I have so many questions about the villains of Luke Cage and so much backstory I want explored, like what happened to Mama Mabel that Harlem’s Paradise was a “roach trap” by the time she died? How long ago did she die? By the way everyone talks I assume it was a while ago. Was Cornell already in charge when she died? When the series starts, how long has it been since he reopened Harlem’s Paradise? How did things become for him at home after he killed Pete?
Why and when did Shades stop working for Cornell? There didn’t seem to really be any animosity between them so what happened there? Priscilla says “late nineties (90′s)” so what was he doing after that? Why was he in Georgia? Did something significant happen when he was a kid that made him think Mariah might remember him? When did he start working for Diamondback? Before during or after Seagate?
How did Willis even become Diamondback in the first place? He was just some random kid from Georgia with no connections and now he’s the boogeyman to the criminal underworld of Harlem? That is a spectacular (if terrifying) rise to power. Did he ever confront his and Luke’s father? Did he know about the experiments going on at Seagate? Was he profiting off the fights held there? Did he know about Luke being alive the whole time or would he have thought him dead had things not happened the way they did?
Just how old is Mariah supposed to be? We all just assume she’s the same age as Alfre Woodard, but that would’ve made her thirty two (32) in Cornell’s flashback. I could be wrong but I assumed she was supposed to be in her early twenties (20′s) during that part, and personally I got the impression that being made to raise Cornell took away from her childhood and/or teenage years. Before the start of the series, just how successful had she been at distancing herself from her family’s legacy? Was her early career focused on Mama Mabel and Cornell, or did she manage to stay away from it all for a while?
Honestly they could just make a series dedicated solely to their backstories they have way more than enough material to work with.