As Luke adjusts to his growing fame and tries to shut down the flow of heroin branded with his name, someone from his past reaches out. Meanwhile, Mariah and Shades plan on retiring from the criminal business.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Action Prologue: We are introduced to Luke as he busts a drug ring selling Arturo Rey's Luke Cage drug.
- Badass Boast: Luke to Mariah:Luke: If you ever say Claire Temple's name out loud again, I'll kill you. I'll go to jail with a smile on my face. No bullet can kill me, no jail can hold me. You hear me? Nothing can stop me from getting to you.
- Berserk Button: A waiter brings up Shades' May–December Romance with Mariah. Shades later beats the waiter down, then has Comanche finish him off.
- Blatant Lies: Luke's confrontation with Ridenhour is riddled with this.Ridenhour: You can't keep doing what you're doing.
Luke: Kicking ass and shutting down drug labs? I have no idea what you're talking about.
Ridenhour: I've got a map that says otherwise.
Luke: Oh. That's just my reputation preceding me.
Ridenhour: You're an unlicensed weapon. You need to work with us, legally.
Luke: I'm doing your work for you. Allegedly. - Calling the Old Man Out: Luke does this to his father, Reverend James Lucas.
- Continuity Nod:
- Shades debriefs Mariah on the prospective gun buyers, who all have connections to the criminal players of the first season.
- Arturo Rey III, the so-called "Discount Furniture King of Washington Heights", smuggles coke and heroin in his couches. He recently acquired a large swath of territory by forcing the Colon brothers out of the drug business completely in the wake of Domingo's death.
- Nigel Garrison is the leader of the Yardies, controlling the guns and gangs of Crown Heights and Jamaica, Queens. His brother Neville Barnwell was one of the four crimelords that Diamondback killed in the fatal meeting at Colon's Gym.
- Dontrell "Cockroach" Hamilton is a fresh out of jail player whose conviction by the late Detective Scarfe was tainted.
- Atreus Plastics, the company that Piranha Jones is pitching for Mariah and Shades to make an investment in, had been alluded to before, as one of their trucks was used in the season 1 finale of Daredevil as part of Wilson Fisk's attempted jailbreak.
- Claire is seen coaching Misty Knight in therapy, and she mentions Matt when bringing up Midland Circle and Misty's injury, which happened in The Defenders.
- Shades debriefs Mariah on the prospective gun buyers, who all have connections to the criminal players of the first season.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Shades beat up a waiter for mistakingly assumed Mariah is his aunt instead of lover.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Misty hates the idea of people pitying her for the loss of her arm. Claire has to explain it's not pity, it's gratitude. Misty has to argue her way back into the precinct; she doesn't want a purple heart, she's not interested in retiring on tax-free 3/4-pay for life. She's a cop, god dammit.
- Evil Power Vacuum: Diamondback's massacre of the gang bosses from season 1 has just led to new gangs filling the vacuum, Arturo Rey and Cockroach being among the new players.
- Eye Scream: Bushmaster slowly slices Nigel Garrison across the face with a knife.
- Historical In-Joke: Luke isn't the first black man to change his name and get insulted/assaulted by people using his dead name.
- Insistent Terminology: Bushman insists on calling her Mariah Stokes from the first time he hears her name.
- Instant Fan Club: Luke's rise in fame comes with a lot of downsides. The Harlem's Hero mobile app allows obsessed fans to track his every movement (like a personal Waze), and some try to catch Luke at the barbershop, etc. The barbershop also now has tour buses coming by every other hour.
- Kill It with Fire: Arturo Rey tries to kill Luke by blowing him up in one of his trucks, but of course, it fails.
- Mythology Gag:
- Shades and Comanche mention the name of their old gang, the Rivals. In the comics, Diamondback and Luke also belonged to it.
- Claire teasingly calls Luke Cage "Power Man" after he goes off to check out a tip from Sugar.
- Mariah's introduced about to play the stock market by investing in Atreus Plastics as they are about to be acquired by Glenn Industries. In the Daredevil comics, Atreus Plastics was a front company for Glenn Industries' illegal manufacture of explosives (with Glenn Industries' CEO Maxwell Glenn being the father to one of Matt's girlfriends). Here, Atreus and Glenn are separate entities, Atreus being a plastics company involved in no shady dealings, and same for Glenn.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Luke Cage, pretty much The Cape of the Marvel Netflix ensemble, threatens people (in this case Mariah) to kill them if they target his loved ones, you know it's serious.
- Oh, Crap!: Arturo shoots Luke with a Judas bullet. Luke falls to his knees, grunting in pain, the bullet explodes... and he stands up. Those aren't a problem any more.
- Playing Both Sides: Mariah suggests her new hire Stephanie do a bit of this when it comes to entrapping powerful men that Mariah plans to blackmail.
- Popcultural Osmosis Failure: During a business meeting, Mariah makes a reference that neither Piranha nor Shades get.Mariah: Plastics? That's our future? [Mariah starts laughing. Shades and Piranha just stare] Damn, none of y'all saw The Graduate?
- Retired Monster: What Mariah plans on doing.
- Shooting Superman: As per usual, but surprisingly even the Judas Bullet, his Achilles' Heel from Season 1 can't seem to phase him anymore.
- Lampshaded in the beginning by Luke but justified by the thugs when one of the them claims, "We gotta know we tried, man".
- Shout-Out: Lucy Liu directed this episode, and her past association with Kill Bill shows in the Tarantino-esque atmosphere when Bushmaster kills Nigel.
- So Last Season: Inverted. Luke appears to be invulnerable to last season's Judas Bullet.
- Take That!: Bobby Fish laments to D.W. Griffith the new generation of people living their lives through social media.
- Throw It In!: When the waiter at Ginny's Supper Club comes to the table, he mistakes Shades for Mariah’s nephew. Instead of getting angry, Mariah responds by picking up Shades’ hand and seductively sucking on his thumb. According to Alfre Woodard, the script actually called for Mariah to kiss Shades on the neck here, but she and Theo Rossi decided to improvise.
- Trespassing to Talk: Nigel ends up on the fatal end of such an encounter from Bushmaster.
- Villainous Breakdown: Mariah has one after Luke survives the Judas Bullet and threatens her life.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Nigel Garrison gets killed in his first appearance by Bushmaster.
- White-Collar Crime: Mariah intends to combine inside information with good old fashioned blackmail to make billions in the stock market.
- Wrestler in All of Us: At the beginning, Luke slams a goon through a table, WWE-style.
- The Yardies: Nigel Garrison is their new leader, as his brother, Neville Barnwell, was one of the four crime lords murdered by Diamondback during the meeting at Colon's Gym.
