When Our Marvel Heroes Die

How Do We Mourn

By now, I’m sure that many of you have seen the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Avengers: Endgame and for those who haven’t, you may have heard that couple of the Avengers did not make it out okay. Tony Stark aka Iron-Man and Natasha Romanov aka Black Widow died in this spectacular penultimate event. How surprised were you depends on how much you loved these characters and couldn’t imagine that this was a possibility? But in this battle against Thanos and a war for survival from extinction, there is a strong indicator that the escaping of death was a 50–50 proposition.

In Avengers: Infinity War, we witnessed the ‘snap’ of Thanos glove that left many of our heroes dusted along with half of the population. As much of a major blow to our collective consciousness, there was a measure of hope because the story wasn’t complete. As conditioned as we are to happy endings, perhaps this was an early warning of things to come in a partially written chapter? Maybe we had become complacent with our heroes because we knew that, for whatever reason, they will always be there to satisfy this inner feeling of contentment and this sense of relief. Maybe we felt a little of the loss when Spider-man faded away while saying his last words to Tony. We knew that the remaining heroes from Infinity War would find a solution to the problem and restore the population and their friends.

And while a solution to the problem was achieved, it came at a price. We lost Tony and Natasha from the MCU. But they weren’t the first high profile casualties that we were to lose. While there have been deaths of superheroes in the past, none have had a major punch to the gut than the loss of Professor X, Charles Xavier and Logan aka Wolverine. Much like in Endgame with Tony’s passing, Logan’s death comes after a major fight that saw him being impaled by a tree branch by his doppelganger before the doppelganger is shot in the head by Laura, Logan’s daughter. And while we knew this would be the last Wolverine that we would see, seeing him in this state was a moment to behold.

We watched Logan say the thing he needed to say to his daughter. We needed to see the realization of his final moments where he would come to see his life and all of its chaos disappear when looking at the face of his child. He now knows that all of these years of life experience that the few seconds that he has left, he must pour into Laura and hoped that she will learn from a life of pain. We feel this in his watering eyes. We feel this in his shallow breathing. We’re torn when we here Laura calling him ‘Daddy’ for the first and last time and he gets the chance to hear it.

With Tony, he lays there dying. Those connected to him come running to his side but it is Pepper, Tony’s now wife, who fought alongside him said what he needed to hear as the light in his chest dims away. We get to see the aftermath of Natasha’s death on Bruce/Hulk, Steve Rogers, and Hawkeye. She sacrificed herself in order to get one of the stones. I don’t think she or Hawkeye knew the price they needed to pay in order to get the soul stone. For Hawkeye and Steve, she was more of a sister to them. For Bruce/Hulk she was more than just a colleague. The pain that you feel for Bruce/Hulk and Steve is perhaps of the fact that they didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to her. For Hawkeye, she gave him a sense of redemption knowing that one day he will get the chance to see his family once again. For her, the chance of her having a family was taken away from her by the Soviet order. And while we got to say goodbye to Tony at his funeral, Natasha’s body was left on the alien planet left to rot on the ground. She deserves better.

Charles Xavier became a casualty two-fold. The first being that he was suffering from age-related dementia/Alzheimer. He had slowly started to lose his memory and at the same time access the psychic parts of his brain that caused havoc on both mutants and non-mutants. He lost the ability to control his mind. The inevitable was a certainty but he lost his life to violence. Logan’s doppelganger murdered him with a set of claws to his chest. His death was particularly brutal in that he had no idea it was a doppelganger and that his trust was betrayed in a way that paid a disservice to the elderly.

There have been other deaths of MCU characters but they didn’t carry the emotional wallop like Tony, Logan, or Black Widow. Jean Grey, the X-Men soldier, died at the hands of Wolverine when she became Phoenix. Quicksilver lost his life in the Age of Ultron. Their deaths are important to the narrative but we saw them as plot devices to move the story along. Quicksilver was a device to move the Scarlet Witch narrative along. Jean’s death added to the Wolverine troubled narrative of never finding any happiness in his life.

But what is the takeaway with this? What are we to conclude with the deaths of Tony and Natasha of Logan and Professor X? It does close a chapter with them and signals that this is the end of a journey that took all of us on a ride we will never forget. They became these friends from afar but close enough to say that we knew them well. They made us laugh, they made us cry and that, my friend, is the magic of life. As I wander around love doesn’t last too long but true love last 75 years.

Avengers: Endgame Film Review

A Tragic Cinematic Opera at its Finest

*** WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS ***

Just about the entire planet, perhaps as many as those who were caught in Thanos’s snap, have been waiting with anticipation to the sequel of Avengers: Infinity War and now it’s finally here. This is the ultimate film for fanboys, fan-girls, film buffs, normies, anyone who has a pulse as they sit down to watch the unfolding and end to some epic storytelling in cinematic history. What we are about to witness is perhaps an epic tragic opera told in separate acts and I’m not sure if the Russo brothers didn’t intentionally design it that way.

The film opens up with Hawk-eye and his family enjoying an outdoor moment. He is teaching his daughter how to shoot a bow while the rest of his family are running around waiting to enjoy some hot dogs. No time is wasted in this first Act when tragedy strikes. Hawk-eye turns his attention away from his daughter to his sons and poof, his daughter is not there when he turns back to her. He turns back to the rest of his family and poof, they aren’t there either. Confusion and pain register on his face as he knows that what he is about to experience is bad. He is living the day of the Thanos snap. The opera has begun.

We then find ourselves with Tony and Nebula in space. We have no idea how long they’ve been marooned on the ship but suffice to say, it’s been a stretch. Rations have dwindled to the point that the scarcity of food had come to eating mere crumbs. While Nebula may survive longer than Tony as she is mainly machine parts, Tony’s life is teetering in the balance. Act 2 of the opera is singing when all of a sudden, a bright light comes forth and stirs a weak Tony Stark. It’s Carol Danvers. She rescues Tony and Nebula by bringing them back to earth.

Now Carol Danvers is a divisive character. For the most part, she’s not a fan favorite and it was feared that she would dominate this story and become a distraction. While she does play a contributing role, she does not consume too much time from the main characters although her character was a bit arrogant and abrasive when she was with the Avengers team members. Her appearance was tolerable and you can sit there and deal with her because this film is worth putting up with Brie Larson. She does say a couple of lines that just flies in the face of arrogance though this isn’t a part of the operatic tragedy.

The journey continues as Rocket and Nebula figure out where Thanos is living. He is living a life of an agrarian, quite a different contrast from a person who wiped out half of the world’s population without any remorse. The team burst in on his home and quickly subdue him. The infinity stones have been destroyed by Thanos thus preventing any type of restoration of the population. But before any other alternative can be derived from Thanos, Thor makes good on Thanos’s instruction to Thor from Infinity War and that was to go for the head. Thor, in lightning speed, cuts off Thanos’s head. You start to feel the opera grow to a climatic crescendo with the dispatching of Thano’s head. Are we appalled or are we more vigilantist by six degrees of separation?

Scott Lang returns to the world thanks to a rat. He’s been gone for five years. Time for him has only moved for five hours. He has no clue as to what has transpired and when he sees his name on a monument stone of other people who have disappeared, he finds his way back to his now grownup daughter. He soon comes to realize that he may have the answers to the snap. He heads to Avenger’s headquarters where they are surprised to see him. He lays out his theory to the team but they aren’t savvy to the science so they head to Tony who is now a father to a five-year-old daughter named Morgan. Fatherhood has made Tony blissful. He has not hunted in him when the proposal is laid out. He distances himself from the notion that it is anything but feasible. The ideas though starts to haunt him.

The team then goes to Bruce Banner as their second top brain to pitch their idea. Banner is now embracing his Hulk side and lives openly as a green skin with Banner’s brains. He’s a totally different person. He’s an inviting man, takes selfies with fans but seems to be more introspective. In this operatic twist, we see that Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow and Banner/Hulk are at a distance. We can feel it, the sense of estrangement, of loss, of things lost in the fire. We can’t dwell on this now, the stakes are too heavy.

We saw this introspection with Tony and Pepper as well. The snap left more than just physical scars on our heroes. Thor is sporting a beer gut and is totally out of shape. He’s grown out his hair and his beard is halfway down his chest. He looks more like a younger version of Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. Ant-man provides 90 percent of the comic relief in a world of morass and no hope. Rocket is the coolest raccoon that gives point to Thor as he smacks Thor who has an emotional breakdown. Hawk-eye becomes a Ronin as he dispatches bad guys as he tries to compensate for the loss of his family. Everybody has some sort of post-traumatic stress after the snap and sometimes it’s subtle and sometimes it’s in your face.

They take turns tag teaming the leadership roles. Sometimes it’s Black Widow, sometimes it’s Tony, sometimes it’s Cap and sometimes it’s Rocket if he’s flying the ship.

Tony finally comes around with the idea of manipulating time. He and Banner/Hulk devise the instrumentation and the team sets out to prevent Thanos from even collecting any of the stones. They break up into teams and set out to gather up the stones. Cap and Tony go back to 1970 to a military base where Cap sees Peggy Carter from behind glass. Tony sees his father and speaks with him. With Cap and Tony, you are taken on this emotional roller coaster that’s layered. Although Cap never speaks to Peggy, his love for her is palpable. The same holds true for Tony as well. Even though collecting the stone is important, the interpersonal dynamic is also important and is setting us up for something else down the road. We also get the chance to see the real Jasper who is his father chauffeur.

War Machine and Nebula is teamed up on a planet but things don’t go as smoothly. Her earlier version of herself has linked to her and her counterpart reads what she is reading. This gives Thanos much needed Intel on what the team is up to. Five years younger Nebula replaces five-year-old Nebula in the team.

Hawk-eye and Natasha run into the Red Skull on another planet that holds the soul stone. We all know what is required to get the soul stone and what transpires is an epic turn in this operatic telling. We experience the loss of a beloved one, Natasha Romanoff. Hawk-eye wanted to sacrifice himself, perhaps to be with his family. But Natasha saw that should they be successful and retrieved all the stones and reverse the snap, he would have his family back. For her, she had no family and if she were to live, the ability to have children was taken away from here when she was in the Soviet Union program. We’ve never experienced a loss of an original team member before. This can’t be real.

We only begin to feel this loss when all of the team return back to home base. Cap is devastated and Banner/Hulk is even more devastated by the loss of Black Widow. They become more determined to see this project through. Black Widow left a tremendous hole that will not be filled. Cap nor Banner/Hulk had the chance to say goodbye.

The stones are assembled but before they can implement the snap, five years young Nebula opens a portal for Thanos to come through. This is epic as the headquarters is obliterated by Thanos forces. The team survives and battle their way out to fight Thanos and it’s epic. Banner/Hulk had made the snap earlier and slowly, during the battle with Thanos forces do we see the first sign of restoration. A portal opens up and out walks Black Panther and his sister and then a whole army of MCU heroes. This is pound for pound the best battle action sequence that’s ever been done on planet earth. And here is a surprise, Captain America picks up Thor’s old hammer that he collected while on Asgard collecting the other stone and uses it. Thor even said, “I knew it.” What did he even mean by that? Was its something I missed in an earlier Avengers movie> Cap even tried to pick up Thor’s hammer in The Avengers movie but he couldn’t do it but now he is using it and kicking Thanos ass.

As this battle ensues, Thanos gains the upper hand and has the gauntlet of infinity stones. Tony, looking over to Dr. Strange as he holds up one finger, goes back in to do battle with Thanos. He gets him in a clutch and Thanos pushes him back. Thanos goes to make his snap and nothing happens. Tony has the stones and makes the snap. Thanos and his minions disappear. Tony gets a dose of gamma rays that Banner/Hulk could absorb but not anyone else. Tony becomes the ultimate operatic tragedy. Slowly it unfolds. Pepper is there doing battle earlier with the minions. She comes to Tony’s side and we get to witness our collective hearts be broken by someone who has taken us on a ride for the past 10 years. We were with him from the start. We saw his arrogance turn into humanity. We saw this playboy become an adoring husband and father. We saw this mortal human become a superhero. Goodbye, farewell, and amen, Tony Stark.

In the waning minutes of Endgame, we get the chance to see some chapters close on our friends and heroes. Steve Rogers goes back in time to return the Infinity Stones back to their rightful places but he doesn’t come back. Instead, he stays behind to find his one true love, Peggy Carter, whom he marries and grow old with. He passes off his shield to Falcon. Ant-man is in bliss with his daughter and the Wasp.

...The procession moved on the shouting is over

The fabulous freaks are leaving town.

They are driven by a strange desire

Unseen by the human eye.

The carnival is over

We sat and watched

As the moon rose again

For the very first time…

-The Carnival Is Over – Dead Can Dance

Grade: A+

Cloak & Dagger: Season 2, Ep. 4

Rabbit Hold Review

Cast:

Aubrey Joseph … Tyrone Johnson / Cloak

Olivia Holt … Tandy Bowen / Dagger

Gloria Reuben … Adina Johnson

Andrea Roth … Melissa Bowen

Emma Lahana … Detective Brigid O’Reilly

Miles Mussenden … Otis Johnson

Dilshad Vadsaria … Lia

Noëlle Renée Bercy … Evita Fusilier

At this particular junction, Cloak & Dagger does not seem to be resting on its laurels from its freshman run. This week’s episode picks up right away from last week’s very engaging episode where Tyrone’s dark cloud sucks in Mayhem much to the surprise for Tandy. Of course, the first reaction from Tandy is no surprise as Tyrone has no logical answers for her. He knows nothing of this new power. Much like the smoke monster from Lost, this smoke entity has a mind of its own and seems to engage Tyrone whenever he finds himself in peril. Tyrone, through Tandy’s prodding, discovers that the smoke entity is activated through the things that scare him the most as well as the danger element. At some point, you begin to wonder if the smoke entity is a separate being from Tyrone. Is it sentient? As Tandy gets Tyrone to activate the smoke entity, she has decided to go in and retrieve Mayhem. Before she goes in, something curious happens.

It’s Tyrone’s concern for her, not so much as what he says but how he says it. He says it in a way that has layers of interpretation. Are his feelings starting to reveal some sort of feelings towards Tandy that even he doesn’t realize as yet? Tandy, on the other hand, seems to take an instinctive part in wanting to go in the cloud while quieting the guilt she feels got one of the sex trafficking victim’s life in peril. She appears to be relatively calm going in as if there is no danger for her. We go along with her in this calm atmosphere as she virtually holds our hand walking into the unknown.

Once inside this dark world, Tandy finds a mound of pennies. What does this mean? Is this an Easter Egg? She looks up and spots the Roxxon gas station with a body lying in the front. It’s the “fun-sized” version of a younger Tyrone. After a brief conversation with Tandy, “fun-sized” Tyrone explains to her that she must go through the gauntlet of transition in order to leave the dark world. Now is this another Easter Egg? Will going through this alleged gauntlet means that Tandy can come and go through the dark world as she will be immured to certain criteria because of her powers?

Meanwhile, Tyrone’s powers are put on hold while Tandy is inside him. He finds out from Brigid that the bad guys have found out who he is and where he lives. He goes home to find his mother doing what looks like her own investigation. Time is not on his side as the bad guys make it to his house putting their lives in danger. We get nothing on his mother and father’s separation as this is not brought up mainly because of the life in jeopardy situation. They escape by running, stealing a car, running again, catching a trolley, and running to a vacant building while the bad guys are still in pursuit. In a human moment, Adina talks with Tyrone in an attempt to catch up on his life as he has told her three times that he’s not a kid anymore. But the topic of separation with his parents is still not addressed.

Back in the dark world, Tandy has found Mayhem. Because Mayhem is half of a person, Tandy tells her that Mayhem cannot escape the passage without her help. Mayhem doesn’t believe her until they come to a wall of mirrors where Mayhem doesn’t see her reflection but Tandy sees her reflection five times overdressed in different outfits. Is this an Easter egg, too? One Tandy is dressed in a lab coat. One Tandy is dressed as a student, another is a dancer, the other as a fighter sporting her dagger, and the last as a party girl. We get no answer to this hall of Tandys.

Tandy and Mayhem find themselves at a record store that lists the names of the sex trafficking victims linked to the record album cover art. As they peruse the albums, Tandy comes across a collection with her name on it. She’s not a victim, what does it mean? Is this yet another Easter Egg? As she plays each album, it brings her back to the days when she was little as each album reflects back on the abusive nature her father was to her mother. Apparently, the past is not reconciled between her and her mother. Tandy has no time to process this new revelation because Mayhem has found Connors and literally has him strung up hanging him. Tandy gets in a battle with Mayhem for Connors’ life, As she does this, the dark cloud returns freeing Tandy and Connors but no Mayhem.

So, what was this episode about, redemption? Or was there another message, bargaining for the truth? Whatever the answers may be, Cloak & Dagger is running this marathon in a healthy click. It has you running along with them as well. Keep going, the finish line is not yet in sight as yet.

Rating: B+

Cloak & Dagger: Season 2, Ep. 3

Shadow Selves Review

Cast:

Aubrey Joseph … Tyrone Johnson / Cloak

Olivia Holt … Tandy Bowen / Dagger

Gloria Reuben … Adina Johnson

Andrea Roth … Melissa Bowen

Emma Lahana … Detective Brigid O’Reilly

Miles Mussenden … Otis Johnson

Dilshad Vadsaria … Lia

Noëlle Renée Bercy … Evita Fusilier

As I had intimated at the beginning of Season 2 of Cloak & Dagger, the show appears to be taken on some darker elements and it seems to be forging ahead with that premise. In this episode titled Shadow Selves, the subject matter focused primarily on the three principal characters, Tandy, Ty, and Brigid. The episode starts off in a laboratory where Mina Hess (Ally Maki) is studying a mouse to see what effect did the Roxxon gas explosion have on the surrounding environment. As she goes about in her experiment on a mouse, there is a power glitch. The power goes out and when it returns a few seconds later, there are two mice. When they see each other, one of the mice attacks the other one, quickly dispatching it to the horror of Mina. Cut to the past 8 months as we witness the birth of Mayhem aka Brigid climbing out of the water after the Roxxon gas exposure and also from the attempted murder on Brigid’s life by Connors.

In a fill-in-the-gaps scenario, we watch as Mayhem slowly Takes over Brigid’s life as she comes to realize that she’s the doppelganger in this duopoly of mind and body. She realizes who she is after watching herself laid up in a hospital bed. She wants to kill her twin self but after overhearing a conversation about Connors, she has an unofficial mission statement to go after him even though she has no clue on where to find him. As she wonders the streets of New Orleans, she spots these fliers and posting of missing women from the area. She now has a cause.

Cut to present day where we left off from Episode 2 where Brigid meets Brigid and I have to applaud Emma Lahana for playing two diametrically opposing characters in such a unique way. Right away, you see the Alpha Mayhem asserting dominance while the timid Brigid is a wallflower. This takes your mind into a different area as well as you wonder about what role one’s aggression plays in making up who you are? It’s that Ying/Yang thing that gives us balance as we see one candle burning much brighter at one end than the other. Mayhem doesn’t shy away from her past exploits as she recalls in vivid detail of wiping out the members from the drug cartel meeting. Tandy and Tyrone don’t know how to process this but you start to sense that one of them is resigned to see the valid logic in taking that approach.

Mayhem attempts to kill them when she fires a shot at them forcing Tyrone to transport Tandy and Brigid to the abandoned church, much to Tandy’s surprise. With Tyrone’s new ability to transport other people with him, it adds a new layer to the power dynamic with Tandy. They take Brigid to see Mina who confirms that Brigid was exposed to the gas and Mayhem was “born” as a result. They also come to the conclusion that, given the opportunity, Mayhem will kill Brigid when the time is right. Since Brigid and Mayhem are the same people, Tandy bolsters Brigid’s confidence to think like Mayhem and perhaps figure out what she is doing and where she is going. She does and they wind up at some seedy no-star hotel and gets the key from the desk clerk. They enter the room and find the walls covered with the missing girl fliers and other paperwork Mayhem has put in on tracking the girls.

There is a ‘B’ story in all of this. Last season we saw Tyrone in a scuffle with Father Francis Delgado (Jaime Zevallos) and during that scuffle, Tyrone saw Father Delgado’s past where he had killed a child after striking her with his vehicle as a result from driving under the influence. It was implied that he got away with vehicular manslaughter and because Tyrone saw this in his reading, Father Delgado suffered tremendous guilt but I don’t know about remorse. We see Mayhem seemingly feigning compassion towards the now defrocked Father Delgado as he has fallen into drunkenness and living on the streets. At one point, Mayhem uprights his liquor bottle as Delgado is passed out on the streets. This really didn’t move the plot points along whatsoever unless they wanted to show Mayhem feeling some sympathy towards Delgado. In the final scene of this ‘B’ story, Delgado smashes the liquor bottle to the ground which seems to allude that Delgado is getting his act together. None of the “B’ stories moved my needle in any given direction. This is a stale plot device that we’ve seen way too many times and other actors have proven that they had done the plot device of an alcoholic person (Emmy winner Dennis Franz, NYPD Blue) way better.

On occasions, there is a tug of power beneath the surface with Tyrone and Tandy as they take turns being in charge. Tandy is pushing Brigid to move forward while Tyrone is checking Tandy to not push Brigid so hard. As the plot jumps back and forth in time, Mayhem finds some girls and sets them free. She is long gone when Tyrone, Tandy, and Brigid show up at the scene. Tyrone uses his touch on one of the traumatized girls to get a vision of where she had been. He gets the location and Tandy and he is on to the location. The bad guys are holding more girls at this location. Tyrone and Tandy set out to rescue them. Tandy uses her new ability to generate energy balls and hurls it towards the building setting off chaos among the bad guys. Tyrone teleport in and gets the remainder of the girls. Mayhem drives up in a tractor rig running over one of the guys. She gains one of the weapons from the ground and begins firing at the guys indiscriminately. As she does, Tyrone runs toward a younger looking teen who is about to get shoot. Tyrone releases his cloud as the bullets fly into the void. At the same time, Mayhem is sucked into his dark cloud and disappears. Tandy has a look of horror on her face, what did Tyrone just do? Mayhem is walking in the void and sees a building in the distance. At this point, Cloak & Dagger has you wanting to see more but it ends. Nooooo. Until next week.

Rating: B+

Cloak & Dagger: Season 2 Review

A Journey Into Darker Elements

Cast:

Aubrey Joseph … Tyrone Johnson / Cloak

Olivia Holt … Tandy Bowen / Dagger

Gloria Reuben … Adina Johnson

Andrea Roth … Melissa Bowen

Emma Lahana … Detective Brigid O’Reilly

Miles Mussenden … Otis Johnson

Dilshad Vadsaria … Lia

Noëlle Renée Bercy … Evita Fusilier

If you are a glutton for teenage melodrama, misery, and angst combined with extraordinary fetes of inhuman abilities, I welcome you to the second season of Cloak & Dagger, on the Disney-ABC owned Freeform network. Cloak & Dagger is from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) without the pomp and ceremony of their more established stable of superheroes of Thor, Iron Man, Avengers roster. If one were to rank Cloak & Dagger against the roster of superheroes, there are the blockbuster movie heroes, there are the television heroes and then there are the streaming service on demand heroes. Cloak & Dagger falls in the latter category. With the demise of Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Punisher, and Jessica Jones from the Netflix streaming services, only Cloak & Dagger and The Runaways remain as fixtures to the comic book adaptation world that’s not streaming on Netflix. While not a rating juggernaut, Disney-ABC is keeping it propped up for now as it enters its second season.

To give those unfamiliar with Cloak & Dagger a fresher course, here is a quick summation from Season one. Tyrone Johnson and Tandy Bowen were children growing up in New Orleans, Louisiana. While growing up, they both experienced tragedies that would set them on a path of discovery and a pairing neither one could foreshadow. On that particular fateful night, Tyrone witnessed his brother being executed by the police by the water’s edge and Tandy was in the backseat of a car driven by her father as it plunged into the water killing him. At the same time these events are going on, an explosion at a Roxxon chemical plant erupts sending unknown gases into the water below. As Tyrone’s brother falls into the water, he goes in to rescue him but is unsuccessful. Instead, he finds Tandy stuck in the backseat of her father’s car and he attempts to rescue her. The next we see in Tandy and Tyrone unconscious and clutching each other's hand. Tandy wakes up first and takes Tyrone’s hoodie jacket. They don’t see each other until years later at Tyrone’s high school outing one night. Tandy boosts his wallet and Tyrone goes after her. He catches up with her and when they go to touch, light emits from her hands and dark clouds emanate from his body. And so it begins.

In a two-episode story arc, Season 2 opens up eight months later from the Season one finale where Tandy and Tyrone combine their new abilities to defeat a near catastrophic event affecting New Orleans while dealing with bad guys. The roles and fortunes have been reversed for Tandy and Tyrone. Where she once stayed by herself, homeless, in an abandoned church is now the new habitat for Tyrone as he was framed for the murder of his brother’s friend by a crooked cop he was absorbed by Tyrone’s dark cloud. Tandy is back living with her mother whom she discovered that her mother had been abused for years by her father whom she adored and saw him as a person who could do no wrong. This revelation changes her perspective on her father as well as the specter surrounding family violence.

In a group meeting with women victimized by family violence, Tandy takes one woman to task for not taking steps to remove herself from the abuse she’s been receiving. Her intense passion emboldens Tandy to take measures into her own hands and she goes after the man by entering his home and leaving behind a message on the wall but that episode fails to dissuade him as he writes it off as vandals and he embellishes the event where he comes off as a hero as told by the woman. Tandy goes back and confronts the man directly warning him to change his ways.

Tyrone, on the other hand, is skulking around drug havens stealing money and drugs directly from the dealers. He lies to Tandy about what he is doing because he is living a life of isolation and he has to do something he feels is positive to stop this scourge. When Tandy discovers what he has been doing, she is pissed but she also wants to help. Both of them seems to have this need to help when they see a wrong.

Detective O’Reilly has a new friend, herself. In a twist from the source material, O’Reilly’s has a doppelganger named Mayhem. Mayhem is Dirty Harry with an A-cup on steroids. Tandy and Tyrone don’t know that O’Reilly has a doppelganger until unrelated events lead them to an ambulance storage yard where they track the abduction of the abused woman to the yard. Tyrone had retrieved O’Reilly and transported her to the yard where Tandy is there with Mayhem. Tandy, Tyrone, and O’Reilly officially meet Mayhem. Mayhem makes no excuses for her actions but was she responsible for the execution of all the drug dealers at the club?

There were elements to these two episodes to evokes a much darker tone for this season of Cloak & Dagger. A woman victimized by domestic abuse is systematically abducted through an elaborate system using ambulances. Who is behind it? A group of drug dealers is killed under a minute with no signs of any weapons being used. One of the dealers leave behind an etching of some juju sketched out in cocaine powder next to his dead body. Are Tyrone’s parents separated? Does Tandy still have any lingering resentment towards her mother for not leaving her abusive father? After viewing these episodes, you get the sense that dark themes are foreshadowing this season of Cloak & Dagger.

Introducing Sabrina Claudio

Working Social Media Platforms

If you do not know who Sabrina Claudio is and you are of a certain demographic, you are not alone Granted, her name is not familiar to the tongues of many Americans for this native Floridian of Cuban-Puerto Rican descent from Miami as she has made her mark in the world of a singer-songwriter. She has a voice that sounds like liquid glass poured over pearls. She has made her mark in something that hasn’t had too many breakout artists and that’s in the R&B genre through what has become the “norm” of social media platforms (SoundCloud, Instagram, YouTube, etc.). Like many before her, if you can grab some eyeballs to your YouTube channel with some good sounds, you can at least get some subscribers. She currently has around 383,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel. But is she worthy? In a word, yes.

Sabrina Claudio made her virgin debut in 2016 by uploading her music on SoundCloud and from there, she looked back and saw what she had done and then looked forward. Originally doing Instagram cover songs that garnered some followers, she started focusing on original content and an original sound. She had stated in the past that her love for R&B comes from what she considers her “old school” R&B from the likes of Mariah Carey, Usher, and Boys II Men. I would recommend that she explore and expand her overall music history with artists like Marvin Gaye, Shirley Horn, Aretha Franklin, and Sade to get more experience with the full complement especially when you get deep into these artists studio work.

On occasions, her vocal gymnastics reminds me of Sade but in a different tonal range. It’s just a hint but it’s there in the way she just sings in this pure natural form without any effort. 

Right now, she is playing it safe with her voice. She’s not really challenging it like one of her contemporaries, Ariana Grande. Right now, what she has done so far is the safe middle of the road work. You’ve had our attention but you need to flex those vocal chords and show yourself that you’re not just a few notes phenomenon resting solely on YouTube view hits. Aretha Franklin sang opera on a moments notice when she substituted for an ailing Luciano Pavarotti at a Grammy event one year.

You can hear that Sabrina Claudio has talent as she belts out her song, Standing Still. This by far, in this writing, is the standout piece she has created to date. It reminds you of a style of music that's long been forgotten called “Let’s Make a Baby” music. It’s the kind of song that when the original WKRP in Cincinnati Dr. Johnny Fever had a panic attack and couldn’t get back on the air, Bailey Quarters helped him get back on the air by being by his side and as he slowly came around he looked in her eyes and said “I sure would like to take you home and kiss you all over in the dark”. It’s the kind of song that Quincy Jones made with Barry White, Al B. Sure, James Ingram, Michael Jackson and others collaborated on the Secret Garden record. 

It’s the kind of song that you will not get tired of hearing on a loop for the entire day. Ladies and Gentlemen, here is Sabrina Claudio.

Lyrics

Time stands still
While we stand here
Don't wanna fight you
I need the same as you

I want trust too
I want us too
I want lust too
I want lust too
I want love too
I want this too
I'm wanting you

Time is being wasted screaming
Not listen I promise you'll heal me better
You're so unaware about the feeling
The same thing, the same damn thing

Time is standing still
And why are we still here
I don't wanna fight you
I'm needing the same as you

I want trust too
I want us too
I want lust too
I want us too
I want love too
I want this too
I'm wanting you

Songwriters: Ajay Bhattacharyya / Sabrina Claudio