Cottonmouth strikes back at Luke by taking his vengeance out on the people of Harlem, while Detectives Knight and Scarfe face an unexpected threat.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Applied Phlebotinum: The Judas Bullets contain metal salvaged from the Incident.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: Luke gets personally tailored for Pop's funeral. The shirt acquires five bullet holes before he makes it to the memorial service, but fortunately still looks just as good with the jacket on.
- Bad Boss:
- Cottonmouth shoots the one henchman who suggests leaving Luke Cage alone.
- A demonstration of the Judas bullet shows a mook wearing military-grade body armor to test if it can stop the bullet. It can't.
- Bitch Slap: Luke to the thug who shook down a stripper for her tips, and you can slap a lot harder when you have Super-Strength—Luke knocks him unconscious with a single blow.
- Blasphemous Boast: Shades claims that Hammer Industries' special bullets are called the Judas because they're what you'd use to "kill Jesus."
- Boom, Headshot!: How Cottonmouth kills Koko.
- Call-Back:
- Misty's superiors approach her to give her a heads up that Internal Affairs has Scarfe under investigation. Perez (who later is revealed to also be dirty) says, "We have a lot of eyes on us, Misty. Can't take any chances," referring to the increased public scrutiny the NYPD has been under for the past year after dozens of cops were arrested for doing Wilson Fisk's dirty work.
- Claire describes how her co-worker Louisa Delgado was murdered in the Hand's attack, and how Metro-General Hospital has done everything it can to blacklist her from practicing at any hospital in the New York City area, as well as how she treated Luke Cage after he took a shotgun blast to the head.
- Camera Abuse: The impact of the chunks of human flesh emitted by the exploding Judas bullet in the test footage knocks the camera's tripod over.
- The Cameo: Jidenna opens the episode with "Long Live the Chief" alongside a montage of Luke lifting debris from a dumpster and Claire arriving in Harlem fighting off a would-be mugger.
- The Consigliere: Even though he's seen Cottonmouth murder a man just for making a suggestion he didn't like, Shades uses his position as Diamondback's representative to offer commonsense advice which Cottonmouth unfortunately is unwilling to take.
- Dirty Cop: Lieutenant Perez is also on Cottonmouth's payroll, and reveals to Scarfe that Internal Affairs is investigating him. So is one of the Property sergeants responsible for the disposal of seized firearms. The property sergeant is shown falsifying paperwork indicating the weapons were removed for immediate destruction, then collects a payment from Scarfe, who hauls the cases away in a van.
- Disarm, Disassemble, Destroy: Luke prefers disarm and squeeze the gun into an unworkable shape with his Super-Strength.
- Donut Mess with a Cop: When Perez tells Scarfe that he's tasked one of the property sergeants with removing Domingo's weapons from evidence, Scarfe skeptically says, "that fat, donut-eating bastard's gonna get us burnt."
- Establishing Character Moment: Claire running down the guy who snatched her purse and beating him up.
- Fighting Fingerprint: Shades recognizes Luke is Carl Lucas from his fighting style.
- Foreshadowing: Cottonmouth says during his eulogy at Pop's funeral, "I promise you with all my might that even though we are being attacked from all sides by foreign interlopers, strangers with arcane abilities..."
- Hero with Bad Publicity: Cottonmouth attempts to tarnish Luke Cage's name and reputation by having his thugs shake down shops and extorting payments from shop owners. Cottonmouth claims that they need to pay for the "Luke Cage stupidity tax." This backfires, as Luke gets a standing ovation for his eulogy towards Pop. Luke also makes Cottonmouth's plan backfire by getting back the stolen items for all the people who come to him.
- Hidden Depths: Coco, one of Cottonmouth's goons who has been reading a book on "politics and the social conditions that created hip-hop," draws a connection between it and their Luke Cage conundrum, suggesting that "benign neglect," i.e. leaving Cage alone, may be preferable to antagonizing him. He gets shot in the head for his troubles.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Cottonmouth attempts to make innocent shop owners and businesses pay for Luke's interference with his protection racket. Instead, Luke ends up protecting these people and since he isn't extorting them, wins Harlem's heart over Cottonmouth. Had Cottonmouth chose to practice benign neglect and not try to fix their Luke Cage problem, he would probably had kept his Villain with Good Publicity image instead of "bullies masking as friends."
- Honor Before Reason: Shades says that Cottonmouth's revenue problems will be solved if he just sells his nightclub, but he refuses.
- I Am the Noun:Stripper: Don't you need a gun?
Luke: I am the gun. - Internal Reveal: Several.
- Shades, and by extension Cottonmouth, learn Luke's real identity.
- Claire tells her mother about her experiences with Matt Murdock.
- Kick the Dog: Claire has been blacklisted from working as a nurse in New York City after she refused to help the hospital cover up the Hand's attack.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Cottonmouth has police officers on his payroll, but unlike Wilson Fisk he has nobody bribed in the Internal Affairs Bureau. This bites him in the ass since it means when said cops are compromised, he can't offer his goons protection from investigation, which compromises their loyalty. There is also the fact that in light of Fisk, IAB has no tolerance for any suspected corruption within the ranks, so the Cottonmouth crew don't have the free reign that Fisk's did. It doesn't take much for IAB to launch an investigation, beyond simply some discrepancies with Scarfe's official movements on the night of Chico's murder and the bombing at Genghis Connie's.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Claire's mother insists that there's a reason why Claire gets caught up in the superhero affairs.
- Memorial Photo: Beloved neighborhood figure Pop has two: one of him smiling avuncularly at the camera, the other of him standing beside his barber shop.
- Revenge by Proxy: Bobby Fish describes Cottonmouth's shakedown tactics as this—if he can't drive Luke out of Harlem, he'll make the locals do it.
- Say My Name: Inverted when Luke threatens a thug that bad things will happen to him if he ever drops Luke's name again.
- Serious Business: Aisha is ready to shoot people to get her father's championship ring back.
- Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Cottonmouth and Luke Cage's rhetorical speeches at Pop's funeral recalls the "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" scene from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, with Cottonmouth as Brutus and Cage as Marc Antony.
- Silent Offer: Shades writes down the cost of a single Judas bullet on a coaster and Cottonmouth is incredulous when he looks at it. But as the alternative is to let Diamondback take over his territory, he makes immediate plans to raise the necessary revenue.
- Shooting Superman: Luke points how dumb it is for Cottonmouth's man to shoot him with a pistol when he's already shaken off a rocket blast.
- This Cannot Be!:
- Luke is surrounded on the floor of the club by several of Cottonmouth's men. Cottonmouth's men attack him, and Luke fights them off effortlessly. But Shades realizes, Luke's fighting style looks awfully familiar, and look of disbelief crosses Shades's face as he recognizes...Hernan "Shades" Alvarez: ...Carl Lucas?
- Zip's expression when Luke takes a .45 bullet to the chest without flinching.
- Luke is surrounded on the floor of the club by several of Cottonmouth's men. Cottonmouth's men attack him, and Luke fights them off effortlessly. But Shades realizes, Luke's fighting style looks awfully familiar, and look of disbelief crosses Shades's face as he recognizes...
- Too Dumb to Live:
- One of the guys that fights Luke on the floor of the club is the very guy who broke his arm trying to punch Luke at Genghis Connie's in the first episode, and clearly didn't learn his lesson there.
- Zip continues to try shooting at Luke even after the first bullet clearly didn't do anything to him. Somehow he didn't get word of the altercation Luke had with Cottonmouth's other thugs at the club, or believe what the others told him about Crispus Attucks.
- Took a Level in Badass: Claire has taken one since being attacked by Ninjas and Russians, and immediately deals out a beating to the first guy who attempts to mug her. She obviously gets a kick from it.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Cottonmouth's speech at Pop's funeral receives unanimous agreement and approval from the people attending the funeral. He even earns a round of applause after finishing his eulogy. However, Luke manages to outdo him.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Misty is the only one not impressed by Luke's speech, pointing out that—vigilantism aside—his starting a war with Cottonmouth will only get innocents killed.
