CLOAK & DAGGER
Not as black and white as it seems
Not to be confused with Croak & Jagger. That’s the Rolling Stones.
UK Broadcast Amazon, finished US Broadcast Freeform, finished Episodes Reviewed 1.01-1.10
Cloak & Dagger doesn’t do itself any favours. With the TV schedules straining like Bruce Banner’s Y-fronts with superhero shows, any new comic-based show needs to hammer home its unique selling point. To a casual viewer, Cloak & Dagger doesn’t have one. Not only is it another superhero show, it’s another teen angst superhero show. Yawn. Still, if you commit yourself to it, perhaps because, hey, you fancy one of the two impossibly good-looking leads (don’t deny that doesn’t happen) then you’re rewarded with an unexpectedly complex, inventive, unconventional and often quite dark series. But all in a curiously low-level, non-chest-thumpy way.
Cloak and Dagger are teenagers Tandy and Ty, whose lives first tragically intertwined years ago when an experimental Roxxon Corporation facility off the New Orleans coast, designed by Tandy’s dad, exploded. That same night Ty lost his big bro to a bullet from a crooked cop’s gun, Tandy lost her dad in a car accident, and they both ended up in the sea (it’s all a bit convoluted) being blasted by mysterious energy from the facility. They never met again until, in the present day, they begin to develop powers that draw them together: she can make razorsharp daggers from light and “see” people’s hopes; he can teleport and “see” people’s fears.
In a clever reversal of both the original comic book characters and standard TV tropes, it turns out that white girl Tandy is the street criminal, while black guy Ty is the conscientious student. He’s been fighting to convince people that his brother was killed by a cop, while she’s had to cope with her mother going into a downward
Cleverly reverses the original comic book characters
spiral after her dad was blamed for the explosion. There’s a conspiracy plot going on too, which’ll surprise no one who knows how dodgy Roxxon are from the comics.
None of this sounds particularly groundbreaking. Ty and Tandy bicker, pout, sulk at parents and get used to their powers while corporate baddies do corporate baddie things. What gives this show edge is a willingness to experiment with structure and storytelling, and to subtly thwart expectations. After the pilot, each episode has its own framing device; episode two, for example, starts with its ending and works its way back there, while others use narration from various characters, or weird time jumps that Legion would be proud of. It’s not afraid to be weird either, beyond just the voodoo vibe of New Orleans.
The leads are also fantastically good, with Olivia Holt turning Tandy into a cocky, protoCatwoman with an undercurrent of fragility. Aubrey Joseph makes teenage moping watchable, and delivers the “black experience” dialogue with a worldweary authenticity that Black Lightning could learn from. And by the end of the season, there’s not even a hint of them fancying each other.
There are problems. The special effects are humdrum, robbing Cloak and Dagger’s powers of awe. Promising support characters die off with alarming regularity. The big apocalyptic plotline ultimately fails to deliver. A deliciously dark subplot about Tandy getting high on her powers fizzles out. But the show’s main problem is that it’s no good subverting the genre if the vibe it’s giving off is conformity. At the moment, Cloak & Dagger is smoking behind the bike sheds when it needs to be blowing up the science lab. Dave Golder