Luke Cage S1:E3 Who’s Gonna Take the Weight?

Simple Synopsis

In the aftermath of Pop’s death, Luke starts to clean up the trash.

With Pop gone, Luke is left reeling, and blames Cottonmouth for breaking the parley. Fish tells him they will need money to keep the barbershop open and to fix it up, and Luke decides to hit Cottonmouth where it will hurt, right in the wallet.

And holy crap, Chico lived through that. Misty wants him to step up and testify, but he doesn’t want to do it. Luke tells him he needs to step up and help out after having what he did led to Pop’s death, but Chico is reluctant. He goes as far as telling Luke everything he can about Cottonmouth’s operation, but he won’t testify.

When Luke learns that Cottonmouth keeps his money in stash houses around town but has a plan to centralize everything if he gets into trouble, Luke sets out to hit as many of the stash houses as possible. Despite Mariah’s objections, Cottonmouth goes according to plan and moves all of his assets to Maria’s office. Luke takes the opportunity to strike, using his bulletproof status to take out all of the guards and blow the whole thing open, leaving the guns and most of the money for the cops. Meanwhile, Diego declares war with Cottonmouth over the missing guns from the botched deal.

Seeing Luke’s efforts to step up, Chico finally decides that he needs to do the same, and goes to Misty’s partner, Scarfe, and agrees to testify. Hearing this, and learning that Luke was the one that hit Cottonmouth, Scarfe strangles Chico. Cottonmouth is livid over his losses when Scarfe arrives and lets him know both who did it, and where Luke lives.

Luke turns the reclaimed money over to Fish to get the shop opened back up and heads off to Connie’s to get some food. Cottonmouth shows up with a freaking rocket launcher, and sends one flying into the restaurant, blowing the place sky high with Connie and Luke inside.

TL;DR
Luke goes big, hitting enough of Cottonmouth’s stashes to have the gangster move all of his assets to a central location, and then hits that. Chico decides to come forward, but finds out that Misty’s partner is a crooked cop when he murders him. Cottonmouth hits back at Luke with a rocket launcher.