Marvel's Luke Cage: Ranking Every Major Character From Worst To Best

Finest Moment: The memorial monologue.

Cottonmouth is everything Luke Cage's Harlem shouldn't be, and everything that a certain rogue element of its populous thinks it really ought to be. He's about greed, shows of power and respect and about controlling his patch with an iron fist.

He's a little like Wilson Fisk (albeit without the top level power as he has to answer to bigger entities): suggesting he IS Harlem in the face of a superhero who actually embodies more of the place's identity. He's the worst of the hip-hop dream - not about resistance or expressed identity, but about getting rich, getting women and flash suits.

And he's thoroughly unlikeable and capable of huge terrifying episodes with a depth from his artistic nature and his tragic backstory that make him far more complex than he initially seems.

And who would have thought he wouldn't even make it past the mid-point of the season. In dying, he actually served a greater purpose to his cousin.