Tandy wants to find answers while Tyrone just wants to be a normal kid. Find out what happens in our review of episode 5 of Cloak & Dagger, “Princeton Offense.”
In It to Win It
Big corporations don’t have the best track record in the Marvel universe, but that doesn’t mean Roxxon isn’t trying. The episode opens with a Roxxon commercial spouting out claims about how the company is trying to make the world a better place.
But this might as well be a Saturday Night Live parody since the audience and Tandy are starting to learn the truth. She is as determined as ever to figure out what happened to her father and searches through Greg’s documents.
After being interrupted during a hook-up with another cop, Detective O’Reilly goes into the station to talk to Tyrone. (It seems like this scene is attempting to establish that O’Reilly doesn’t play by the rules, but it also felt unnecessary when there are so many other options for character building than the trope of a career woman having a tryst with a coworker.)
O’Reilly wants to believe Tyrone’s story about Detective Connors because of her own gut instinct but points out it’s hard to take down a cop without any evidence. He tells her about the drug deal he saw and she promises to investigate. She also tells him to “go on and be a kid.”
After the past few days it seems impossible for him to go back to “being a kid,” but he returns to school for the big game and tries to get into the spirit. That lasts for about a minute before Tandy surprises him with a visit and shows him she can control her powers.
It’s obvious that Tandy doesn’t even consider going back to school an option and marvels at the mundanity of Tyrone’s school life.
“I don’t know if Betty or Veronica decorated your locker, but she’s in it to win it. You know that?” quips Tandy when she sees his locker decorated by Evita. While it could just be a reference to the classic comics, I’m hoping it’s also a wink at one of the other biggest teen dramas on television right now.
What Tandy really wants is to use the computer lab though for her Roxxon investigation which she shares with Tyrone. He’s more interested in how she controls her powers. It’s easy, she just had to nearly kill herself.
Not only can Tandy control her dagger powers, she wants to use her power to read people’s hopes to her own advantage. Tyrone likens it to stealing, but Tandy insists it’s fair since the world has been stealing from her for her whole life.
Tyrone’s enthusiasm for the championship doesn’t really recover and he can’t understand why Evita is treating him so coldly (did she see him hanging around Tandy?).
At the police station, O’Reilly starts digging into the drug crimes, or lack thereof, in her ward, theorizing that Connors cleared the field to set up his own monopoly.
She tells her coworker, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” This speaks not only to the Connors case but to all of the intertwined events of Tandy and Tyrone’s past and present.
For Tyrone, Billy’s specter hangs over him throughout the episode. Even when his mom tells him how proud she is, Tyrone admits all he ever wanted was to share moments like the basketball championship with Billy.
As he places a picture of Billy and his old friends back on the wall, his powers teleport him to a workshop where an old friend of Billy’s, Duane, is working. Despite the time that has passed Duane remembers Tyrone and tells him he’s rooting for him.
Duane tells Tyrone he wishes Billy was still around, but you can’t change the past and have to look ahead. It’s all sweet and good but considering how long it’s been you’d think he would be a little more confused why Tyrone just showed up out of the blue.
Maybe once Tyrone gains control over his power we’ll get fewer of these clunky scenes where no one seems to notice him just disappearing and appearing all over the place. Because so much of Tyrone’s story takes him out of his normal habitat they seem to be over-relying on his sporadic teleportation to weave all the narratives together.
Tandy’s story doesn’t have that problem since she apparently has no place to be and is used to being in places she doesn’t belong.
Anything Could Happen
Speaking of being in places she doesn’t belong, Tandy’s investigation takes her to a modeling agency that Roxxon uses. And as you’re probably guessing, the modeling agency sometimes offers its clients a little more than just arm candy if you catch my drift.
While Tandy is signing up to be an escort, Tyrone’s world couldn’t be further removed as he offers Evita his letterman jacket as a way of proving his love before the big game. Move over Archie Andrews, there’s a new lovesick jock in town.
As the game announcer foreshadows, “It’s one of those magical nights where anything could happen.”
Although the game is about as interesting as watching paint dry, Tyrone does get a glimpse of the referee’s fears and realizes he’s throwing the game.
We get a reappearance from Tandy’s ex-boyfriend Liam who O’Reilly offers a deal in exchange for any information he has about the drug dealer who operates out of the nightclub he works at. Call it a hunch, but I’m pretty sure even if he gets out of jail things aren’t going to end well for Liam.
At the party, Tandy sees that all the Roxxon employees have versions of all the same hopes: to humiliate their boss. However, as we were reminded earlier, every action has a reaction. Tyrone accidentally teleports from the game at halftime, claiming that Tandy’s abuse of her powers is causing his to go haywire.
However the snooping works for her, she realizes the man she keeps seeing in people’s hopes is a man named Peter Scarborough who came to their house looking for something after her dad’s death.
One problem? Tyrone still needs to get back to the championship. Tandy pushes him over the railing of a balcony guessing a dangerous situation will trigger his powers. Thank goodness she’s right or they’d have to drop the Cloak from Cloak & Dagger.
O’Reilly tracks down the cocaine dealer and gets closer to finding the main supplier.
After meeting a seemingly friendly scientist named Mina Hess at the party, Tandy goes home and ties CEO Peter Scarborough back to the documents Greg had found on Roxxon.
Tandy stages a blown tire outside of Scarborough’s house, and it looks as though she might stab him. But she changes her mind at the last minute and reads his hopes instead. In his vision he’s taking money out of the water anyway he can, even off of dead bodies. She realizes that the conspiracy is much bigger than her dad and Roxxon must be stopped.
In the final minutes of the championship, Tyrone is untouchable as every player who tries to block him is sent into confusion as he triggers their own fears. Tyrone takes the buzzer beater shot… and misses it. It’s implied he intentionally misses the shot, realizing after reading their fears that the other team deserves it more.
Tyrone finds Evita waiting in his bedroom after the game. She admits she knows he missed the last shot on purpose, reiterating that she sees him for who she really is. She undresses and we don’t see her leave until the next morning.
Meanwhile, O’Reilly entraps Connors by pretending she has a drug problem and used to be on vice. This lie does the trick to get Connors to trust her.
Unfortunately, Tyrone’s good mood after his night with Evita is cut short as he teleports backs to Duane’s workshop from earlier. He overhears Duane arguing with Connors over the dealer O’Reilly busted. More shocking is Duane references Billy’s murder, implying that he knows it was Connors.
The show closes with Tandy realizing the woman she met at the party was the daughter of someone involved with her dad’s accident.
Additional Thoughts:
- I struggle to maintain interest in Tyrone’s “normal life” when there are so many questions left unanswered about Connors. Hopefully, Cloak & Dagger finds a way to incorporate Evita better without making her seem like a side plot. More Voodoo, please?
- Given all the hype and speculation around the announcement of Ally Maki, who plays Mina Hess, joining the cast, I can’t wait to see a lot more of that character.
- That said, maybe the cast is getting too big. Sure, they killed off Greg, but where has Father Delgado been?
Cloak & Dagger airs on Freeform at 8 p.m./7c every Thursday. Stay tuned to The Marvel Report for more coverage.