Releasing Fridays on Amazon Prime in the UK
Director: Peter Hoar
Writers: Story by : Ariella Blejer & Dawn Kamoche, Teleplay by : Peter Calloway

Essential Plot Points:

• We see something odd being 3D printed.
• And then we’re post-crash. Tandy picks herself up, bleeding from her hairline as Ty asks if she’s okay. Tandy is understandably not thrilled about Ty having A)A gun and B)Firing said gun at her. Ty tries to explain but Tandy’s done. She leaves as the police roll up and does not get far.
• Detective O’Reilly goes to see Tandy’s would-be rapist. He claims he didn’t see who attacked him. O’Reilly, in about 10 seconds, demolishes him. He’s got defensive wounds on his face, his pants were unbuckled when the paramedics found him. He fobs her off but it won’t last.
• Tandy wipes the car down and goes home. Because where else can she go? Mom and boyfriend are asleep and she cleans up as best she can.
• Her mom wakes up, rips into Tandy  and then…O’Reilly shows up. Tandy’s mom lies for her, O’Reilly doesn’t buy it for a second and tries to explain she thinks Tandy is a victim rather than a perpetrator. Nonetheless, mom shuts her down and O’Reilly leaves. Tandy bolts and gets a bus out of town.
• On the bus, still hurting, Tandy pulls her hood up, goes to sleep and…
• Wakes up. On the bus. Except she’s the only one there and they haven’t moved…
• She gets up, looks around and brilliant white light flares outside the bus. She gets out and is suddenly, alone, in a city street.
• And then, young Ty is in front of her.
• We’re back with the 3D printer, and it’s some kind of statue…
• Then we’re back in the past, immediately after the crash.  We see the conversation between Ty and Tandy from his point of view. He ducks the police and goes to see Father Delgado. With no one there, Ty takes a knee, lights a candle and prays for guidance.
• He asks God if they’re doing this to him. That he can’t control himself or his abilities and for the first time in his life he has no answers. He asks what he should do?
• And then he says ‘I miss you so much, Billy’ and we realize he’s not praying to God at all.
• Evita arrives and tells him she’s got someone who might be able to help. She asks him to meet her after school where she works as a Voodoo historical tour guide.
• She tells him the story of the last duel ever fought in New Orleans, between two brothers. It took place in a hurricane and the second one brother died, the hurricane ended.
• She leads them to the church where Maria Laveau, the most famous Voodoo practitioner, lived. She explains about how Laveau was a practicing Catholic and that people still ask her for help, which she grants, once they make a mark on her tomb. She, of course, has Ty do this.
• Later, she leads them to her family’s gift shop. She explains that she believes in voodoo about as much as she does Christianity but you don’t have to believe in it for it to work.
• Evita introduces him to her Auntie, a Voodoo practitioner. She reads his Tarot and suggests he take a bath. A cleansing bath. She gives him the ingredients for it and sends him home.
• Ty and Evita sneak home and she tells him to get naked and get into the bath. He does so and is annoyed that he isn’t instantly fixed. She talks him through it, tells him to relax and…
• Darkness falls. Slowly. Completely.
• Ty gets dressed and goes downstairs. He notices the family photographs have been replaced by Voodoo symbols. Ty steps outside and finds himself on the roof where he woke up the night his powers first activated. Tandy, as a young girl, is standing in front of him.
• Meanwhile, back at Tandy’s vision, she sees Billy’s friends tell him and Ty about the radio they’re planning to steal back. Billy tells them he’s going to stay with his brother. They leave, he sinks a basket and…
• Tandy’s in the woods next to a table covered in candles and fruit. She is, understandably, freaking out. Older Ty appears, dressed in period clothing. He picks up a musket and, as his parents watch approvingly, he shoots Connors.
• And both his parents die too. Suddenly, Ty is surrounded by riot police. He runs and…the scene replays. Except this time he’s lynched by the cops.
• Tandy pleads with him to try something new. As she does, she realizes that one of her daggers has manifested. She puts it down, Ty picks it up and now it’s a pair of handcuffs. Connors runs off in terror.
• On the roof in Ty’s vision, young Tandy falls trying to pirouette. There’s an electrical short, Ty runs towards her and…
• Now he’s in the woods. With grown up Tandy. Both of them watching what starts as a board meeting and turns into Tandy watching in horror as the board members drown her father. She runs off and…
• The vision repeats. This time with Tandy’s mom in the boardroom.
• She runs off again, falls into a marsh and…

• Third time, young Tandy is in the board room pleading with her dad. Old Tandy turns to bolt and Tyrone turns, throws a tendril of darkness out of his hand towards her and begs her to try something else. She walks towards the boardroom window, dagger in hand, there’s a flash of light and…
• Tyrone is by himself in front of a set of huge wooden doors. He hauls them open and…
• Tandy steps through into an office. The floor is covered with checks written to Billy, all of them stained with blood. Ty is sitting on the floor weeping.
• Ty’s vision is of Tandy as a young girl, and priest, drugging a string of men. The last one is Carl who willingly takes the drug and passes out.
• Tandy notices a stained glass window in the office. Ty sees the same one in the church. Darkness flowing his hand, light from her’s they reach out for each other and…
• wake up back where they started.
• Connors drops in on O’Reilly on stakeout and gives her the stabbing victim’s driving license. He claims he found it on a dead junkie and the case she’s been working is closed. He leaves, and O’Reilly, fuming, takes a phone call.
• From Tandy. Who’s willing to stay and face the consequences if she’ll help.
• Ty walks Evita home and she notes how much better he feels. He sees the stained glass window from his vision at a nearby church. Evita explains she made a wish too, and they kiss.
• O’Reilly picks up Tandy and they talk. Clearly unhappy with what she’s just been told, Tandy leaves.
• Back in the 3D printer, we see the statue finished. It’s an image of Tyrone, created by Evita’s auntie and sitting with her other Voodoo equipment.
• Tandy returns home, to the church from the vision. Ty’s there. He says ‘I think we should talk.’

Review:

So at the top of this episode we had three ongoing plots; Tandy trying to get out of town, Ty trying to understand who and what he is and O’Reilly tracking down Tandy.

In one episode, the show has wrapped all of these up, largely resolved them and stepped up three gears at once. Everything, from the chopped up time frame to that final line, is fantastically well done. There’s none of the occasional running in place the Netflix shows do, no filler. This is a show with a pounding sense of urgency that, this week, dominates the episode with the single weirdest, best sequence a Marvel show has done in a very long time.

The duality of Cloak & Dagger, their platonic intimacy, was always going to be one of the hardest elements of the show to land. This episode makes it look easy as we get Ty and Tandy both confronted with the one thing that can solve their problem; each other. We loved the different ways Tandy’s daggers were used in particular. In Ty’s vision they become handcuffs and through that an instrument of both mercy and justice. In Tandy’s, they’re an instrument of empowerment cutting deep into the boardroom and through the red tape it metaphorically represents. In both visions, the characters are confronted by each other. In both visions, they realize the only way to stop what they’re failing at, is to try something else. In both visions, that something else, is also someone else as well as the decision to not be alone.

This is visually complex, thematically chewy television on a level no other Marvel show has touched. It’s also deeply emotional. Ty’s visions in particular are as horrific as they are moving and the moment where he prays to his brother is a punch to the gut. And all of that is wrapped up in an episode that gives Evita some welcome dimensions, O’Reilly someone to push back against and hints at the overall plot.

Emotive, arresting, disturbing, unique. This is the best hour of TV we’ve seen this week and the best episode so far of Marvel’s newest, weirdest, most interesting show. Bring on episode 4.

The Good:

• Tandy’s mom ripping her a new one and defending Tandy in the same heartbeat, and the look on Tandy’s face as she hears it, is heartrending.
• Voodoo ingredients bought from Whole Foods. BRILLIANT.
• Yet more great performances from everyone. This is an amazing cast.
• The best way to shoot weird is to just shoot it. The direction here is note perfect, turning something as mundane as a bus corridor into something deeply weird and disturbing.
• The approach to Voodoo, and the way it’s used as a toolbox for working with your subconscious, is fascinating and a world away from the tabloid schlockfest it could so easily have been.
• The entire Loa sequence. The symbolism and visual metaphor, the emotion, all of it. Amazing work. More of this and Legion will have serious competition for visually smartest Marvel show.

The Bad:

• Not a thing. This show is weird and pacy and we’re loving every second.

The Random:

• This is a big Evita episode and it’s great to see her step into the spotlight. Noëlle Renée Bercy is a New Orleans born actress who has previously had roles in Blood Brother, NCIS: New Orleans, Tabloid and cameo appearances in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Ender’s Game.
• Peter Hoar has quite the genre pedigree. He’s directed for Daredevil, The Defenders, Iron Fist, Altered Carbon, Doctor Who, Grange Hill (!!) and is currently filming episodes of The Umbrella Academy for Netflix,.
• Ariella Blejer and Dawn Kamoche have worked on Containment, Hand of God and others.
• Peter Calloway has written for Legion. Hellcats, Under The Dome and many others.
• Marie Catherine Laveau was very real indeed and was an immensely popular and well known Voodoo practitioner. Her life has been immortalized in countless stories and has influenced everything from Danish metal band Volbeat to Marvel themselves. A character named Marie Laveau, loosely based on the real woman, first appeared in Issue 2 of Dracula Lives in 1973. We’re about 80% certain Evita’s aunt isn’t going to turn out to be her. But only 80%.

Best Lines:

• ‘You don’t have to believe in it for it to work.’
• ‘I don’t know about this one, Evita.’
  ‘Why?’
  ‘He doesn’t think he deserves help.’
• ‘Is there something else I could do?’
  ‘I could hit you over the head, give you a concussion. Both open up the mind pastthe conscious so you can walk in the land of the Loa. Clears the spiritual sinuses, so to speak. I prefer the bath.’
• ‘Tyrone you have to listen to me. You HAVE to try something else.’

Read all of our Cloak and Dagger reviews here