Releasing Fridays on Amazon Prime in the UK
Director: Jennifer Phang
Writers: J. Holtham & Jenny Klein

Essential Plot Points:

• Evita and her auntie are taking a reading on the overall fate of the city.
• Ty watches Duane, his brother’s old friend at his business while Tandy bluffs her way into the company as Mina Hess’ intern.
• Ty is up for a job too, and less than subtly asks Duane for a job only to get turned down.
• At the precinct, O’Reilly’s not-quite boyfriend tries to warn her off Connors.
• Ty follows one of Duane’s drug couriers and immediately gets jumped and warned off.
• Evita’s Auntie has a growing suspicion that Ty may be much more important to New Orleans future than anyone previously thought…
• Ty visits Tandy at church and they compare notes. She gives him some ideas about how to get into Duane’s organization and then heads off for her first day at her ‘job.’
• Mina Hess, it turns out, lives on the outskirts of an abandoned fairground and is a cheerful, wildly eccentric activist with a fondness for cookie baking and green science.
• O’Reilly talks Connors into helping her track down the centre of the city’s drug network.

• At the reading, Evita and her Auntie figure out that major events in the life of New Orleans always seem to come down to a pair of people. But if that’s the case, then who is the other half of the pair…
• Tandy and Mina head out into the swamp. Mina tests Tandy on how much she knows and Tandy, because she’s good at what she does, passes the test. Mina reveals that there is something special under the swamp. That she’s happy to show Tandy…When Tandy assures her she signed the NDA, Mina reveals that they aren’t digging for oil. They’re digging for something that burns ten times better and twice as hot.
• O’Reilly and Connors bust one of Duane’s runners and Ty takes the opportunity as his in.
• At the swamp, Tandy and Mina realize the valve they need to access the material under the city has been put 10 metres off its target spot to cut corners. They butt heads with the onsite supervisor, and leave/ But not before Tandy slashes his tires with a well placed light dagger…
• The runner that Ty stole the bag from catches up to him. They fight and Ty grabs him, stepping inside his fears. He gets a flash of the other man trapped in a garden as a discordant nursery rhyme plays and frightens him off.
• At the reading, Evita and her Auntie figure out something is coming and only the Divine Pairing can save the city.
• Ty goes back to Duane, hands the drugs over and Duane agrees to have him ride along for a day.
• Tandy and Mina bond over their dads. Tandy asks to talk to her dad, Mina says no, Tandy reaches out to touch her and…the exact species of bee Mina has been looking for lands on Tandy. The two women, united in a moment of hope at the sight of the near extinct creature, look out across the swamp.
• Connors warns Duane about O’Reilly and arranges a meeting.
• Mina, because Mina is brilliant, sees through everything Tandy’s done and calls her on it.
• Evita’s Auntie tells her the last component of the Divine Pairing problem. Time and again, down through history, the Divine Pairing have saved the city. And every time they have, one of them has died.
• At the warehouse, Duane lets slip that he was there when Connors killed Billy. Ty is furious, Duane pushes back, saying he did what he did to survive. Duane is rocked, even though he won’t admit it. Then there’s a knock at the door. Connors. Who has O’Reilly in the car. He tells her to give him five minutes and then come in. Inside, Duane sends Ty away but he hides nearby.
• Mina visits her dad, and hands over the cookies she was baking that morning. Her dad is catatonic. Tandy follows her and asks if she can try and talk to her father. Mina agrees, Tandy reaches out and…
• appears in a swamp. She hears Mr Hess humming and moves towards a bulkhead door. She goes to open it, the energy Ty uses reaches out and she flashes back to the present. She tells Hess who he is, that he knew her dad and she just wanted to say hi. Mina apologizes for him not being able to her but she smiles and says she knows who might…
• At the warehouse, Connors throws Duane a gun and tells him to shoot O’Reilly when she comes in. Ty texts her, trying to warn her. She ignores the call.

• O’Reilly comes in, shoots Duane and Ty screams. He runs off, pursued by Connors. Connors has him dead to rights, shoots and…Ty teleports away, reappearing every time the shot passes him. He jumps again, lands in the church and breaks down, sobbing.

Review:

We’re always fond of aptly named episodes here at MYM Towers and rarely has one been more aptly named than this. Tandy, Ty, Mina, Duane, Evita and O’Reilly all get distorted views of their lives this week and it makes for an edgy, tense hour of TV that pushes the show along very well.

Ty and Duane and Mina and Tandy are the emotional heart of the episode. In Ty’s case, he’s seeing clearly for the first time and realizing just how close he was to the life Duane leads. His father’s past, his brother’s, all of it leads to this sort of life and this sort of violent end. Duane in turn sees Ty as the best version of Billy, the one who has a real chance to get out. But he also resents him for that and it’s notable how little he tries to dissuade Ty from taking this path.

Tandy and Mina, appropriately, come at the same subject from a different angle. Tandy could have so easily been Mina; brilliant, driven, hard-working and a company woman redeeming Roxxon from within. It’ll be interesting to see if later episodes explore Mina realizing how close she was to becoming Tandy too but even if they don’t, it’s still the start of a great partnership. It’s also thematically perfect; Tandy stepping cautiously out into the light at the same time as Ty seems drawn to the darkness.

Evita’s funhouse mirror is different. She and her Auntie, in one of the episode’s quietest, best moments, see a lot but not all. The Divine Pairing are needed again but they don’t know who the other one is, or if Ty is going to survive what’s coming. The Voodoo subplot has been the place where the show was most likely to stumble but this week it’s front and center and one of the best elements of the episode by a mile.

Finally, O’Reilly and Connors find themselves pretending to be each other. Connors as a dutiful vice cop, O’Reilly as the newbie ready to be led astray. Neither of them are especially good at it and, especially if Duane’s dead, there are going to be serious consequences for both of them. That particular game of psychological chicken is going to be rough, but our money is on Connors blinking first.

The fate of the city, the history of the city, the impossible substance beneath it and a handful of lives, all driven and dictated by forces they can barely understand and all heading towards one another. This is another episode where the show accelerates, another episode full of brilliant visuals and another great entry in a great debut season. Cloak & Dagger remains one of the best things on TV right now. If you can, check it out.

The Good:

• The psychology behind the scene of Ty asking for a job is amazing. There’s genuine concern and affection in him being turned down. By a drug dealer. Who’s killed people. Complex, well handled stuff.
• Tandy’s smile when Mina inadvertently exonerates her dad is so sweet.
• The Voodoo plot. This could still go horribly wrong but the idea of Ty and Tandy being the latest version of New Orleans’s defense mechanism is very good and very much not the usual Marvel fare.
• Mina seeing through Tandy’s lies. It’s so refreshing to have female characters on a show like this, and to be fair, the other Marvel shows too who are allowed to be clever.
• Fantastic guest stars this week. Dalon J. Edwards and Ally Maki both turn in great work.

The Bad:

• We know we say this a lot, but, honestly, nothing. Especially as it builds momentum, this is a great series.

The Random:

• Mina is the daughter of one of the men in Tandy’s vision last episode! We totally missed that!
• She’s played by Ally Maki who’s great and has appeared in Bones, Shake It Up, 2 Broke Girls, New Girl, Wrecked, Dear White People and others.

• Dalon J. Edwards is great here as Duane. He’s previously appeared as Percy Cattube in Parks and Recreation as well as in shows like Being Mary Jane, and The Get Down. Notably, he’s also a cross comics continuity actor, having appeared in Black Lighting: Tobias’ Revenge, a short movie tying into the DC series.
• Jennifer Phang is an award winning director and screenwriter whose previous work includes the short movie Futurestates, Advantageous, episodes of The Exorcist, The Expanse, Quantico, and more.
• J. Holtham has wrirten for Noisemaker Blues, Straight out of the Closet and others.
• Jenny Klein has been executive story editor for Supernatural, written for Jessica Jones, Sacred Lies and the upcoming Netflix adaptation of The Witcher as well as two episodes of Cloak & Dagger.

Best Lines:

• ‘I like that about you.’
  ‘Be prepared to like me less.’
• ‘So now we’re visiting each other.’
  ‘So now we’re wearing rubber pants?’
  ‘Judge less, or leave more.’
• ‘Hey! Come on up here and SCIENCE!’
• ‘No magic, Just science we don’t understand.’
• ‘There’s always a point of no return, darling. It’s called the end.’
• ‘Justice is for white people. In some other place.’
• ‘Every day you kill my brother all over again. Come on man, you can do better than this.’

Read all of our Cloak and Dagger reviews here