Alfre Woodard Joins Marvel's LUKE CAGE Series on Netflix

Actress Alfre Woodard (12 Years a Slave, Desperate Housewives, and about a hundred other things) has been cast in Marvel's Luke Cage Netflix series, which already has Mike Colter set to play the title character. Deadline brings the news, saying that Woodard will play "a lead character listed on the breakdown as Minetta, a powerful woman in local politics who will have an impact on Luke Cage’s life." But the outlet also hears that she may be playing a character from the comics named Black Mariah, a villain that opposes Luke Cage as well as Iron Fist.

Woodard is a veteran actress who would definitely bring some gravitas to a role like this. Though Colter is going to play a role in Netflix's next Marvel series, Jessica Jones, it seems unlikely that Woodard would make an appearance in that show; if I had to guess, I'd say we won't see her until sometime in late 2016 when Luke Cage first drops on the streaming service.

Marvel's wikia has this to say about her character, which may tip us off to how she'll be depicted in the show:

Black Mariah was the leader of a gang of New York criminals called the Rat Pack. Their primary source of criminal activity would be using a stolen ambulance to pick up the bodies of the recently deceased, and then stealing whatever valuables they had on their person. When a man named Frank Jenks was murdered in the Gem Theater, it would be Black Mariah's gang that would pick up the body. When Jenks' widow learned the truth, she would hire Luke Cage (who was at the scene of the murder) to find her husband's body, the sympathetic Cage would take the job free of charge.