Cloak & Dagger 2.01 and 2.02 Review: "Restless Energy" and "White Lines"

2.01 “Restless Energy”

The first season of Cloak & Dagger showed the Divine Pairing of Tyrone Johnson (Aubrey Joseph) and Tandy Bowen (Olivia Holt) saving the city. With the Season 2 premiere the bigger question seems to be, “can they save themselves?”

From the start the premiere episode, “Restless Energy,” uses parallels to show much has changed for the two but that the change isn’t necessarily for the better. In fact, there’s a sense the two have taken a step back as you see the parallels to the first season pilot.

Tandy is back in ballet class and Tyrone is back on the streets with trouble brewing just like they were that fateful day of the Roxxon explosion

But instead of seeing a renewed and refreshed Tandy, she seems uncomfortable in her environment. Even though her mom seems to be doing much better as we see the two participate in group therapy, it’s obvious Tandy still grapples with learning the truth about her father’s past abuse. Even with Roxxon’s misdeeds brought to light, there are even more wounds open than before.

Tyrone seems a little more at ease, using his powers to take down drug rings, but things aren’t exactly easy for the runaway falsely accused of killing a cop. He has no way to prove his innocence and tries to gain some sense of control by using his powers for good.

The third big question left from last season is the life of Detective Brigid O’Reilly (Emma Lahana). After nearly dying, she’s clearly still shaken as shown by her inability to even hit the target at the shooting range. Tyrone isn’t making her life any easier, as he keeps interfering with the drug trade and causing her more trouble.

Despite all her flaws, O’Reilly’s experience and maturity always contrasted with Tyrone and Tandy’s youthful naiviete in Season 1. Now she comes off as more unstable and troubled as the both of them combined.

Fortunately, Tyrone also has Tandy who knows the truth about his innocence. We see that their friendship has grown even stronger during the time lapse, with Tandy visiting him at the church and bringing him schoolwork so he can keep up with his studies.

She struggles to understand why he doesn’t use his powers to visit Evita or his family, but he claims the risk is too great.

hey settle in for a movie night with an old Zorro film. As Tyrone explains the character of Zorro to Tandy he also describes their own situation. The townsfolk are always in trouble, and Zorro always does the rescuing. Just like them.

Things will never be normal for them again and Tandy admits she misses being in the action, but also claims she’s avoiding any heroics.

There’s of course one problem. They’re both lying to each other.

Levels of Entropy

Tyrone secretly visits his parents, now separated, and Evita, while we find Tandy showing up at the house of an abused group member ready to take revenge on the girl’s abusive boyfriend. Neither can let go of their old live.

Even heavier-handed than the Zorro reference, Tyrone reads aloud a physics textbook chapter about entropy as narration over Tandy’s scene of destruction at the abusive boyfriend’s house. He also marks up a map of the gang territory of New Orleans.

“The levels of entropy in a closed system never decrease. They never go away. They simply change form.”

Chaos continues to reign in New Orleans, just in a new form to be uncovered this season.

But before their secrets can get either into too much trouble, they realize the truth about one another. Tandy tracks down Tyrone in the middle of a drug bust as he’s about to be killed and saves him.

Instead of being angry at Tyrone for sneaking out, she’s angry at him for not asking her to help.

Tyrone finally opens up and admits that he felt Tandy had moved on with Roxxon behind them. “I didn’t want to get in the way of all that good. Because I wasn’t. I wasn’t good. I was horrible.”

After all that Tandy has been through, he didn’t want to be the one holding her back. When he admits she’s one of the ones he checks up on he says,“I told you I check up on everybody I care about.”

But his heartfelt admission is not enough for Tandy who’s done being lied to.

Both of their actions are backfiring, as the abused girl from the group, Mikayla, is more sympathetic than ever to her boyfriend who thinks he was attacked. Meanwhile, Tyron’s actions have further fueled the gang violence causing O’Reilly and the police to take emergency action.

One of Cloak & Dagger’s strengths is how adept the show is at expressing the characters through dialogue-less scenes. A cut montage of Tyrone playing basketball while Tandy practices ballet shows how out of control their emotions have gotten. It adds a realness to the characters and grounds them instead of letting them drift into teen melodrama.

Tyrone finds Tandy and admits he needs her help, which prompts Tandy to admit her own struggles in dealing with the resentment left towards her dad.

Maybe they can’t fix each other, but they’re better together and ready to do some good. The episode ends with them planning to secretly record the drug lord meeting arranged by the New Orleans PD. Everything seems to be going great, and they even get a moment to let loose in the club they snuck into (very awkwardly for Tyrone), until they notice a head being bashed into the backroom window where the meeting is taking place.

Entropy is taking a new form once again.

Additional Thoughts:

Just as with Season 1, the musical cues for this show are still on fire. I found myself jotting down lyrics to try to find the song later more than once.
Olivia Holt and Aubrey Joseph continue to elevate the show from good to great. Their relationship on screen always seems so sincere. Even with the time jump, the progression of their friendship doesn’t feel forced.
While it’s easy to compare it to Runaways,it’s becoming obvious with the show’s continued focus on street level crime it lends more comparison to the now discontinued Marvel Netflix shows.

Continue on to page 2 for our review of the second part of the Season 2 premiere, episode 2, “White Lines.”