, where he's going" after telling an "early part of the middle" of his story on
Jessica Jones. Colter noted that the series uses flashbacks to tell elements of the story like the previous Marvel Netflix shows. Coker described the series as "a powerful fusion of dark drama, hip-hop, and classic superhero action" and
The Wire of Marvel Television. More specifically, Coker felt the season was a hip-hop
Western, comparing it to
Sergio Leone's
Dollars Trilogy of films, with Cage the
Man with No Name coming to a town, Harlem, where he is convinced to fight injustice. Coker further compared the characters Cottonmouth and Misty Knight to the resident villain and local law enforcement, respectively, of the Western genre, and described the
Harlem's Paradise nightclub as the town's
saloon. The season picks up "a few months" after
Jessica Jones, with Luke Cage trying to stay off the radar. The end of the second episode "get[s] this series into forward action mode [by making Cage] see that he couldn't just sit back and do nothing." Coker said the arc for Cage in the season was "hero", and felt this was a more natural way of introducing the character than telling a traditional
origin story as other Marvel properties have done. This also differentiated the show from the rest of the MCU. Coker had plotted the story of the first four episodes before the show's writers room began work, but had initially done so over two or three episodes, with the event at the end of the second episode originally taking place at the end of the first. Loeb and Marvel's Karim Zreik told Coker to slow the pace of the show down, which led to an approach that Coker compared to the film
Unforgiven (1992). Coker also planned the "rugpull" at the end of the seventh episode from his initial pitch, wanting the audience to feel the same way he had reading
Alpha Flight #12 which featured the death of
Guardian. Set in Harlem, rather than the Hell's Kitchen of the previous Marvel's Netflix television series, Colter described the season as "a completely different world". Marvel Comics'
editor-in-chief Joe Quesada said that unlike the fictionalized version of Hell's Kitchen depicted in
Daredevil and
Jessica Jones, which was more inline with how it was when the comics were first written, the Harlem of
Luke Cage represents the Harlem of "today", and is truer to the real-life modern New York. However, Colter admitted that the show's version of Harlem "does resemble Harlem of maybe ten years ago." Coker said that Harlem was a world for the series, but also about legacy. He wanted to replicate the experience of walking through Harlem and hearing different music coming from cars driving past and open windows, which he felt was unique to the neighborhood. Coker further described the Harlem's Paradise nightclub as the series'
Iron Throne, and wanted it to "invoke the history of Harlem ... it's crime, politics, music, really the whole cornucopia of the black creative existence in one place." Cage is seen wearing a black hoodie throughout the series, which, beyond being practical for a character trying to lie low, was a nod to
Trayvon Martin and
Black Lives Matter. Colter said it was meant to invoke "the idea that a black man in a hoodie isn't necessarily a threat. He might just be a hero." The series also features a political campaign with the slogan "Keep Harlem Black", "in the face of gentrification that threatens to homogenize Harlem's cultural history." Discussing these racial undertones, Coker asked, "how does the presence of a bulletproof black man change the ecosystem of a neighborhood? Not just in terms of the street-level crime. How do the cops react to someone like that? What are the ripple effects of doing that? That's one of the things I wanted to explore on the show". He did caution comparisons to recent headlines involving racial tension given when they had begun working on the show, stating that his focus had been on "identity", which he saw as a common element in all black art.
Casting The main cast for the season includes
Mike Colter as
Luke Cage;
Mahershala Ali as
Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes;
Simone Missick as
Misty Knight;
Theo Rossi as
Hernan "Shades" Alvarez;
Erik LaRay Harvey as
Willis Stryker / Diamondback, whose involvement was not officially announced by Marvel prior to the season's release, as he agreed not to do any publicity for the show to not "ruin the twist" of Stryker being the season's main villain;
Rosario Dawson as
Claire Temple, reprising her role from
Daredevil and
Jessica Jones; and
Alfre Woodard as
Mariah Dillard. In September 2015,
Frank Whaley was cast as
Rafael Scarfe.
Sean Ringgold and
Karen Pittman were revealed to be involved in the series in March 2016, playing
Sugar and
Priscilla Ridley, respectively. Also recurring throughout the season are
Ron Cephas Jones as
Bobby Fish,
Jacob Vargas as
Domingo Colon,
Darius Kaleb as
Lonnie Wilson,
Jade Wu as
Connie Lin,
Deborah Ayorinde as
Candace Miller,
Justin Swain as
Mark Bailey,
Jaiden Kaine as
Zip,
Dawn-Lyen Gardner as
Megan McLaren, Jeremiah Richard Craft as
D. W. Griffith,
Michael Kostroff as
Noah Burstein,
Tijuana Ricks as
Thembi Wallace, and
John Clarence Stewart as
Alex Wesley. Several other actors also reprise roles from other Marvel Netflix shows:
Parisa Fitz-Henley returns as Cage's deceased wife
Reva Connors from
Jessica Jones;
Rob Morgan reprises the role of
Turk Barrett from
Daredevil;
Rachael Taylor provides the voice of
Trish Walker, who she plays in
Jessica Jones, for a radio talk show; and Danny Johnson and
Stephen Rider reprise their roles of
Benjamin Donovan and
Blake Tower from the
second season of
Daredevil.
Design Costume designer Stephanie Maslansky returned from the same role on
Daredevil and
Jessica Jones. Like the main characters of those shows, Cage has his own wardrobe evolution throughout the season after his initial look of T-shirts, jeans, leather jackets or an army jacket was introduced in
Jessica Jones. The series opted to depict Cage in a Trayvon Martin-inspired hoodie, but introduces the character's classic costume for a brief flashback. Colter said that the costume, designed in the blacksploitation era, "is not made for serious moments", but the series was able to poke fun at it in the brief scene. In looking to pay homage to Cage's original costume with his updated clothing, Maslansky and Coker considered having him wear gold clothing, but thought that would be too on the nose and impractical for someone trying not to draw attention. Instead, Maslansky lined the insides of Cage's hoodies with yellow, so the color could frame the character's face in close ups. In contrast to Cage's hoodie, with jeans and T-shirts, many of the series' villains wear well-tailored suits. Stokes does this because he wants to present himself as "a wealthy, successful businessman", and wears a lot of suits from
Dolce & Gabbana and
Zegna. One of his suits for the show was custom made. To pay homage to the comics, Maslansky dressed Ali in a green suit for his introduction, using a subtle shade of green to avoid being flamboyant. The character subsequently is always wearing something green, like emerald earrings for one costume. The designer noted that many of these elements would not be noticed by the audience, but they made a difference to Ali when he was getting into character. For the character Shades, brands such as
Hugo Boss,
Helmut Lang,
Prada, and
Ferragamo were used "because he wasn't trying to hide who he was", while Misty Knight, in her final shot of the season, is shown wearing a version of her own iconic comic costume. That look includes leather pants and an "interesting cold-shoulder"-shaped top; a cream-colored top that fit that shape was found and dyed red for the scene. The sets were designed and dressed to consist of strong colors that could be emphasized by the series' cinematography, to help differentiate the show from the noir look and tone of
Jessica Jones. The nightclub Harlem's Paradise was intended to invoke the real-life Harlem nightclubs the
Cotton Club and the
Lenox Lounge, with production designer Loren Weeks, also returning from that capacity on
Daredevil and
Jessica Jones, taking specific inspiration from
The Apollo and
Smalls Paradise. Because of the series' filming schedule and Coker's desire to film live musical performances in the club, it was decided that filming in an actual nightclub would be unrealistic. A set was built for the location, with Weeks using an
Art Deco style to give the club "a very distinctive look, and giving it an historical anchor", and indicate that it had been a successful club around the 1920s and 1930s and was now being refurbished as part of Stokes and Dillard's "New Harlem Renaissance". Weeks felt the building could be a metaphor for the political undercurrents of the series. Set decorator Alison Froling, whom Weeks worked with on the other Marvel Netflix series, furbished the Harlem's Paradise set with contemporary furniture, finishes, and lighting fixtures to contrast the older architectural design. The lounge side of the club features two murals by
Archibald J. Motley, an artist from the original
Harlem Renaissance. Coker insisted that the set for Pop's Barbershop be at street level, to connect it "both visually and geographically" with the Harlem street. For budget reasons, dressing an actual location as the barbershop was not going to work, but building a set to be at street level was also problematic since they would not be able to show people or cars driving past the window that you would see on an actual street. It was decided that a real location be found that is below street level so that scenes could be filmed on the street there, but would not have to match inside scenes filmed on the set because of the obstructed view of the street. To emphasize this, the set was built even lower than the actual store and a fake wall was added to the location. Coker instructed the series' prop master to carefully choose a selection of books to appear in Cage's bedroom, including
Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel
Invisible Man.
Filming Marvel announced in February 2014 that the series would be filmed in New York City, with Quesada stating in April that the show would be filming on location in addition to sound stage work. In July 2015, Loeb stated that
Luke Cage was prepping to begin filming, and by September 2015, production had begun under the
working title Tiara. Filming concluded in March 2016. Filming took place in Harlem, including
Lenox Avenue and areas where the film
American Gangster (2007) was shot, the
Mount Olivet Baptist Church,
St. Nicholas Park,
Jackie Robinson Park,
Riverside Park, and the
Riverside Drive Viaduct; in
Washington Heights, including at the
United Palace;
Cortlandt Alley in
Chinatown; in areas of
Queens for when Cage escapes
Seagate Prison and puts on the classic Power Man costume; the
Roosevelt Island steam plant and
Queens Detention Facility for interiors of Seagate; the
Music Hall of Williamsburg for the exterior of Harlem's Paradise; the former Fulton Correctional Facility in
The Bronx for the Crispus Attucks Complex; and the
Long Island City portion of
Newtown Creek. It was important to Coker for the series to film in Harlem, "the only place in the city where you see those wide boulevards. We really wanted to capture the color, the rhythm of the streets". For example, the production had the opportunity to film at a barbershop in
Greenwich Village, which would have been much easier for the production, but Coker said "the opportunity to film it in Harlem was irresistible. I didn't want us to talk about Harlem and then not film" there. Soundstage filming took place at
Broadway Stages in
Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For the church that Cage and Temple visit in
Savannah, Georgia, an abandoned church in The Bronx was found that was being sold, and the production was able to "graffiti up and sort of ruin" it. They also had to spend two days carting snow from the site before filming, after a recent blizzard.
Manuel Billeter served as director of photography for the series, after doing the same for
Jessica Jones. He worked with director
Paul McGuigan to establish the look of the show in the first two episodes, with Coker hiring McGuigan based on his direction of the
Sherlock episode "
A Scandal in Belgravia" (2012). Coker was delighted to learn how little CGI McGuigan used to craft the visuals of that episode, and wanted the same approach for
Luke Cage, "just old school camera stuff. He brought a very analogue perspective, analogue feel to the show." McGuigan, Coker explained, directed "every scene [as] long takes, from multiple takes over and over again. We would run an entire eight-page scene almost like a play, so when it comes together it's seamless." McGuigan was inspired by the works of photographers
Gordon Parks,
Tony Ray-Jones, and Jack Garofalo. Billeter looked to differentiate the look of
Luke Cage from
Jessica Jones, using modified gels on lights, and saturating and warming colors in color correction to give Harlem a more glowing look. Coker noted that the series' has a color scheme of yellow, brown, amber, and gold, in contrast to the violet tint Billeter gave
Jessica Jones to reflect that series' villain, the
Purple Man. The series was shot on Netflix's standard
4K cameras, with Billeter pairing them with
Panavision Primo lenses that were "custom treated with a reflective coating in between the glass elements in the interior of the lens, causing more flares and bringing down the contrast in addition to very slightly de-focusing them" in order to "add something magic, less controlled and more cinematic". Billeter filmed Colter with a lot of low angles to make him look "even more heroic", and kept the camera close to him with Harlem in the background so that Cage "is always the dominant force in his shots, but he also remains a part of the terrain. The shots aren't of him alone; they're of him in his home." Cage's fight style in the series was called "smack-fu" by Coker, referring to the way he tried not to punch anybody since that would probably kill them with his super strength. To film the effect of bullets bouncing off of Cage, remote controlled devices were attached to Colter and operated by somebody behind the cameras. The devices could burn his skin if not attached properly, and Colter almost lost hearing in one ear after forgetting to insert the required ear pieces. The third episode begins with a couch coming out of the window of the fictional
Crispus Attucks complex in Harlem. This was a tease of a large fight scene, the series' version of the "superhero hallway fight" made famous in
Daredevil. Filming for the fight was influenced by "
Arnold Schwarzenegger's invading the police station in
Terminator", and was one of the toughest sequences for the crew to shoot; it took a 14-hour day, and Colter attributed the successful completion of the sequence, including the couch shot, to director
Guillermo Navarro. Colter also called the fourth episode particularly difficult to film, taking around 12 or 13 days to shoot. The episode was written by executive producer Charles Murray, who looked to organically transition the character's origin story from the original comics into the modern world of the series for the episode. This involved flashbacks with Colter in makeup and different costumes. Scenes shot at the United Palace theater created new challenges for the series' stunt team due to not being able to drill holes in the historic building for creating anchors for wire rigs and other complex stunts. The crew had to find other ways to weigh down the equipment to remain safe for the actors and stunt doubles. For the explosion at the Genghis Connie's restaurant, a practical explosion was created in the storefront on location, which was extended with visual effects to show the destruction of the building. A set showing the inside of the rubble of the destroyed building was then created on a soundstage, while a lot was found that "feels" similar to the original location, where rubble could by piled and fire trucks could be brought to show the exterior. The lot was previously being used to store vehicles that had been seized as evidence, with the production having to negotiate with the NYPD to have the vehicles moved elsewhere. Looking back on the filming style of the season, and comparing it to the previous Marvel Netflix series, Weeks said that the crew members working on each of the shows wanted them all to feel like they are set in the same city, but also for the world of each character to be distinct, and for this series they embraced Harlem "for exactly what it is" to differentiate the "visual identity. Some of that is lighting, and of course, some of that is production design and location work ... the color, the life, the activity on the streets. There's so much character to the neighborhood... I think it was important to feel that these characters were rooted in the real place". The series' production sound mixer Joshua Anderson, who worked on
Daredevil and
Jessica Jones as well, worked to capture as much sound on set with boom mics over
lavaliers to ground the unbelievable elements of the series in "naturalistic sound". He noted that Ali's Cottonmouth laugh and many of Colter's lines in particular sounded "incredible on the boom". Anderson also talked about
Luke Cage adding a new layer of sound that the other series did not—music. The captured sound had to be clear to be properly mixed in with music later, and live performances in Harlem's Paradise had to be recorded for which Anderson and his team had experience after working on the musical series
Smash (2012–13).
Visual effects FuseFX provided 867 visual effects shots for the season, with a team of 15 to 20 members under FuseFX New York's production head and senior visual effects supervisor Greg Anderson. Anderson explained that the series' challenging schedule was made easier by the company's catalog of previously used digital assets and effect elements that can be reused, or partially reused, where appropriate in new projects. Several effects shots were created to show Cage's abilities, including a slow motion shot of a thug's fist collapsing into a compound fracture while punching Cage in the face. A standout effects sequence for the season was when Stokes fires a missile at a building, which took FuseFX 130 days to complete. It involved creating a CG building and integrating it into footage of a real New York City block, matching up with different camera angles and sources of light throughout the sequence. The effects team then had to digitally destroy the building, and create "a complex array of fireballs and falling debris".
Music In April 2016, Coker revealed that
Adrian Younge and
Ali Shaheed Muhammad were composing the series' score, describing it as "a confluence of multiple genres, a bit of ['90s] hip-hop, soul, psychedelic rock and classical". Younge and Muhammad composed the score as if they were creating 13 albums, one for each episode, with the music inspired by
Wu-Tang Clan,
Ennio Morricone, and Muhammad's group
A Tribe Called Quest. The duo composed around twenty minutes of music for each episode, composing the entire season's score in nine months. Younge and Muhammad were encouraged to "push" the sound of the score as far as they could, and were allowed the use of a full, 30-piece orchestra for recording. They also arranged an original rap single, "
Bulletproof Love", which features
Method Man (who performs it in the show). Songs from
Mahalia Jackson,
Nina Simone,
John Lee Hooker ("
It Serves You Right to Suffer" and "
I'm Bad Like Jesse James"),
Dusty Springfield ("
Son of a Preacher Man"), and Wu-Tang Clan ("
Bring da Ruckus") are used in the season. It also features onscreen performances by various artists as the live performances in the Harlem's Paradise nightclub, which Coker wanted to use to help capture the vibe of the neighborhood. Coker wanted Prince to perform at the nightclub for the season finale, before his death in April 2016. The "swear jar" that appears in the season was designed by Coker in hopes of convincing the artist to make the cameo appearance, as he was known to have a "swear jar" himself since he was a devout
Jehovah's Witness. The role was ultimately filled by
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, which Coker said was "the better choice" because "that sequence is about Mariah being crowned." A soundtrack album for the season was released on October 7, digitally and pressed on yellow vinyl by
Mondo. Coker said that "one of the things that's really the cornerstone of '90s hip-hop is sampling, so we have a lot of influences that we wear openly", which he compared to the style of
Quentin Tarantino. He continued, "I think what makes it feel new is the fact that we're showing you can be both. We're showing that you can do Ralph Ellison at the same times as you're doing
Chester Himes." Coker was as specific with his choices of music in the season as "
Martin Scorsese is with the rock 'n' roll references like in
Casino or in
Goodfellas", rather than just adding hip-hop music for the sake of it. He highlighted the use of "I'm Bad Like Jesse James" in the seventh episode, which he had been trying to use in something for 20 years, that "builds up and coincides with the explosion that happens on screen and it's so subtle. That's the kind of stuff I geek out over."
Marvel Cinematic Universe tie-ins Part of the series takes place simultaneously with the events of the second season of
Daredevil. Throughout the season, the villains use
Hammer Industries weapons to counter Cage's abilities.
Justin Hammer and his company were introduced in the film
Iron Man 2 (2010), and Hammer was last seen incarcerated in
Seagate Prison in the
Marvel One-Shot All Hail the King (2014); Seagate is depicted in
Luke Cage, as the prison where Carl Lucas was sent and where there are rumored "millionaires hidden in the basement". The series references the events of the film
The Avengers (2012) and members of that team, as well as the future Defenders and
their own series. Specific mentions of the latter include Madame
Gao's operations in
Daredevil, the widely known villains
Wilson Fisk and
Frank Castle, and a flier for
Colleen Wing's martial arts class, to then be introduced in
Iron Fist. == Marketing ==