“I’m a politician, not a gun dealer,” says Mariah (Alfre Woodard) in the second half of Luke Cage. “What’s the difference?” comes the reply. “Sell the fear.” That reply comes from Willis Stryker (Erik LaRay Harvey), aka. Diamondback – Season 1’s Big Bad. Yes, it was he who shot Luke at the end of Episode 7. And it’s he who starts to take over Harlem in Cottonmouth’s absence. The problem? He’s also a massive disappointment.

The departure of Cottonmouth still ringing in our ears, Episode 8 is something of a gear shift for Luke Cage, and that’s largely due to Diamondback, who feels more comic booky (it’s a word, honest) than those slow-burn, low-key first episodes. Where Cottonmouth emerged as a quietly tragic figure, Diamondback is all loud, all the time. LaRay Harvey makes an excellent contrast to Cage, smiling at pain, laughing at violence and generally cackling and talking over everything, but he’s also at odds with the world of Harlem that’s already been built around him.

The juxtaposition with Luke is no accident, as we are told in Episode 8 that Stryker is Luke’s half-brother – and that he wants revenge for what he perceives to be his brother leaving him to “rot”. Their first fight in a theatre is a brilliant reminder of how well Luke Cage does action: their fighting styles couldn’t be more different; one bulletproof and happy with his fists, the other using a magic bullet that can actually harm him. Weakened for the first time, Luke has to use his environment more than ever, while Stryker’s own fighting skill mean that the exchange of blows is more varied than what we’ve seen already. (Compare that to the way Arrow’s action scenes have become less diverse as the series continues.)

But otherwise, structure and theme, which were so brilliantly united in the show’s first half, are noticeably poorer here – at the end of their initial encounter, Stryker shoots Luke and leaves him to be driven off in a garbage truck, but why? Why not just kill him then while Luke is weak?

Mariah, fortunately, is still there to keep us on track, refusing to believe she’s anything like Mama Mabel, even though she so clearly is.

She’s the star of Season 1’s second part. Or maybe that’s Misty, who knows Luke didn’t kill Cottonmouth and doesn’t buy the story of waitress Candace, who’s told to frame Luke for the murder. Or perhaps it’s Claire Temple, who is interrogated by Misty about Luke’s whereabouts – until Misty flies off the handle.

For all the talk of Mike Colter’s lead, it’s easy to overlook that Luke Cage has done something else equally rare and powerful: given us a TV show filled with complex female characters, all of whom are nuanced, developed, rounded human beings.

We spend time with Misty, as she’s quizzed by a psychologist to get her badge back after losing her temper. We watch Mariah try to sell off the family business to New York’s rival crime bosses, only for Diamondback to kill everyone at the meeting and force her to be his colleague. We wince, as Claire attempts to heal Luke’s injuries from the Judas bullets, by taking him to Dr. Burstein, the doc from the prison, who comes up with the idea of boiling him in acid. (Pro tip: Don’t ask him to be your GP.) Every subplot gives them heaps of material to work with, each person acting out of a belief in doing the right thing, each performer compelling enough to make their perspectives convincing. (At one point in a later episode, Misty and Claire talk to each other, both admiring the other for being so good at her job. It’s a beautiful moment that a lesser TV show simply wouldn’t have bothered with.)

Even Reva is revealed as more complicated than we first thought, when Cage discovers in Episode 10 that she was part of the plan to target and recruit him for Burstein’s experiments all along – good news for those who didn’t buy Cage and Reva’s romance in the early chapters. (Cage tries to stop the experiments continuing in the future, but, of course, Burstein still has a copy of the data. So that’s on the cards for future MCU fun.)

But there’s clunky dialogue in the exposition of even these parts of the show. “I’m in love with the idea of her,” declares Cage, ruefully, of Reva, just in case we needed his internal feelings spelled out explicitly. It’s that kind of sloppy speech that really doesn’t do Diamondback any favours, as he repeatedly quotes the Bible every chance he gets, even when it doesn’t seem to be relevant to the conversation at hand.

“You quote the Bible like you actually believe in God,” he’s told. “And you speak to me as if you’re not in the presence of death,” he retorts, in the most over-the-top way imaginable. “I’ll murderise everything in sight,” he later snarls. “You can’t bargain with me. You buy, or you die.” He’s full of these phrases that feel like they’re trying a little too hard to be cool. The phrase ‘larger than life’ is an understatement.

But there’s still stuff that resonates with reality: the powerful image of a bullet-proof Black man finds new depth and importance, when the police step up their hunt for Cage, stopping every Black and Latino resident of Harlem they can find. Cage, who wears a hood to disguise himself, becomes a sadly familiar sight, as he’s stopped by the cops in the street – a situation that forces him to escape using his powers. Footage from a dashboard camera in a police car promptly goes viral, making it look like he’s beating up cops. (In truth, he’s kind to them, shielding them to prevent them getting shot and taking care not to deliver fatal blows.)

Mariah and Diamondback jump to take advantage. He dons an electric-shocking backpack (no, we don’t know where it came from either) and starts assaulting cops and others, shouting “I’M LUKE CAGE” to make sure Luke gets the blame. It’s laughable that anyone would actually believe that, not to mention laughably unsubtle in its own right. But the death of a cop escalates things into believably hostile territory. (“This is Harlem, and when cop gets killed, heads roll.”)

And so Mariah and Diamondback play their trump card: stoking the community’s fear, so they can sell Judas 2.0 bullets (suitable for mass production) to the police to arm them against what they portray as a growing superhero threat.

“You gotta go big pharma on this shit,” says Mariah, more like Mama Mabel than ever. “You invent the disease, then you sell the cure.” Jumping on police brutality to call for weaponising the police, she gives rousing speeches exploiting the recently deceased locals that rediscover the urgency and topicality of Season 1’s excellent first half.

Arming the police does happen, and the resulting stand-off all climaxes in Harlem’s Paradise, following Mariah’s campaigning. A hostage situation eventually unfolds in the building, with Stryker and Mariah both trying to pin the blame on Luke in media reports of the event.

Theo Rossi remains superb as Shades, who, along with Mariah, provides the crucial link between Diamondback and the rest of the show’s world. Rossi’s quiet presence is more in keeping with Cage’s opening episodes, able to slot into political conversations and violent scenes with intimidating ease, while still carrying a graphic novel vibe with his signature sunglasses. It’s no coincidence that he’s the one pointing out how dumb Mariah and Diamondback’s plan is – but rather than ground the whole thing with his more realistic perspective, he only makes the stupidity of their plan more obvious. All the while, Diamondback continues to quote the Bible, telling us over and over that his father wasn’t as nice to his bastard son as he was to Luke. Son Of A Preacher Man plays in the background. It doesn’t quite work.

It’s here that the show really reveals how uneven its become. Downstairs in the basement, we have a remarkable show with complex Black women interacting – using dental floss to seal arteries and even double-teaming Diamondback’s goon, Alvarez, to knock him out. Upstairs, we have a villain whose main strength is that he calls Damon Boone, Mariah’s main political rival, a “Diet Barack Obama”. By the time Luke gets arrested by the police storming the club and Diamondback walks away, you’re left questioning how it’s all possible – no matter how symbolic it is that Cage is back behind bars, he can surely just break free anyway, right? And how does nobody spot the world’s most conspicuous villain leaving a surrounded building and screeching away in a car?

There are some neat easter eggs and nods peppered throughout Episodes 8 to 11, from Cage’s Power Man nickname gradually being phased in and Claire being dubbed a “night nurse” (as per her comic book identity) to Jessica Jones getting a mention from Mariah, alongside Frank Castle’s recent bullet-spraying rampage. But while the ties to the wider MCU are being set up, Luke Cage’s second act feels messier, less focused and less exciting – once again, there’s a dip around the Episode 9 to 10 mark, as Netflix’s superhero outings (see Daredevil Season 2) often seem to struggle to fill out their 13-episode runtime.

How much of this disappointment is because of the strong first seven episodes? And how much of it is due to Marvel and Netflix’s adherence to a standard length for a first season? Luke Cage continues to do impressive, important things with its characters and themes, but you wonder whether it would work better if Marvel and Netflix released it as two smaller seasons: Episodes 1 to 7 as an establishing Season 1 and this storyline as a wider Season 2.

All episodes of Luke Cage are available on Netflix UK, as part of an £9.99 monthly subscription.