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The 10 Best Easter Eggs From Luke Cage Season 2


Season 2 of Luke Cage arrived on Netflix this past Friday, delivering even more of the bulletproof badass fans grew to love when he first popped up in Season 1 of Jessica Jones.

Of course, much like each season of Marvel’s Netflix series, Season 2 of Luke Cage is filled to the brim with references and nods to the comics, the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe, and more. With that in mind, here are the 10 best Easter eggs from Luke Cage Season 2:

  1. Night Nurse

    Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple has been a staple of the Marvel/Netflix universe ever since she debuted in the first season of the flagship series, Daredevil. Though it’s never explicitly stated in any of the shows, she’s essentially a stand-in for Linda Carter, aka the Night Nurse, from the comics, who specializes in helping injured superheroes. However, in Episode 1, when Luke and Claire are dancing in Claire’s apartment, we get a pretty on-the-nose nod to Claire’s de facto comic book counterpart, as the song the pair is dancing to is Gregory Isaacs’ Night Nurse.

  2. Luke Loves His Coffee

    Over the course of Jessica Jones Season 1, The Defenders, and Luke Cage Season 1, it’s become something of a running gag that whenever Luke discusses getting coffee with a member of the opposite sex, it’s actually a code for just that: sex. However, what began as just an inside joke among fans has since taken on new life. In Season 2, there are numerous instances of “coffee” being used as a double entendre, and unlike previous instances, the show hardly shies away from the intended connotation. 

  3. Hero for Hire

    As early as Episode 1, we begin getting nods to Luke becoming a Hero for Hire, either by outright hiring himself out as a hero or by using his rising popularity as the Hero of Harlem to secure sponsorships. This, of course, is a callback to the very early days of Luke Cage in the Marvel Universe, as the character’s very first solo series was titled Luke Cage: Hero for Hire. In fact, we’ll touch upon this once more in a later entry.

  4. Between the World and Me

    In Episode 1, while Claire is sleeping in Luke’s lap, we can spot Luke reading a book titled Between the World and Me. While the book itself has no direct connections to Luke Cage in the comics, the author does. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a prose author who made the leap to comics several years ago, most notably as the scribe of Black Panther. Coates has yet to write any solo Luke Cage stories, but Luke did play a minor role in Black Panther #6-8.

  5. Daughters of the Dragon

    In Season 1 of Iron Fist, fans got their first tease of the Daughters of the Dragon - the crime-fighting duo consisting of Colleen Wing and Misty Knight – when Colleen told a cage-fighting emcee to refer to her as ‘the Daughter of the Dragon.’ However, while the characters briefly shared some screen time in The Defenders, it’s their scenes in Episode 3 of Luke Cage S2 – particularly the barroom brawl – that give fans their best look yet at what a Daughters of the Dragon spinoff could look like.  

  6. Misty’s Bionic Arm

    In Luke Cage S1, it was teased that Misty Knight might lose her right arm, bringing her closer to her comic book counterpart. Then, in The Defenders, it actually happened in the crossfire of the climactic battle between Colleen and Bakuto. In the comics, Misty loses her arm following a bomb attack and is subsequently fitted with a powerful, bionic arm, courtesy of Iron Man, himself, Tony Stark. In the Netflix corner of the MCU, Danny Rand is the resident billionaire, and at the hospital, Colleen assured Misty that Danny owned the hospital and that it’s “a state-of-the-art kind of place” that should be able to “help [her] get back up and running.” The long journey finally culminates in Episode 4 of Luke Cage S2, when Misty is equipped with the bionic arm fans have been clamoring for, and it doesn’t take long for her to begin putting it to use.

  7. ‘Where’s My Money, Honey?’

    This is a very minor Easter egg, but it’s also so incredibly hyper-specific that it absolutely deserves a shoutout. In Episode 6, Luke asks Raymond “Piranha” Jones, “Where’s my money, honey?” in reference to the $150,000,000 Piranha agreed to pay Luke for appearing at his party. This line was actually pulled straight from the pages of 1973’s Luke Cage: Hero for Hire #9, by Steve Englehart and George Tuska. However, it wasn’t Piranha that Luke posed the question to in that issue, but rather the villainous Doctor Doom.

  8. Heroes for Hire

    While there are plenty of references to Luke Cage’s status as a Hero for Hire in Season 2, there’s one particularly crowd-pleasing nod to the Heroes for Hire, which is the duo of Luke Cage and Danny Rand, aka Iron Fist. In Episode 10, which features a guest appearance from Finn Jones’ Danny Rand, Danny notes to D.W. that “Power Man and Iron Fist” has a nice ring to it. This, of course, is the name of the team of Luke Cage and Iron Fist in the comics, who went on to found Heroes for Hire and partner with the likes of Misty Knight and Colleen Wing.

  9. Tilda’s Comic-Book-Accurate Look

    The Tilda Johnson we see in Luke Cage S2 doesn’t share a whole lot in common with her comic book counterpart, the villainous Nightshade, besides the fact that she uses actual nightshade as an ingredient in the formula that helps give Bushmaster his powers. In the final episode, though, when Tilda walks into Harlem’s Paradise, there’s no denying that she bears an uncanny resemblance to the comic book version of Nightshade, which could be a way of foreshadowing her possible role as the big bad of Season 3.

  10. Luke Cage, Crime Boss?

    By the time Season 2 ends, Luke Cage is the new owner of Harlem’s Paradise and by all accounts, a reluctant crime boss. While this isn’t something Luke has done in the comics, it is a path we’ve seen none other than Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, go down on a few occasions. Once, of course, was in Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s “King of Hell’s Kitchen” arc, which saw Daredevil declare himself the new Kingpin after beating Wilson Fisk within an inch of his life. The other was during the divisive Shadowland event, in which Daredevil becomes the leader of the Hand and erects a massive temple/prison in Hell’s Kitchen.

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