LogFAQs > #904284863

Finished LC2 last night. Kinda mixed feelings, although I liked it a lot better than LC1 (mostly because LC1 wasted so much time on the set-up and kinda always felt like it lacked focus. Had Cornell died at the end of the season rather than midway or had Diamondback been introduced earlier (since with DD1, iirc from the first episode we knew they were working for somebody else), it would have felt a bit more cohesive).

The season's last episode in particular kinda bugged me. I'm kind of okay with Bushmaster just leaving instead of being arrested -- although I'd still rather see him wind up in prison since, although the Stokes screwed his life, he killed a *lot* of innocent people himself, including the Atreus Plastics guy; all the characters were making a big deal about Mariah and Shades not getting away with their shit, but Bushmaster was every bit as bad as Mariah.

For a while, it looked like they going to do the same thing with Mariah that DD was doing with Kingpin, which felt like a lazy move. However, when I saw Tilda cooking in her kitchen, I immediately recognized it as, "Oh, bitch is being poisoned," and the kiss of death -- especially after *another* very popular show did it in recent years -- was a pretty dead tell. Killing her to end the second season was a pretty good move. While I would have liked to have seen more of her as a villain, the second season encapsulated her downfall and gave her a full character arc (whereas I had assumed it would just build her up as a villain)

Everything with Shades's proffer made no sense. Characters argued, "Oh, he wants to get her out of the way so he can take over! And get immunity for his crimes!" but, as he himself noted, once he snitched, his career was done. It's not like he was leaving with any money at that point either, since Mariah had all the cash. It would have made more sense for him just to leave.

And, while Shades did tons of objectively evil shit in season 1 to get viewers to hate him, his season 2 portrayal was more nuanced and we got to see more of his humanity. So the fact that Bushmaster was allowed to just get out of the game and go back to Jamaica yet Shades winds up being arrested for his proffer just seems stupid from a narrative point of view. idk, maybe this is buildup for his use in s3. That said, the fact that the witnesses are dead so everything is built on his confession could get him off, but it's not like there's anything to return to -- almost everybody in the organization is dead, Mariah's millions were given away, and Luke has the club.

Then, of course, everything with Luke Cage becoming a crime boss not actually involved in crime was just weird. I guess it makes a natural stopping point since it's a good place for a time skip.

While Mariah's personality constantly flipped around, I still liked her this season. And I liked how pretty much everything unfolded partly because she went ahead with a gun sale that Shades and others warned her against doing. The Hammer weapons themselves -- and I'm not sure why more weren't withheld if a few were kept anyway -- might have been enough to subdue Bushmaster, considering that his invulnerability was a lot weaker than Cage's.