Marvel's Luke Cage: 10 Ups And 2 Downs From Season 1

Ups...

10. The Music

Luke Cage's showrunner is Cheo Hodari Coker, a former music journalist and writer of the biopic of Notorious B.I.G., so it shouldn't come as any surprise that music plays a huge part in the series.

With every episode taking its title from a Gang Starr track, the show is put together like an album, and makes great use of both existing and original music throughout the season.

The music perfectly accompanies what we're seeing on screen, helping to elevate scenes and give them more a sense of moving forward: Wu Tang Clan's Bring Da Ruckus plays during a big action sequence; John Lee Hooker's It Serves You Right To Suffer is a poignant accompaniment to the preparation for Pop's funeral, and his Bad Like Jesse James haunts a later scene with a young Cottonmouth.

Another standout is the appearance of Method Man, who then appears on radio to rap about Luke Cage. All of this is backed-up by a wonderful score from Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, who know when to go subtle and when to bring the bigger, booming beats, that manages to feel fresh while paying lots of homage to the past of hip-hop.