How the bat­tle for diver­si­ty is being won on the small screen

There are two schools of thought when it comes to cre­at­ing TV shows and films that are, for lack of a bet­ter word, ​‘diverse’. The first is some­thing akin to the BBC’s colour-blind cast­ing: cast actors of vary­ing races, gen­ders and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, and then act like it’s no big deal. The sec­ond is to tack­le the prob­lem head-on, to acknowl­edge, dis­cuss and chal­lenge inequal­i­ty, to admit that it is a big deal and make it a cul­tur­al talk­ing point. Marvel’s Luke Cage does the latter.

The company’s third Net­flix out­ing stars man-moun­tain Mike Colter as the tit­u­lar hero, repris­ing his role from 2015’s Jes­si­ca Jones. He’s super-strong and almost entire­ly invul­ner­a­ble which makes him per­fect for pro­tect­ing the streets of Harlem, name­ly from local gang­ster Cot­ton­mouth, played with a cocky grin by Maher­sha­la Ali.

Boast­ing a black lead is enough to make Luke Cage stand out among oth­er super­hero movies, but the show goes sev­er­al steps fur­ther than that. Almost every main cast mem­ber is either African-Amer­i­can or His­pan­ic. Hip hop, soul and Motown infuse the sound­track. His­toric civ­il rights lead­ers are rou­tine­ly name-dropped, and even Black Lives Mat­ter earns a cur­so­ry men­tion. The show also direct­ly con­fronts police bru­tal­i­ty; in 2016 the idea of a bul­let­proof black man feels espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant and almost paradoxical.

The show is actu­al­ly so for­ward think­ing that it’s now being accused of reverse racism in cer­tain cor­ners of the inter­net (you know, the ones you nev­er want to vis­it), with some bemoan­ing the fact that there just aren’t enough white faces in it. Those ​“crit­ics” should have expect­ed such pro­gres­sive­ness in the wake of Jes­si­ca Jones – just as Luke Cage tack­les racism, that series addressed sex­ism, with promi­nent, flawed female char­ac­ters and a super­pow­ered take on abu­sive relationships.

Tak­en togeth­er, the two shows put into per­spec­tive Marvel’s sur­pris­ing lack of big-screen diver­si­ty. In Mar­vels biggest fran­chise movies, unless you’re a white male actor you’re prob­a­bly still stuck in a back­seat, side­kick role, pro­vid­ing com­ic relief or serv­ing as a love inter­est. There are signs of pos­i­tive change in the form of Chad­wick Boseman’s Black Pan­ther, who debuted in this summer’s Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: Civ­il War and will return in his own solo film in 2017, joined by Michael B Jor­dan and Lupi­ta Nyong’o. Else­where Evan­ge­line Lil­ly is being upgrad­ed to co-head­lin­er in Ant-Man and the Wasp, while Brie Lar­son will become Marvel’s first out-and-out female lead when she stars in Cap­tain Mar­vel. For the time being, though, any seri­ous dis­cus­sion of gen­der or race is typ­i­cal­ly rel­e­gat­ed to the occa­sion­al throw­away quip.

Out of the five Mar­vel Tele­vi­sion series to have aired so far, three have been front­ed by either a black man or a woman (count­ing Agent Carter). By con­trast, Mar­vel Stu­dios hasn’t man­aged this once in 13 films, and the MCU will have expand­ed to 18 films before we see some­one oth­er than a white man front and cen­tre of a Mar­vel movie poster. And it looks like it’s going to get worse before it gets bet­ter. The upcom­ing Doc­tor Strange faces the unen­vi­able task of updat­ing a ​’60s ori­gin sto­ry which fus­es ori­en­tal­ist and white sav­iour tropes. Its cast­ing choic­es are inter­est­ing to say the least – Til­da Swinton’s pres­ence as the Ancient One (think: a mag­i­cal Tibetan Mr Miya­gi) has drawn equal parts crit­i­cism and praise for simul­ta­ne­ous­ly gen­der-swap­ping and white­wash­ing the character.

Per­haps the best point of com­par­i­son between Marvel’s dis­parate divi­sions will arrive with Iron Fist, which debuts on Net­flix next year. As with Doc­tor Strange, the show will fol­low a wealthy, white Amer­i­can who trav­els to Asia to learn the mys­tic arts, and it must grap­ple with the same time­worn stereo­types and anti­quat­ed tropes. It could be Mar­vel Television’s first real stum­bling block, or the chance to prove defin­i­tive­ly that any­one tired of the sea of white Avengers should make the jump to the small screen.