Cloak & Dagger, Season 2, Ep. 6

B Side Review

B Side, the appropriate title from the continuation of Episode 5, finds that we are still listening to the soliloquy of Tandy Bowen giving her speech on the virtues of her best friend, Tyrone. We immediately assess that this is a state of hallucination as Tandy was captured by Lia (Dilshad Valsaria) who hit Tandy with a taser and placed her in the back of an ambulance. Tandy’s alternative life is that of a successful ballerina while Ty’s is that of him becoming a New Orleans police officer with the event of him celebrating graduating from the police academy. In Tandy’s vision state, she and Ty are heading to the store to get more ice as she recounts the day she was saved by Tyrone. He, in turn, stated that she has saved him many times spiritually just by being in the world. This mutual affection for one another comes under attack when they arrive at the convenience store. Tandy is confronted by a white customer who objects to Tyrone’s friendship with Tandy. But you know Tandy, she won’t back down or put up with hate speech. Compounding the intensity is the white store clerk who chimes in with the customer. He spots Tyrone’s service gun and pulls out his weapon and aims it at Tyrone. Tyrone explains to the clerk that he is a cop but Tandy has because she was admiring it on the way to the store. Tandy makes a sudden move and the clerk fires off his gun. Tandy and Ty reach for one another and get the force reaction they encountered when the first touched at the cemetery.

Tandy us trying to force her will out from this dream state. She knows something is wrong. Inside the ambulance, Lia is injecting her with a substance to keep her under. In another dream state, Tandy finds herself being an employee of Roxxon. She’s at a drilling platform dealing with a contentious Mina Hess (Ally Maki) who doesn’t want her there. Tyrone is one of the workers who is trying to assist Tandy shut down the platform as it is in danger of exploding. This dream state proves to be a failure for Tandy as she briefly spots an image of a figure in her induced unconscious state. We soon come to see who the other person is in the back of the ambulance. It’s Andre (Brooklyn McLinn), the community activist who had been working with Tandy about the missing young women. He apparently developed meta powers on the night of the Roxxon explosion as he attempted suicide. He came out on the other side with abilities that tapped into people’s minds. While in the beginning, he helped people 90% of the time, it was that 10% he chose to exploit and make money off the trafficking of women.

Tandy continues to fight the medication as she is now a street thief and Tyrone is a car thief in her latest dream state. In a series of back and forth, Tandy relives the street encounter with a pickpocket victim. She finds herself running from the law and encounters Tyrone in the middle of stealing a car. Their Bonnie and Clyde escape is mixed in with flashes of the ambulance ride. Tandy fights harder to come out of the induced state and in her mind, she does. She heads back to the church where she finds Tyrone worried about her. She explains to him about the trafficking ring and they enlist Bridget to go after Andre and Lia.

But that situation doesn’t resolve itself because we find Tandy and Tyrone in the record store of the missing. It seems Tandy is facing her biggest fear as she confronts Andre. He has a weapon on Tandy and Tyrone. But she has this sense of calm about her because now she is not alone and comes to this realization that the reason she feels confidence is that she has Tyrone with her. We get the sense that should Tyrone fire his weapon that Tyrone would suck him into his dark cloud like he had done before. Andre soon comes to surmise that if what makes Tandy strong is having Tyrone by her side then it is also what makes her vulnerable. He shoots Tyrone who doesn’t evoke his dark cloud. Tandy watches as he slowly dies and it is at this moment that Tandy relinquishes her powers to Andre. She has given up.

In the back of the ambulance, Andre and Lia move Tandy to her next destination now that he has broken her. On some level, we have begun to see just how important Tyrone means to Tandy. She subconsciously knows that it is Tyrone that has meaning to her life. He has become a stabilizing anchor that she may not be ready to admit, at least not consciously.