The whole season, wrapped up in a nice little hoodie wearing bow.
Luke Cage, the bulletproof man, heads to Harlem to lay low after losing his bar in Hell’s Kitchen, staying with Reva’s only family, a man named Pop. Through a stupid move by a friend of Pop’s he gets sucked into a bad situation with a local crime lord, Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes, and when Pop ends up dead, Luke isn’t going to just stand aside. He sets himself to make as much trouble for Cottonmouth as possible, trying to run him out of business and bring him and his corrupt politician cousin Mariah Dillard down for Harlem. In the process he starts to but up against Detective Misty Knight, a woman he shared a night with before he found out she was a cop.
Luke’s efforts put the squeeze on Cottonmouth, upsetting his weapons connection, a man named Diamondback, and causing him to send his lieutenant Shades in to watch over things. Luke knows Shades from his time at Seagate prison, where he met his now ex-wife Reva, and where he got his super powers before escaping. Shades grows increasingly unsure about Cottonmouth’s ability to hold it together as Luke continues to wreck his operation, and in the process exposes Misty’s corrupt partner, who is very nearly able to take down the whole organization. But Cottonmouth isn’t the only one unravelling, as Cornell’s run-ins with Luke keep coming back to hurt Mariah politically as well. With both of them on edge old family arguments flare up and Mariah loses it, pushing Cottonmouth through a window before bashing his head in with a mic stand. To cover up her part in his death, Shades suggests that they pin the murder on Luke, and they pay off one of the waitresses, Candace, to back up their story.
Not knowing that things are already looking down for him, Luke, now in the company of the night nurse Claire, comes to learn that he is only mostly bulletproof, when Diamondback himself comes into town and unloads an alien metal Judas bullet into his stomach. Misty tracks them down to arrest Luke just in time to join them in continuing to fight of Diamondback’s attacks, and in the process he nearly kills Misty, and her and Claire get separated from Luke. Luke takes another bullet to the shoulder and gets knocked out, waking up the next morning and tracking Claire down, on the edge of life.
She rushes him to find the doctor that ran the original experiment that gave him his powers, in the hopes of finding a way to remove the bullets from skin they can’t cut through. They are eventually successful, allowing Luke to heal, but he also learns that Reva had lied to him about everything in their relationship. He takes some time to really think about his past and is finally able to put together truths from his childhood to realize that not only is Diamondback his once childhood friend Willis Stryker, but that he is legitimately his half brother. He’s been behind nearly every bad thing that has happened to Luke, including the frame that originally put him into prison, all for revenge against Luke for being the favored son.
Luke and Claire return to Harlem to find an anti-Luke Cage rally going on, as in his absence Diamondback has been impersonating Luke and stoking up fear among the people, going as far as killing a cop in a way that Luke would get the blame. At the rally Diamondback tries shooting both Misty and Luke, and the entire thing turns into a hostage situation. Shades turns on him, thinking that Diamondback has lost his mind. In the end Luke is able to save most of the hostages and get them out, including Candace, who is now determined to do what she can to clear his name, but Diamondback escapes.
Diamondback tries to have Shades killed for his disloyalty, setting both Shades and Mariah against him and having them turn to Luke as the enemy of their enemy, but before a deal can be struck Misty arrives to arrest Mariah, and then Diamondback shows up in his latest weapon: a custom made power suit that essentially gives him the same strength and abilities as Luke.
The two duel it out as Mariah makes her last ditch plans to escape jail, now plotting to blame everything that happened entirely on Diamondback. Luke gives his testimony to the police, clearing his name, but thanks to Mariah his past is outed and he is forced to return to Seagate prison to finish his sentence. Mariah arranges to have Candace murdered, making Misty’s case against her impossible to win, so she is able to walk free.