Marvel’s Luke Cage: September 30, 2016 Mike Colter will take the lead in Luke Cage after making his debut in Jessica Jones as a love interest for the heroine. Cheo Hodari Coker (Ray Donovan, NCIS: Los Angeles) will serve as the showrunner on the third of four planned Defender series. The new series will explore more of Cage’s origin story and how a sabotaged experiment left him with super strength and unbreakable skin. According to the Netflix synopsis, Cage is a fugitive trying to rebuild his life in Harlem, but he is soon pulled out of the shadows and must fight a battle for the heart of his city — forcing him to confront a past he had tried to bury. "You’re definitely going to get a chance to see the backstory,” Colter told Entertainment Tonight in May. “A lot of the stuff you saw in Jessica Jones, the questions you have, the ambiguity, the vagueness [will be answered]… Luke has a lot of skeletons in his closet.”
Rounding out the cast of Luke Cage is Alfre Woodard (Mariah Stokes), Simone Missick (Misty Knight), Mahershala Ali (Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes), Theo Rossi (Shades) and Frank Whaley (Rafael Scarfe). Rosario Dawson will reprise her role of Claire Temple, the night nurse who helped Jessica Jones ( treat Cage in the first season of Jessica Jones, and was introduced in the Daredevil series as an ally to Charlie Cox’s blind hero. It’s unknown if Ritter will make a cameo in Cage after Jessica and Luke separated on rocky terms. (Photo credit: Netflix)