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+