Netflix's Luke Cage Season 2 Trailer Introduces Tough New Villain

Marvel's Luke Cage has a date with Netflix, and the streaming studio has released its debut trailer for the second season. After the events of The Defenders, Luke has gone back to Harlem as a hometown hero. It isn't long before his celebrity attracts unwanted attention from another man, who also happens to be bulletproof. The trailer also hints at a continuing working (and flirty) relationship with Misty Knight.

Continuing the trend, the snake-themed villain this time around appears to be Bushmaster, a super-powered crime boss in Marvel continuity. On the whole the season appears to add a bit more levity than the first, along with some science-fiction zaniness like Misty's robotic arm. It's coming on June 22.

The Marvel Netflix universe has been one of mixed results. The big team-up feature The Defenders was notable mostly for finally ending a plotline that had gone too long already, and Iron Fist was generally panned. The most recent addition was season 2 of Jessica Jones, which had a stellar first season but slowed down for the second.

Despite ostensibly taking place in the same world as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and occasionally casually referencing big events like the Battle of New York, the Netflix series are kept corralled in their own storytelling space. That means that the street-level heroes that make up the Defenders team--Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage--were nowhere to be found in the mega-blockbuster Avengers: Infinity War. That movie broke more records over the weekend, becoming the quickest movie ever to reach $1 billion.