A councilwoman who wanted to bring change to Harlem, whose family business keeps pulling her back, until she stops resisting it.
Mariah Stokes-Dillard is a local councilwoman, Cornell Stokes’s cousin and Tilda Johnson’s mother, looking to bring change to Harlem, whose life is thrown into turmoil by the actions of Luke Cage and of Stokes. Alfre Woodard plays her in both seasons of Luke Cage, having already played a different character, Miriam Sharpe, in Captain America: Civil War.
The series’ version is a long way from the comics’ Black Mariah. Wikipedia records that she is not necessarily a criminal herself, at first, but feels a responsibility to a family that includes Stokes. The showrunner wanted the comics nickname in there as a homage, and Woodard agreed on condition that it be used sensitively. Woodard, who lives in Harlem, took the part after the showrunner proved his love for the neighbourhood, and called the scripts some of the smartest writing she had come across.
Minor spoiler
By the end of it she has embraced her birth name of Stokes, and is arrested for her illegal activities. In her jail cell she is secretly poisoned by Tilda, and dies of it.