|
"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | You like my Biggie photo? Me too. You know what draws your eye when you look at that? The crown. Wanna know why? 'Cause everybody wants to be the king. | „ |
| ~ Cottonmouth's most famous quote. |
| “ | Cottonmouth: I'm all about the old school. You know that eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth kind of thing. Fire and brimstone. See back then do someone wrong, wasn't no begging and pleading. Just took care of it. Handled your business. Pop: What about turning the other cheek?" Cottonmouth: Mmm. Jesus saves. I don't. |
„ |
| ~ Cottonmouth to Pop. |
Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes is the secondary antagonist in Season 1 of the 2016-2018 Netflix Marvel Cinematic Universe series Marvel's Luke Cage.
He is the owner of Harlem's Paradise, a nightclub in New York City, and a powerful mob boss, as well as being the grandson of Mama Mabel and the cousin of Black Mariah. After three young men from Harlem attack one of Cottonmouth's weapons deals and escape with Cottonmouth's money, Cottonmouth starts hunting down the three to get his money back. While hunting the last remaining assailant, Cottonmouth's henchmen accidentally killed Pop, a respected man around Harlem. Pop's friend Luke Cage intends to avenge Pop and starts coming after Cottonmouth's operation in order to do so.
He was portrayed by Mahershala Ali.
His Evil Ranking[]
His Villainous Deeds[]
In General/Background[]
- In his youth, despite his family being heavily involved in criminal activities in Harlem, Cornell (for quite some time) did not become part of it. Eventually, his grandmother, the crime lady Mama Mabel, decided that he needed some "dirt" on him and sent Cornell with his uncle to kill someone who sold drugs on her territory.
- When he was fourteen years old, during a conversation with Mama Mabel, Cornell informed her that her brother-in-law, Pete Stokes, was making deals with the Puerto Ricans without her consent. Mama confronted Pete and had him shot by Cornell. Although Cornell really liked Pete, who shared his love to music, payed for Cornell's piano lessons and drove him to music auditions as he thought that Cornell had real talent, he killed Pete after both Mama Mabel and her cousin Mariah, whom Pete had sexually abused, urged him to shoot Pete.
- Eventually, Cottonmouth became a gangster in Harlem. He was part of Pop's gang and was known as "Thing One". As he had lost three teeth in a fight, he was afraid to smile for a time. After the gang was caught and disbanded, Cottonmouth continued on alone.
Luke Cage[]
- In the wake of the eventual death of Mama Mabel, Cottonmouth took control of the Stokes Crime Family and Harlem's Paradise. Becoming one of the biggest crime bosses in Harlem, Cottonmouth established relations with multiple criminals across New York City, such as Yardies, Macoute, Korean Mob, Cuban Mob, and Wilson Fisk and befriended a weapons dealer, known as Diamondback.
- Exploited his cousin Mariah's political ambitions by tying violence and crime to her public reputation.
- Manipulated political and street dynamics to solidify power, including controlling public opinion.
- He partners with Diamondback to supply advanced weaponry (including Judas bullets) to criminals and gangs throughout Harlem, expanding the violence and chaos in the city.
- He orchestrates violent actions against Luke Cage and his allies, including arranging attacks to intimidate and eliminate Cage, whom he views as a threat to his control.
- He beats Shameek Smith to death after interrogating him. While the latter did steal his money and spat blood in his face, it was still pretty brutal.
- During an altercation involving his men and street thugs ("Piranha" and others), Love's attack inadvertently results in the death of Pop Hunter, a beloved Harlem barber and father figure to Luke Cage. This violence catalyzes Luke Cage's direct opposition to Cottonmouth.
- Uses his resources to try to eliminate Cage through hit squads and assassination attempts.
- He maintains protection and influence through corrupt officers like Detective Rafael Scarfe, who sells out Luke Cage to Cottonmouth's forces.
- When Scarfe threatens to expose his operations, Cottonmouth shoots him and leaves him for dead.
- Throws one of his henchmen off the roof after learning they were involved in the shooting that killed Pops.
- Ordered Zip to send out a hit on Scarfe.
- Despite being arrested in his club by the NYPD, he uses his lawyer Benjamin Donovan to reverse this, which prevents him from going to prison.
- He is misognystic as made an insulting remark to Misty Knight which compared her to a dog
- Uses a rocket launcher to kill Luke Cage, which destroys the restaurant, Genghis Connie's.
- While playing his piano, Cottonmouth was visited by Mariah Dillard, who ordered him to finally finished the Luke Cage situation as her political career was at serious risk of falling apart due to the actions of Cage. When Dillard furiously reminded him that they were family and brought up Mama Mabel, he loses his temper, thinking back to all the ways that Mabel had destroyed his life by pushing him to be a gangster rather than a musician.
- This had led them to an argument regarding Pistol Pete, who Mama Mabel had forced Cottonmouth to execute when he was fourteen years old, although Dillard argued that Pete deserved to die as he had raped her. Cottonmouth had still insisted that Mabel had always protected Dillard while forcing him to commit murder, with Dillard arguing that she had always been protecting him.
- He then accuses Maria of flirting with Pete and requesting sex, which leads her to slapping him before hitting him hard with a bottle and pushing him straight through of his own office window. Dillard caught up with him and grabbed a microphone stand and then proceeded to beat Cottonmouth on the face with it, eventually crushing his skull and killing him.
- While his death was horrific, he deserved it for all for the crimes he committed during his reign over Harlem.
- His death is used by Mariah and Shades to incriminate Luke Cage before the murder is then pinned on Diamondback
- Afterwards, Mariah would take over the Stokes organization and for a time, become Harlem's ruling crime lord. However, a series of events would lead to Dilliard being publicly exposed as Cottonmouth's true murderer and was arrested as a result.
Why He Doesn't Stand Out?[]
- Despite his high kill count and personal villainy towards Luke, he fails the MCU's high heinous standards to other human villains such as Kingpin, Obadiah Stane, Alexander Pierce, Crossbones, Dreykov and Erik Killmonger who all did far worse than him with similar or more resources. Plus conspiracy, mass murder, torture, blackmail, organized crime and extortion aren't unique crimes in the MCU. He also fails to Diamonback, who is arguably more heinous with similar resources and more personal villainy towards Luke despite also being a ruthless crime lord.
- He is quite tragic as his grandmother is the one who influenced him into a life of crime and ruined his life, as he genuinely wanted to be a famous musician due to his piano skills. She made him beat a boy to death and even shoot his own uncle. He was basically forced to continue his family's criminal legacy at the expense of his musical prospects which he cared much more about.
- As cruel and greedy as he is, he is honorable and has standards. He believes that there are rules to the criminal lifestyle, and is angered when those rules are broken. He's also disgusted with Mariah's pretenses of legitimacy, seemingly viewing her as even more dishonest than him.
- He cares about several people:
- To some degree, he loved his family due to being raised by Mama Mabel in the importance of family first, even though Pistol Pete was his first victim for betraying Mabel, he was implied to feel deep regret over this and Peter did wish Stokes to have a better future than just another criminal in the family.
- He also did care about his cousin, Mariah but simply teased her too much to the point where she eventually killed him in a blind rage when he pushed her too far.
- He had a good relationship with his niece Tilda Johnson, using music to try to steer her away from crime as his uncle - her biological father - had done for him, which proved successful.
- He event had a close bond with Pop even if they went down different paths as they got older. He planned to secretly fund the repair of his barber shop after his hit on it and killed Tone when he discovered that Pop was killed in the shooting. Later on, he cried over this news and paid for Pop's expensive casket.